Mark Weigel, Principal, CPIBN

Empower Your Leaders with Critical Skills

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Mark Weigel, 716.632.0850 /  mweigel@cpibn.com

The team at Career Partners International Buffalo | Niagara appreciates your support and wishes you prosperity in 2012!

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Well it’s that time of the year for holiday parties; getting together with old and new friends and family to celebrate the season. All are great opportunities for networking. Hopefully any job seekers out there have heard or know that over 70% of all jobs are found through networking—face to face networking! You can learn so much from talking with friends and colleagues about the “Hidden Job Market” positions that are open within an organization, but not posted yet. These jobs prospects could be due to promotions, retirements, firings or employees that have decided to move on for new opportunities.

 Now is the time to be sure you have an effective Elevator Speech / Branding Statement. If you can’t explain to your friends and relatives what type of job you are looking for, how can they assist you in your job search? Your personal branding statement is your first impression to everyone that you meet so it better be a good one.You have just a few seconds to introduce yourself and spark their interest in learning more about you. That is why it is so important.   

Remember your personal brand statement is not your past or current job title! As Walter Feigenson states in his brand yourself blog, “Your brand statement is the essence of who you are, distilled to just a few words.”  For instance, mine is: “As a career coach I teach people how to fish for a job; I do not fish for them.”  That is simple, concise and it’s enough of a teaser to get a response like:  “Wow, so tell me how you do that.”  Now you have grabbed their attention where they will want to know more about you and you can elaborate with your 30-second elevator pitch.

 Be sure you elevator pitch is understood by all. If it’s boring they won’t listen, too long and they won’t have the faintest idea what you’re really saying. Your personal brand statement should be used in your email signature, in your blog postings, on your business cards and as your LinkedIn headline, essentially everywhere you can to promote yourself.

 So be sure to talk to as many as possible at your next holiday gathering. Wishing you a happy holiday season and a successful job search!

First and foremost, do thorough research of the company, the position, and your network.

1. The Company – Research beyond the basic company products, locations and competition; gain an understanding of their values and mission, their corporate culture, initiatives that they are implementing and their short and long term business strategies. These should all be readily obtainable in the world of the internet.

2. The Position – Find out what the key responsibilities of the position are, who the manager is, the reason that they are hiring for this position, and be ready to discuss how your experience matches with the position.

3. Your Network – Use your network to talk to people at the company, try to obtain “inside information” that is not readily available to those outside the company.

After doing thorough research in each of these areas, the next step is to ask for an agenda so that you can mentally prepare for your day. In addition, by getting the names and job titles of those that you will interview with, you can then do research on these individuals.

Image courtesy of www.careerskillshq.com

Other key steps in interview preparation include:

1. Having appropriate interview attire (which for most professional jobs is still an interview suit).

2. Preparing several questions to ask your interviewer (as companies are turned-off by candidates who don’t have any questions).

3. Make sure you know how to get to the interview so that you don’t arrive late (the quickest way to “blow” an interview).

Make sure that you invest the time in interview preparation; it will become apparent in the interview which candidates have and which have not!

I just read a very interesting article on “7 Tips for Effective Networking” by Zeke Camusio and the most prominent point I found to be quite useful is to Start Networking When You Don’t Need To.  Most people wait until a crisis arises and they realize they now have to get out and network. 

For instance when an individual loses their job and they are back in the market conducting their job search they say, “darn, I wish I kept my network up over the last 12 years at my last job, but I didn’t think I needed to.”  We all need to be sure to keep our network viable and current as you just never know when you may need to reach out to a past colleague, mentor or college alumni.

Join us for a complimentary webinar and learn how leading companies use executive coaching to enhance the performance of their leaders to advance their businesses. Create a competitive advantage by enhancing the leadership capabilities of their leaders, expedite high potential development to prepare leaders for increasing levels of responsibility, and accelerate the onboarding process of new leaders.

I tell job seekers that their goal at the beginning of the search should be to find the “best” job in a reasonable period of time (as opposed to just any job that gets you off unemployment). There are many, many variables that can effect the time it takes to find the “best” job, some of which include….

1. Your Education
2. Your Career Field
3. Your Willingness to Relocate
4. Your Level of Management/Salary Level
5. Your Resume & Interviewing Skills
6. Your Work Ethic in Finding a Job

There are no “magic formulas” related to salary to calculate how long a search should take. For most professionals (non-executives), a reasonable period of time to expect to spend on a job search would be 4-6 months, the first few months about doing the hard work that leads to interviews in the 3rd and 4th months and eventually a job offer.

It is important that you set realistic goals for yourself at the outset of your search. If every week starting week 1 your goal is to get an interview, you are setting yourself up for failure and the negative self-image that goes with failure. Expect to do a lot of hard work before the effort yields results and don’t get discouraged. If after 3 months nothing seems to be taking hold then at that point you may want to readjust your approach, which might be to consider relocation, expand the types of jobs or industries you are targeting, improve your resume, or increase your networking efforts.

How you handle the negotiating process will often dictate your chances of success. The following are some guidelines to follow when dealing with companies…

• Put off discussing salary as long as possible.
• If pushed by the company, only discuss in terms of broad salary range.
• Wait until you receive an offer to negotiate.
• Ask for up to a week to consider the offer.
• Contact other companies that you are pursuing to expedite their processes.
• Develop a list of questions regarding the company/position that will resolve any uncertainties you have.
• Generate a counter-offer to present to the company (10-15% more salary and another week of vacation is a good guideline).
• Set up a meeting to finalize the offer.

Don’t forget that the start date is also a negotiable item; many people make the mistake of rushing back to work when it is a perfect time to take a few weeks to mentally prepare for your new job, take a vacation with your family, or get projects done at home without the stress of the job search.

People understand that for a prom date, your first approach isn’t to ask yourself “well, who will go with me?”, you should begin with “who do I want to go with?” and once you have someone in mind, then your work really begins to get him/her to go with you. The same is true for a job search; you should never start by asking the question “who will hire me?” (In other words, what positions are posted that match my background?); you should start with “who do I want to work for?” (In other words, if I could park my car anywhere and start working there on Monday, where would it be?).

Once you know several potential people that you might want to go to the prom with (places that you’d like to work), then you can begin the hard work of figuring out how to get each of these select few potential dates to go with you, learn everything about them, don’t wait for them to come to you….approach them, make them aware of what you have to offer, and who knows maybe you’ll end up with your dream date rather than the neighbor next door who is merely someone to go with.