What are the three legs of a successful job search? Based on the feedback from job search experts, many of the mistakes job seekers make happen as a result of lack of focus, structure, and discipline. These are ways you can build a stronger, more effective job search.

1. FOCUS

There are two ways your job search needs focus: certainty about what you want to do next and clear goals and actions for how you are going to achieve your targeted job.

Before you begin your job search or even after you’ve started, be sure to answer these important questions:

• What do you want to do next?
• What is important to you in your next job?
• What companies hire for those positions you are seeking?

Once you know the answers, begin communicating this to people, clearly, and in terms they can understand and relate to.

Without a clear and specific direction of where you want to go, how will you get there? How can others help you get there?

Have you ever heard someone say this: “I am a scientist (or insert any job title here) and I am looking for a job just like the one I used to have.” The vast majority of people hearing this will not know how to help you. They are not a walking job board and most likely, do not know of companies hiring scientists (that is, unless they are a scientist too!). It would be more clear if the scientist were to say “I help pharmaceutical labs test drugs in order to get them to market as quickly as possible. I would love to learn what XYZ and ABC are doing to improve their testing processes.”

Establishing focus doesn’t end once you’ve answered these questions about what you want to do and where you want to work. You should also establish clear goals on how you will get there. These can be daily, weekly or even 3-year goals. Goals might include things like:

• Arrange meeting with [insert name of person] at ABC company to learn about the requirements of a [specific job].
• Establish the “right” online reputation by monitoring and creating on-brand, positive content.
• Meet five new people in my industry who can help me stay up to date with trends.
• Investigate additional education opportunities to keep my skill set marketable.
• Become active in the local professional association.

2. STRUCTURE

Many of the job seekers I’ve met miss the routine of their past working lives. For many, this is their first exposure to the unstructured world of being their own boss or a solo-preneur. Sometimes they feel a bit lost or uncertain about what they should be doing.

Creating a to-do list generally isn’t enough structure. Try blocking off time in one-hour increments and assigning tasks to fit into those timeslots can assist in establishing structure.

3.  DISCIPLINE

Having focus and structure is nothing without discipline. You will need to hold yourself accountable for continuing to stick with the plan.

For example, following through on promises made (to yourself or others) can be challenging when you are juggling multiple balls. It is easy to let the items on your to-do list slip when you are preparing for an interview or creating a resume and cover letter for a job you are very interested in. The demands of your personal life also have a way of side-tracking your structured job search activities. Having discipline means that you can find a way to manage the distractions and emergencies and still follow through on the other things you’ve committed to.

Another scenario: Let’s say you’ve interviewed with multiple companies for many jobs you felt you were qualified for, only to be rejected. It takes discipline to keep on trying. In fact, some job seekers may begin to second-guess their job goals and as a result, instead of a specific job, they say they are “keeping their options open.” This lack of clarity is often perceived as desperation or lack of confidence.

While it may be relatively easy to begin establishing focus and structure, it can sometimes be discouraging, especially if you are not seeing immediate, tangible results. Here are some pointers to avoid becoming overwhelmed or stressed.

• Don’t give up too soon. It takes about 30 days to start a new habit or break an old one.
• Find an accountability partner or partners. These are people who will help hold you to task and even celebrate in your successes!
• Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Be realistic about what you can achieve and by when.
• Use positive self-talk. We are often our own worst enemies. Don’t beat yourself up. Focus your thoughts on the things you do well and don’t obsess over what you are not good at doing.

The Bottom Line:

Staying on task is definitely not easy to do. If you build a three-legged stool for your job search, you will be much more likely to endure and succeed in today’s longer job search! Finding focus, creating structure and implementing discipline will not only help you in job search; developing these skills will also serve you well in your new job!

About the author…

Hannah Morgan, Job-Hunt’s Social Media Job Search Expert, maximizes her own personal branding and online visibility using social media platforms. She is a job search strategist and founder of CareerSherpa.net. Selected by LinkedIn as a “Top Voice for Job Search and Careers,” follow Hannah on LinkedIn. Also, follow and connect with Hannah on Twitter (@careersherpa) and Facebook (Career Sherpa). To read more articles on how to use social media for job search, visit her site: Careersherpa.net.
More about this author…

The post 3 Key Elements Required for a Successful Job Search appeared first on Job-Hunt.

These free job search guides are made available to you by Job-Hunt and the authors to help you with your job search. No registration is required to download any of them.

Feel free to use these guides for your job search and to share them with your friends and anyone else who needs help coping with today’s job search process.

NOTE: These materials — and all of Job-Hunt.org — are protected by U.S. Copyright Law. Do not sell these books, and do not repackage the information in them to sell.

If you wish to use them for a workshop or class, please contact us for permission.

Job-Hunt Quick Guides – eBooks Providing Free Help with Your Job Search

These guides are short, designed to be a quick read on a specific topic, so you can learn what you need to know and move on.

