Jobseekers: Plan to Succeed or Fail by not Planning

What I emphasize to new clients and people who attend my presentations is that the key to a successful job search is no different than how you go about launching a successful new business. After all, the desired results are both the same! 

Statistics on small businesses trying to get off the ground will tell you the failure rate is astronomical. Most new businesses do not take off as quickly as originally anticipated and struggle to survive until they learn how to do it right, and too many run out of money and either close, or sell whatever they have built up at a loss, within the first 12 months. Then again there are people who get their business off to a smooth start and reach or surpass their desired expectations From Day One and continue to grow and prosper. How about you, do you plan to succeed or fail in your job search?

The most important factor defining who succeeds, who fails, and who underachieves in opening their small business is planning for success before you begin to take action. Just as most successful aspiring small business entrepreneurs do their research and develop a business plan at the onset, so too must a jobseeker who wants to succeed and a get the right job as quickly as possible. 

So here is a list of common sense things for opening a new business and how they are juxtaposed to conducting a job search. 

A: You need to know your niche in the market and why people would want to do business with you. For a jobseeker this means you need to know which jobs you qualify for and why people would hire you for them.

B: You need to know as much about your customer base as possible and what they are in the market to buy. For a job seeker this means you need to know about the companies you are applying for and the type of person and skills profile they are looking to hire.

C: You need to know the marketplace’s and competitor’s price points, where you and your product fit in, how much your overhead is, and how much of a profit margin you’re seeking to begin with until you become established. For a jobseeker this means knowing the salary range for the jobs you’re applying for, understanding your budget factoring the cost of paid or unpaid health insurance, and determining what your worth is and how much above or below this figure you will accept the right opportunity for.

D: You need to have the right marketing tools, marketing / advertising plan, a website, and a defined budget. For a jobseeker this means you need to have a quality résumé, an appealing and optimized LinkedIn page, and a networking plan. Some of you will also benefit from having a website or some examples of your work that can be viewed online. Most important you need a budget to acquire and execute your marketing program.

E: You need to have of a team of experts i.e. an attorney, accountant, banker and a marketing and social media consultant etc. to help you get off the ground offer professional advice during your incubation and start up stages. As a job seeker some of the people you may want to have as part of your team are industry specific recruiters, a job search coach or advisor, a social media strategist and a résumé writer.

Once you have all the information and the people you need lined up and ready to go, then it is time for the final step; to come up with a written game plan of how you will conduct your job search and your budget.

You will outline the specific job search actions you will take and the amount of time you will spend on each in terms of day-to-day activity and set for yourself daily and weekly goals i.e. the number of people you networked with this week, the number of résumés you sent out to people where there were no actual jobs but there might be hidden opportunities, the number of jobs you applied for, the number of recruiters you contacted, and the follow up for each activity.

I do not mean to make a job search sound so simplistic, there is a lot of hard work that goes into the planning and execution stages. However I can tell you that if you have something worthwhile to offer an employer and you can discover what it is, and you then go about your job search ad-[hoc with a well-conceived plan and the proper support network and checks and balances you will find a job in much less time than if you approach it with a casual flying by the seat of your pants approach.

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

The 6 P's of Writing A Great Résumé

I am constantly approached for advice on how to construct a “Winning Résumé” by unemployed job seekers, people who are currently employed and looking to advance their career, and by established and aspiring résumé writers; and without knowing them personally I am hesitant to offer specific advice.

However, upon reflection for this week’s post, I’ve come up with some ubiquitous rules I feel apply to professional résumé writers and individuals writing their own résumés at all levels and stages in their career.

So here are my “6-P’s of Writing A Great Resume.”

PASSION: Passion, both externally and internally, is a must to achieve a great résumé. Before beginning the writing process the writer (you or the professional you hire) must be passionate about the project. It can’t be looked upon as just another writing assignment, there must be an inner drive that the finished product is going to be the best résumé possible and that the writer will put everything he or she has into it and not stop until perfection is achieved. On the other hand, the writing within the résumé must convey the candidate’s passion for their job and their passion to be the best at what they do. Of course this is easier said than done, but there are ways to convey passion and leave a positive impression in a résumé.

