Land a Job With These 9 Job Search Tips

Career Choices

Each day news sites such as CNN, or MSNB, along with local and national print newspapers are featuring articles regarding unemployment figures in the USA.

You or a family member might even be out of work yourself.  We all know people who are unemployed or underemployed. Unless you already know absolutely what field you’d like to work in, do some research on the alternative career choices.

Start a list of potential career choices.  Explore the possibility of turning your hobby into a career.  Are you a wine connoisseur?  Recently I did a post about how I’m a new aficionado of Ice Wine that my brother helped me to discover.  You might look into wine jobs. Then thoroughly investigate each one and find out what the job tasks are and what training and/or skills are necessary.  You should be able to narrow your list down the more information you discover.

Searching for a new job is becoming a common occurrence these days what with all the layoffs from companies downsizing or going out of business.

However,  searching for a job doesn’t need to be as painful as you might envision it, and there are definitely things you can do to make it go smoother.  Here are some job searching tips:

Treat job hunting like a full time job.

Work on your search every day, just as you would a job.  Looking for a job is a full time job. If you need to, get dressed in work attire, sit down in your home office, and get to work making phone calls, searching online, networking, sending out your resume and cover letter, etc.

Don’t wait to find a job.

Even if you’ve been given a nice severance package, don’t procrastinate.  You don’t know how long it’ll take to find a job and you don’t want to run out of benefits before you nail a new position.  If you have experience in the beverage jobs field as a barista, research transferring those marketing talents into the coffee jobs field.

You might find that you need to take some courses at a local community college to get yourself up to speed in your industry, and the sooner you find this out in your job search, the better off you’ll be.

Create an e-resume.

If you make a master e-resume, then you can personalize and change it to match different job positions that you’re applying for. It’s easier to do if you can work off a master copy rather than recreate a new resume each time. Likewise, you can do the same for your cover letter.

Educate yourself.

Learn as much as you can about the company you’re applying to so you can showcase your knowledge and gear your resume and interview answers around the company’s mission statement, business direction,  and  philosophies.

Get online and offline help.

Don’t be afraid to use all the resources available to you such as resume posting services, headhunters, job search emails, job boards, career counselors, State Department of Labor, etc.

Have your reference info handy.

Have a paper with all pertinent facts – names of at least 3 references; the companies they’re employed by; their business titles; plus email addresses and phone numbers.  When you’re going through the interview process, give your references a heads-up that they may be contacted shortly.  That way they don’t get a phone call out of the blue and they’ll be prepared to speak to your strengths.

Research and target your market.

Find out where the jobs are in your market.  Is it a growing field with new opportunities that might interest you?  Is one company merging with another? Is the current CEO retiring?  Do your research and keep abreast of current events and go after the position you want.

Spread your net.

Tell everyone from friends, neighbors, past co-workers, to fellow church and organization members that you’re looking.  Use social media like LinkedIn to list your credentials and resume.  Network with LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  Many people have found jobs via Twitter by simply tweeting what their area of expertise is and asking people to “retweet” their message.

Have a plan.

Start a spreadsheet to record what you’ve done and where you are with your searching.  That way you wont’ duplicate your efforts and you’ll  have a clear idea of what to do next.  Being proactive will help you from becoming too discouraged.

Searching for a new job after you’ve been let go sometimes feels like the end of the world, but there are ways you can speed up the process and become successful at finding the job you want.

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