Accelerate Your Search™ Now

What will you do different in 2012?

If you have been job searching for a several months or more the question – “What will you do different in 2012?”  As well as the answer is critical to your job search and your career success.  If your results are not where you want them to be, ask yourself “What will I do different in 2012?” 

If your job search results are – interviews and no offers, coming in second time and time again, or no interviews, or no conversations with potential employers and this continues – where will you be at the end of 2012.  Well the odds are the same place you are today!

If you continue to do the same things the odds are great that you will get the same results, and be in the same place at the end of 2012 as you were at the end of 2011.  Also believe it or not, or like it or not, the longer you are not working – yes, unemployed – the higher the odds are you will impact your long term earnings potential.  Let’s face it; the odds are also higher that you are building some habits that may impact your performance for years to come. 

Over the years, I have worked with and learned from many talented coaches, mentors, bosses and colleagues.  I am not 100% sure Doug Brown was the first to ask me a couple of powerful  questions that made a huge difference in my habits, my life, my business, and my career, but I believe it was Doug – Thanks Doug!  

Here are the powerful questions:

What is important to you?

What is REALLY important to you?

If < fill in the blank with what is REALLY important to you > is that important to you, what are you willing to different today to have it or achieve it?

I hope the questions and your answers help your search and your life as much as they have helped me.  Here’s to your very successful 2012!

If you want to share what you are doing different, please do so below.  I’d love to hear about your success.  If I can help you do something different in 2012, contact me.

It is the time of year for resolutions. What are yours? 

If you have followed me, you know I speak about controlling what you can control in your job search.  As you set your resolutions don’t forget to focus on the results YOU want.

Here is a Henry Blodget’s post Mark Cuban: There’s Only One Thing in Life You Can Control Your Own Effort from Business Insider with links to excerpts from Mark Cuban’s new book.  Excerpts are interesting and I will let you know what I think of the book once I read it.

Cuban’s questions are solid.  The questions noted could help you too.  The best point is that for Cuban it “would have been easy to judge effort by how many hours …”, now dead on.  Too many engaged in a job search confuse effort with hours, time spent and not results.  Be careful that you don’t spent time without a focus on results, or pat yourself on the back at the end of a long day when you just put in time without forward movement toward your desered results.  The results you may well achieve from just putting in time may well be an extended job search!

What are the results you want?  What are the goals you have set to get the results you want?

My wish for you in 2012 is solid results in all you do.   Happy New Year!

It is the job you want, you landed the interview, it went great, you are leaving and planning your follow up and the first day at work – yippee!  Then it hits you – you didn’t ask for the job.

Don’t be afraid or forget to ask for the job.  Landing a job is about sales and in sales you don’t close deals if you don’t ask for the sale.  It can be scary, intimidating, or just plain uncomfortable but you must do it.

Do you believe in your skills?  Your value? Your ability to do the job? Can you help this company get results?   If you answered yes, then help them hire you and ask for the job.

Practice a few ways to ask for the job.  You don’t get what you deserve you get what you ask for, state you value and what you can do for the company and ask for the job! 

Have a question about how to ask for the job at the end of the interview? Sign up and join me on the next Q & A call, ask your question and get an answer.

Need specific ways to speed up your search?  Look to the right and request my gift to you – “162 Ways to Accelerate Your Job Search and Land the Job You Want”.

Have a comment or thought?  Post it below.

‘Tis the holiday season!  What a great season for networking and landing a new job. 

Are you ready for holiday season networking?  So many people take a break from a job search at this time of the year, that those that stay with it have the added plus of less competition. 

If you’re a great networker you know this is a great and fun time of the year.  If you don’t like to network or haven’t mastered the finer aspects of networking and marketing yourself as you network you might not have feel the same excitement about this season.

Here are 8 quick tips to help you plan your holiday job search networking.

 1. Don’t only attend the mandatory events, expand your holiday networking

 Leverage the events you always attend and add others.  Consider stepping outside of your industry events, family events, and the networking events you do now, add several events where you can meet new contacts.  

 2. Set a budget for holiday networking

  You will have expenses, business cards, attire, event fees, food or beverage, or a donation to a charity or cause.  Be willing to invest in yourself, in your search and do it with a grateful heart.  Holiday networking is not about going to parties, it is about connecting with critical centers of influence and the opportunity to market you to your target audience.

