What is working in a job search today

Over the past several years I have found people who employ conservative, conventional approaches to find a job too often end up with longer intervals of unemployment between jobs. In the past few weeks I followed up with people I've worked with and those I offered free advice to in 2012 to see what worked and what did not for them in their job search.

Here, again, in no particular order, are some tactics that generated more interviews and shortened the time people anticipated being out of work.

1: The people who used the Bio-Resume and Profile-Resume format I recommended got the highest send-out to employer response ratio. The Bio-Rez worked best for recent grads and early career job seekers while the Profile Resume worked best for high level professionals and executives.
 

2: Skilled professionals 40-60 years old had excellent results in their job search marketing themselves as a consultant or looking to offer a temporary solution. Their ability to broaden their network and get in front of a decision maker was greatly increased thus helping them uncover more employment opportunities in the “hidden job market” than when they conducted a conventional job search.

3: People who, following my advice and upgraded and optimized their LinkedIn page and accumulated a minimum of 8 focused recommendations achieved greater  results after doing so, especially in regards to getting on recruiters’ radar screens.

4: I was surprised (but really not that much) by the number of job hunters who found a new job by going old school and pounding the pavement. By widening their network they got to speak with more decision makers and people who directed them to the ‘hidden job market” at a higher rate than those who used strictly conventional methods,    

5: People who wrote or had a strong resume written for them from the get-go and afterwards only made minor custom modifications to appeal to the job at hand had a better send- out to employer response rate than those who obsessively rewrote their resume based on their perception of its limited value and the  opinion of others not in the know.

6:People who learned how to tell compelling stories in their resume and during a job interview fared better than those who relied on espousing facts and figures to impress decision makers in their written and verbal communication.

 As always I will review your resume at no cost if you email it to perry@perrynewman.com