Also see the columns on Job-Hunt written by experts and expanding every month to help you deal with today’s job search: Online Job Search Guides.

Clicking on the title will open a new browser window containing the ebooklet.

New Year, New Job! 101 Tips from the Job-Hunt Experts for Your Holiday Job Search

27 Job-Hunt Job Search Experts plus What Color Is Your Parachute? author Dick Bolles offer over 100 tips for successfully leveraging the holidays for your job search. These tips help will year around, but are easiest to implement during the end-of-year holidays.

• Military Transition: Defining Your Future Career Options for Current Military and Veterans

  By Patra Frame, Job-Hunt’s Veterans’ Job Search Expert, a veteran of the USAF and now an HR consultant. Patra offers a 4 step process for transitioning to a successful career in the civilian world after your military experience.

• Military Transition: Effective Networking Guide for Current Military and #Veterans

  By Patra Frame, Job-Hunt’s Veterans’ Job Search Expert, a veteran of the USAF and now an HR consultant. Patra shares how to bulid your network during your transition, defining your goals and establishing your plan for your civilian career. She also shares how to build and maintain your network, the foundation of your successful civilian career.

• Winning Negotiation Strategies for Your New Job, 3rd Edition

  By Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers. This may be the trickiest part of starting your new job — negotiating your starting salary and other things associated with the new job so that both you and your employer are satisfied with the result.

• Smart Personal Branding with LinkedIn, 3rd Edition

  By Meg Guiseppi, CEO of Executive Resume Branding and Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert.Subtitled, “How to Use LinkedIn to Build Your Personal Brand and Land a New Job Faster,” this book helps you leverage LinkedIn to build a strong personal brand that will support your job search efforts and help recruiters.

• Converting Your Internship into a Full-Time-Job, 2nd Edition

  By Chandlee Bryan, Job-Hunt’s New Grad Job Search Expert. One of the biggest challenges post-college is graduating from an internship to full-time employment. Here are five winning strategies that college career counselor Chandlee Bryan has seen in practice. Use them to leverage an internship – or convert another short-term work opportunity – into a full-time offer.

• Successful Job Interviewing

  By recruiter Jeff Lipschultz, founder of recruiting company A-List Solutions and Job-Hunt’s Working with Recruiters Expert. Interviewing does not have to be an intimidating experience. Certainly there may some excitement about the prospect of landing a great new job, but in the end, if you are the right fit for the job (and the job is a good fit for you), the pieces will fall into place.

• How to Create a Personal Marketing Plan

  By Tim Tyrell-Smith, Job-Hunt’s Personal Marketing Expert. The 5 powerful steps that will bring your “brand” to life. In this e-book, you’ll learn how to put your subject matter expertise to work for you. And begin to build serious social credibility as you spread the word about your highly marketable skills. You’ll also learn how to balance your own marketing by supporting and sharing the ideas of other people.

• Choosing Safe Job Boards

  By Susan P. Joyce, Job-Hunt’s editor and Online Job Search Expert. For most people, job boards are NOT the solution to their job search, and many job seekers waste too much time on them. But, they can be helpful as long as you know how to choose the best ones for you and how to avoid the ones that are scams.

• Layoff Self-Defense, 2nd Edition

  By Susan P. Joyce, Job-Hunt’s editor and Online Job Search Expert. If others have already been laid off, don’t wait for the golden handshake. Take care of yourself. NOW! Do NOT expect that being a competent, or even an outstanding, and loyal employee will protect your job. It may not.

• 5 Steps to Starting Your Career Reinvention

  By Randi Bussin, owner of Aspire for Success, and Job-Hunt’s Career Change Expert. Are you unhappy with your current career, or just wondering if you might like something else much better? Start re-inventing your career by going through this process to help you determine what your next career should be. Then, move on to implementing your career reinvention, next…

• 5 Steps to Implementing Your Career Reinvention

  By Randi Bussin After you have figured out what you want to do next (above), begin the process of actually changing to that new career in a logical step-by-step manner that should help you find a smooth pathway to that next great career.

• Job Search Networking for Introverts

  By Wendy Gelberg, author of The Successful Introvert and Job-Hunt’s Introverts’ Job Search Expert. More than any other job search activity, networking pulls people out of their comfort zone, especially if they’re shy or introverted. You’ve probably heard that it’s essential – not just for job search, but for managing your career – and yet there’s a good chance that you find the prospect of doing it daunting. Here’s how to overcome.

About the author…

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Facebook, LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post FREE eBooks: Job-Hunt Quick Guides for a Shorter and Smarter Job Search appeared first on Job-Hunt.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your next job found you?

In the not-too-distant future, it might!

We now have this relatively new method employers use for filling jobs. It is called “social recruiting.”