3. Plan and Set a schedule for holiday networking

 The season is short and many events fall on the same day.  Plan which events to attend, who to connect with, what to wear, and how you will follow up. Having a plan and a schedule will help your focus.

4. Leverage your existing relationships, network and connections by giving

 Each holiday networking event is an opportunity for you to add value to others.  Discover who you can help and do so.  Connect someone, learn of a need and help, share a tip, do what you can do to help others in your network.

5. Support the event and the community the event serves

 Find a way to offer your support for the event or the organization before or after the event.  You could share event photos or highlights of the event via social media channels, or connect in advance with the organization or event supporters to offer your unique talent, skills or labor to support the event.

6. Don’t get lost in the crowd

 Know how you want to differentiate yourself from others searching for key contacts and your dream job. Know who you want to connect with, and be open to the opportunities before you.  Don’t sell, and don’t take your résumé to any holiday event.  It can be hard to predict who will show up, remember impressions count.

7. Don’t forget to leverage your online network and online events this season

 Many events are growing and some with combine both online and face-to-face experiences.  If get an “Evite” with an RSVP treat it as you would any invitation with an RSVP.  If you need to check in via a QR code to support the charity – do it.  Manners do count.

8. You Can’t Have It All Without Effort and Work

 Networking can be great fun.  You meet wonderful people, serve others, connect and build relationships and gain a lifetime of event memories, but all relationships take work.  During this season in North American the daylight hours are shorter, so it is a season of busy days, long nights, many events and extra commitments.  Your networking workload may increase, so adjust your schedule according.  Rest during the day if you know an event will end late, drink lots of water and plan your follow up so you can reconnect quickly and in an effective manner.

Do you have a networking tip to share or a comment?  Post it below.

People are often afraid of something new.  You might be afraid because interviewing is out of you comfort zone, or had a bad experience, or have no experience interviewing. 

Fear does pop up for all of us from time to time – at least if you are like me and honest with yourself. I am afraid of different things, usually for me it is either something new or something I do really don’t have much experience or practice doing.  Fear does pop up in my life.  Does it in yours?  I have discovered most of people I know don’t share what they are afraid easily.  Do you?

On Friday, I was with a group of great and talented people, discussing interviewing and we did honestly talked a bit about interview fears.  Why, because the talent in the room understood that if the fear remained it would hold them back. 

You know what I mean – don’t you?  

It is like when you were a kid and you were afraid there was something under the bed, outside, or in the closet.  As soon as you shared the fear with someone you trusted like a parent, friend, brother or sister – what happened? 

Well for me, I only shared those fears with trusted people, who would not judge me for the fear, because to me that was as scary as the fear.  What I learned was if I picked people I trusted, they would then help me explore my fear. 

I usually I discovered with help and guidance that my fear was “False Evidence Appearing Real”.  Like the noise I heard was not evidence of something under the bed that would harm me, but the bedcovers brushing the floor when I moved in bed.

What I learned by sharing my fear, was to reduce the fear to a concern.  Once I did that then I could discover what the concern really was and how to address the concern. 

If you have interview fears, try this. What is your interview concern?  How can you address it?

A common concern I hear often is what if the interviewer doesn’t like me.  Reduce the fear to a concern and take action to address the concern.

Need a tip for this fear?  Here is mine – like the interviewer first! 

Here is how in simple steps:

1. As soon as you meet the interviewer, notice something about him/her you like.  It could be a tie, shoes, smile, anything. 
2. Hold the thought of what you like in your mind for 30 to 60 seconds.
3. Got it. Say to yourself (doing this aloud might work, but works better to yourself)   “I like John’s <use his/her name> smile <insert what you like> he is very friendly <insert why you like whatever you like>.”  
4. Now, repeat the message and make eye contact.  “I like John’s smile, he is very friendly.”  
5. Then let the thought go.

When you like the interviewer in some way first, think about it and then let the thought go, you have taken action, moved your fear to a concern, and addressed the concern.  From fear, to concern, to action. 

Have a question about interviewing? Sign up and join me on the next Q & A call, ask your question and get an answer.

Need specific ways to speed up your search?  Look to the right and request my gift to you – “162 Ways to Accelerate Your Job Search and Land the Job You Want”.

Have a comment or thought?  Post it below.