PREPARED: After writing a few dozen résumés most professionals learn how to prepare for the task at hand, whereas most people who write their own résumé are often at a disadvantage in this regard. To me being prepared to write a résumé is a multi-layered process. Before the first keystroke the writer must know the following information: The profile of the ideal hire, exactly what the candidate has to offer, and what style and format is the best one to use to get the readers’ attention and make a professional impression on them. Only after you have this information in hand are you prepared to start writing.

PATIENCE: This is a most important factor in résumé writing. As mentioned above, don’t rush into the writing process until you are fully prepared to begin; be thorough and meticulous in your preparation. You also need to have some patience in testing the résumé to see if it is getting the desired results. Don’t go rushing off and making wholesale edits and changes if you’re not getting the response you anticipate right off the bat. Before blaming the résumé I suggest you first evaluate how you are using the résumé to see if major changes are appropriate in your job search approach before committing time and effort to make wholesale changes to the résumé document itself.

POSITIONING: For me this is the crux of a great résumé and it is the aspect of résumé writing I personally spend quite a bit of time on. Every resume is as special and unique as its owner, and so is each job. A key factor in getting your résumé to the top of the pile and for the reader to give it more than a perfunctory 10-15 second scan is knowing what information is vital, crucial and useful and positioning this information accordingly in the résumé itself.
POIGNANT: This is the hardest aspects of résumé writing. All too many résumés today (professionally or self written) are a collection of ‘been there – done that’ chock full of bland attempts at including bullet points that end with ‘resulting in blah blah blah…’  Although a résumé is not an exercise in creative writing, it is definitely not an exercise in technical writing. In my opinion the goal of a résumé writer is to be creative in the use of words and appearance, to poignantly tell a story that will influence the reader to judge you through your eyes rather than their own, and in so doing lead them to see what they desire to see while prompting them to reach out to you with a request for an interview.

PRECISION: This aspect of résumé writing applies to both the information contained in the résumé and to its presentation. The information you offer must be as precise as possible, especially when it comes to noting achievements and staying on point for the particular job/s you are applying for. If you oversell yourself it is likely to come back and bite you in the butt on a job interview and if you offer too broad a picture you open yourself up to coming across as overqualified. Precision is also of great importance in choosing the adjectives and achievements used in a résumé and determining if you have offered the reader too much or too little information to determine how well you meet their need and stack up against the competition.

As always I am happy to critique U.S. resumes and LinkedIn pages at no cost. Email me at perry@perrynewman.com

Common threads in business development and job search

As a professional résumé writer and job search advisor there was a recent discussion in LinkedIn’s Account Manager Group that caught my eye and a response that prompted me to write this post.

“Need to convince a prospective client, but no way to get into him!” This was a discussion started by an Account Manager at a bank in Cameroon looking for strategic business development advice.

What I loved was this response posted by a Business Development Manager in the UK.

What do you need to convince the client to do - To buy something?

Why can’t you get to him – He refuses to talk or you can’t get past the gatekeeper?

When you hit a brick wall, ask yourself: How much do you know about his business? What is it that he does? How he does it? What is it that he wishes to achieve? Why would he change something? Why would he buy from you?

Find the answer to some of these questions, and you will find a way to get him to talk.  If you can’t get past the gatekeeper, find a way to build rapport with the gatekeeper first, or find a reason to be at his office in person.

I thought his response was categorically great advice for the banker and also perceive it as equally applicable for people engaged in a job search.

Throughout my career I keep telling people how important it is to think like a salesperson in all aspects of conducting a job search. So when I read this Q&A I saw the correlation articulated by someone from the sales side in a way you can appreciate and understand.

Cristian Andronache’s advice is something you need to seriously consider when writing a résumé and preparing for a job interview.  In both activities you are trying to make a sale and get beyond the initial gatekeeper. Just as he advised the banker, to be successful in a job search it helps to know as much as possible about perspective employers, their business, culture and the modus operandi of their operations. You need to research what is it they are looking for in this hire and why would they consider hiring you over someone else.

Extrapolating on what Cristian wrote, if you can answer these questions you will be prepared to write a targeted résumé that will get past the gatekeeper and get your foot in the door. Then, once inside the interview room you will know what to say to the interviewer that will get you a job offer?

As always I am happy to critique U.S. resumes and LinkedIn pages at no cost. Email me at perry@perrynewman.com