Job seeking advice for talented professionals

Dear jobseeker,

Job seeking is tough, especially in those hard economic times.
I use to think that when I don’t find what I’m looking for, that’s because I’m not looking where it really is.

There are plenty of jobs out there. There are plenty of companies trading every day. There are even growing ones making more revenues this year than they ever did before. People focus on Recessions: come on, this is only 0,5% decrease. Is that a Recession? Think of the 99.5% left of the GDP/Economy. They need staff to look after those remaining 99.5%, it won’t be done by magic. Things are that in tough times, rules tend to change a little bit. Unemployment market is like a bad zombie movie: at every opportunity you have a flock of starving individuals begging for a piece of hope. The most disgusting is that some people are taking profit from that, over their fair share. There are my advices to avoid those pitfalls.

This is based on my own experience and I hope it will benefit at least one of you. There are 9 critical points I’ve identified.

1. Revamp your CV without falling into a “Pimp my CV”

Get your CV matching your personality. It’s your ad of personal marketing. It should make the guy who spend 6 seconds on it to spend more time and eventually to call you. A good CV should be like a miniskirt: short enough to keep the reader’s attention but long enough to cover the essentials. There are plenty of cv advises available for free on the Web for you not to purchase expensive CV rewriting advisors. Those advisors usually charge you over 600£ and you will end up with a cv that will probably not match the majority of recruiters expectations. The day one of them will propose me a services where they charge a success fee (no-job-no-pay) I’ll probably go for it even if they charge twice the price !
Anyone want to carry on with this business idea? If they would all be as successful as they alleges, they would all be doing that. Probably a rubbish business at the end. What I’ve found out is that they are all contradictory: some tell you to put a details that some other prevent you to ever put in your CV. Read them all, pick the common points and just use your common sense. Your CV is yours and not anyone’s else. Make it like you. If the reader don’t like it, he won’t hire you and that’s good because he will probably not like you eventually and you won’t enjoy working for a guy that don’t like you. If your CV is honest about you he’ll prevent you of ending working for a boss who don’t like you.

2 Mind the format and the content.

A Word document is the universal format. Keep it low size and with few formatting. It could be read on a blackberry or a Smartphone then. About the content my only rule is: “Don’t lie on your CV, EVER”. Lies are so detectable and lying is putting yourself in a defensive mode, not very attractive to a recruiter. Be relax, assume yourself, turn your weaknesses into strengths, failures into opportunities of learning, …

3. Keywords.

Make sure your CV contains all the relevant keywords to your activity, education and experience. In those information ages, there are too much data to check them one by one. Now people are making keywords searches. If you don’t have the right keywords that a recruiter looking to fill a job you’d like to find, you’ll miss it and you won’t even know about it. Do you like being ignored because of your ignorance?

Right, those 3 steps are the one everyone will recommend you. No rocket science so far.
That’s what you will do with your CV that is critical now.

4. Post your CV to all the job boards you know.

There are general ones and there are industry specific ones. Do them all. Widespread it all over the place like a leaflet about the last big sales in the nearby shopping centre. The most people are aware of your availability the most chances you got of being noticed. Recruiters that have a vacancy to fill will first look into the job boards databases before advertising it. That’s probably why a job is already filled once you reply to the ad.
My personal advice to the ones who only spend their time responding to job ads on those job boards: keep a log of your applications. I was stupidly doing only this for seeking work and it is particularly ineffective, like it seems to be for other people too as I see through testimonies. But my log saved me. In a spreadsheet, I was noting for every application the date, the job title, the recruitment agency, the contact person and his details and a link to the listing. It helps you to keep statistics too. Once you have a reply, record it. If you’ve less that 1% replies, then consider your job search as ineffective. Under 5% it is still more a waste of time than ever. 20% (one out of five) is a good target.

5 Get specific.

Once you’ve got a strong list of agencies and contacts, send them regular updates. If you post your CV for a specific job, it maybe not taken into consideration for other opportunities. Be sure you’re posting your CV through their websites. Get specific by submitting your CV not for a specific job listing but to a specific potential recruiter. If they have an opportunity, they first dig into their database before digging into a public database and/or advertising it. Get specific by not only targeting recruiters but also other organisation that make recruitment too, like Chamber of Commerce and especially if you are a foreign national. That lead to next point:

6 Forensic job search

Many companies are fed up with recruitment agencies. Even more than any jobseeker could be. They charge huge amounts just to pass an information by. Very few of them are bringing a real added value to the recruitment process. A company is usually searching for a talent while recruiters only spend time matching CVs. I’m a very talented man and so far I was never very successful with recruitment agencies, for many reasons explained elsewhere, but the most obvious is that the consultant in the recruitment agency is always less educated than I am and therefore always end up to BS me not knowing what he’s talking about. They have spent too much of my time demonstrating that they are nothing less than a waste of money for recruiting companies and a waste of time for myself.

A little bit of reasoning may be useful here: a company who is fast growing, dynamic and reactive into his market need to get the most of their cash. If you’re a talented professional, you should know if you’ve ever brought more value to the company who employs you than the cash they were parting for your talent (your salary & benefits). If it is the case, you’re the one they are looking for. Those companies are not using the expensive services of recruiters. They either use referrals and/or search the market themselves or even capitalise on their image. Have you ever seen job listing from companies like Facebook in the UK? How did they get their staff from? If you’re not in it that’s probably because you weren’t where they were looking for.

Forensic search potential employers and target them: this is a tougher job search but even more rewarding than any other method used so far. Get lost in the business column of serious newspapers, especially on the “best performer” lists published in the investment advices columns. Who is a fast growing company is a good investment for shareholder. Therefore they are potential hirers. They need their cash to grow and they have a culture of dynamic and success. Once you’re on their list, search them on the web, get onto their website and seek for their “careers” page. They all have one. I’ve even found some that were specifically saying: “no agencies please”. lol

Once I’ve done that and my response rate rocketed up to 50%, yes one out of two !!! Not all were very positive, but at least they were aware I was on the market and interested to put my talent at their service. First interview rate was 20%. Not bad at all, innit? Even a year after I’ve got a call from one or another that need someone of my profile in their company.

7 Go network.

A networking event is a good place to make you known by the maximum. Let’s face it: this job seeking campaign is basically a Marketing Campaign. Buzz marketing works in there too. ‘Get connected’ is the new motto. “It’s not a matter of what you know but who you know”.

I’ve done that too: find an association that is remotely linked to your domain of expertise, get affiliated and show up in one of their events. If they are active they usually have monthly events. You don’t know anyone? that’s the best reason to get to know some: “Hi, I just joined this group, how long are you a member, could you tell me more?” etc.

Before I was a social caveman, now I’m working everyday to improve my networking skills with some fantastic result. There are few job offers to await from those events and the most of them will look like a waste of time for the most of you. That’s what you’re doing with it that matters. Get business cards ready to exchange at any opportunity (you can get some professionally made ones on the web for less than 5£). Once you’ve enjoyed a conversation with one person, send him/her a contact demand on linkedIn the next day (average success rate: 50%). There it is : you start to get connected. If it’s people in your industry, that contact list you’ve build up, known as your network is priceless. Networks cannot been made while sitting in from of your screen. Unless you’re taking part to discussions groups, but with mitigated result. On my opinion, both discussions groups and networking events are opportunities to achieve an important duty, which is:

8. Give in order to receive.

In our current society people are conditioned to receive only. They get benefits, social care, television programs, download music on the Internet, get news, etc. all for free. The get-it-all-for-free society is on, but it’s eventually not sustainable. You can’t get it all and give nothing back. It’s not balanced. Religions used to dedicate a large part of their dogma to this notion of generosity but people tend to turn their back to those outdated values. A society cannot succeed if everyone is more concentrated into what they are getting than what they are giving back.

A job is working the same way: the employees that are used to give a little bit more always reap the benefits of the extra mile they were going. Job seeking is the same. You’re unemployed, right, that means that you have plenty of time then. As a jobseeker, you should know that it is a full time job to search for a job.

My success rate incredibly get higher when I started to allocate only 4 days a week to my job search. One day was allocated to give. I used to put my expertise into helping a local charity. As an MBA I helped them in their money rising and marketing management. It was only time I gave them, and knowledge they didn’t had the means to access. They are now able to carry on with larger projects thanks to that.

Even if it didn’t helped me directly to find a job, it put me into “generosity” mode which kept me out of a less attractive “selfish” mode. Turn your mood to “open to other” and get more success into your life in general. During networking events, it happened that knowing my background my interlocutor submitted a problem of his and I always respond positively. Even if he can only offer me some gratitude back, I know it puts me in a mode that is the right one to succeed in life. One day someone will be as helpful to you as you have been in the past. That’s only when you’ve brought your contribution to the society that you’re in position to claim something back, especially when you’ve made more than your fair bit of work.
This post is part of this strategy.

9. Consider alternative routes of employment.

This is especially applicable since you’re highly qualified/experienced. High experience and/or high education mean high salary. Few companies are willing to pay a lot for your skills within a permanent contract, they prefer to downgrade their requirements or propose you a lower salary.

Stop looking for a permanent job if it isn’t working. I spent 9 month in the UK searching for work, the longest period of my life I’ve been unemployed. Tough times it was. If I wasn’t able to put everything in question I’d probably still be stuck at that point.

I wanted a permanent job and was only looking for that. I eventually ended up being proposed temporary jobs or contract jobs. Eventually I accepted a temp job, paid less than 40% that my usual. Then six month later I was offered a contract job I could take either through an umbrella company or my own limited.

A limited company cost less than 200£ to setup in the UK and it’s a great way to put your feet on the “own business” ladder. It was a 6 month contract initially. 13 month later they were considering extending it some further. My advice is to accept it. It’s better doing something than nothing, as long it is in your industry and in your salary range. As a contractor I’m paid twice my usual. Wise money management put me in position to be able to sustain a full year without working if I fall unemployed again.

While I was contractor, I gave myself two rules: save 50% of my takings (that was keeping me with even more than the previous job anyway) and keep giving. As I was not able to give time and expertise, I was giving money: I used to work one day for charity: giving the amount I’m charging for one day of work to a charity of my choice every month. Since I’m doing that, my contract has been renewed every 2 or 3 months. I also got a daily rate increase of 25%. I can’t prove my pledge to give is linked to my comfortable income but I prefer to believe so, because it keeps me in the “generosity” mode. And that is something the people who pays for my services actually like.

By taking the contractor lane, they were able to allocate a budget to an expertise they needed without committing into a heavy uncertain permanent recruiting process. After 6 month they were offering me a permanent role, having fully assessed the added value of my skills to their business. I refused because now I’m really enjoying myself as a contractor. Since then I’ve just updated my CV on job boards every quarter and I got my phone ringing every couple of days from a contractor agency enquiring about my current situation.

That is so good to feel desired in tough employment climate.