Today, you must understand social recruiting to leverage it for a successful job search.

What is social recruiting?

“Social recruiting” is finding qualified job candidates by searching through social media sources for people with the right skills, accomplishments, education, and personality required for their openings.

Social recruiting is the main way many, if not most, employers recruit now. They leverage the social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to find candidates for their job opportunities.

Employers also use these networks as windows into each candidate’s personality and communications skills.

When you understand how social recruiting works and how to make your best impression on employers using social media, your next job (and the jobs after that) may find you.

The Rise of Social Recruiting

In 2017, as in the past few years, LinkedIn stays in the lead for social recruiting. It is known as the “professional social network.” And, it is clearly the social network that recruiters have preferred, although, as the chart below from JobVite.com indicates, Facebook is not far behind.

Notice that only 36% of job seekers are active on Linkedin while 94% of recruiters are!

Note that 83% of recruiters are also looking at Facebook, but LinkedIn is still the winner, as it has been for nearly a decade.

The Hazards for Job Seekers of Social Recruiting

Social recruiting is not an un-mixed blessing. It provides employers with a much more robust representation of the job seeker than any resume or application provides.

Rather than going to the expense of hiring a service to do a background check on a job candidate, much information can be gathered quickly from a Google search.

Often, too much information may be available — from party (and other) photos which should not be viewed by a potential employer to information about age, chronic illnesses, politics, religion, financial, and family situations, etc.

This personal information is not usually part of the decision-making process in an employer’s hiring decision (and may be illegal to ask), but when the information is public, it may be considered — even unconsciously.

With social media, the boundaries between personal and professional networking can become dangerously blurred.

Job seekers (and employees!) must carefully consider what they post in a public network.

Before you post something, ask yourself a few questions:

• Who will see this post or comment?
• What could be the consequences if my current or future boss saw this?
• Is this post safe for public consumption?

Google and the other search engines devour social postings, so everything Tweeted or posted on Facebook, LinkedIn, your personal blog, or a comment on someone else’s blog may be shown to a potential employer by a search engine today or next year.

7 Ways to Leverage Social Recruiting for a Successful Job Search

Carefully using social media when you’re actively job hunting – and when you are employed – can boost your job search, connecting you with opportunities you didn’t know existed and would never have discovered any other way.

  1. Separate your personal and professional online visibility.  

If you must share your views on religion, politics, and other personal and controversial topics, establish and use social network identities that are not easily traced to you, or use a different version of your name (and a different email address).

When using LinkedIn, which is clearly a professional network, stick to topics related to – and enhancing – your professional image. And be sure to check – and periodically re-check – your privacy settings on all the social networks to keep those roles separate.

  2. Market yourself and, if you are employed, market your employer, too.  

Make your skills and accomplishments visible in social media, particularly in LinkedIn. Your spelling, grammar, and ability to compose a coherent and effective message or post will be seen and noted. Focus on sharing the skills and accomplishments that show you are successful and well-qualified for your job (and for your future job, too).

If you are employed, describe your employer and your job as positively as possible.

Assume that someone like your manager, PR, or HR will see what you share. Know that trashing your employer is worse in social media than in a job interview because it can can cost you both your current — and possibly your future — employment.

  3. Establish your “brand.”  

Show potential employers your depth of knowledge, your ability to communicate effectively, your good spelling and grammar, your ability to find and share excellent information, and, if possible, your writing skills.

Focus on topics and information related to your field. Avoid political and religious sharing in social media, and be sure that your public visibility is error free — no typos, bad grammar, or trashing anyone (partacularly a former employer).

For more on “personal branding,” read Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert Meg Guiseppi’s excellent Personal Branding articles.

  4. Expand your network.  

All of the social networks offer search capabilities to help you connect with people you know (family, friends, former classmates, former co-workers, customers, clients, professors, neighbors, etc.). But, don’t limit your connections only to people you have met or spoken with in person.

To be most effective, you also need to connect with people you have not actually met. Connect with people who look like people you should know, and accept connection invitations from people who look like they would be good members of your network.

In addition, connect with important people in your field. For example, if banking is your industry, look for new connections you can make in banking to expand your network. You can follow/connect with banking industry sites, banking news sites, banking industry career and job search experts, as well as other thought leaders.

These connections will enable you to stay up-to-date in your field as well as providing the connections and advice that will help expedite your job hunt. They may help you do your current job better and also help you connect with that next job when the time is right.

Read Should You Refuse or Accept LinkedIn Connections? and 3 Ways to Effectively Grow Your LinkedIn Network for more details.

  5. Connect with your target employers.  

Most employers pay attention to who is following their social media profiles, so this can be a good, but quiet, way to bring yourself to the employer’s attention.

Both Facebook and LinkedIn have pages specifically for companies, filled with excellent information (the company’s “party line”) for potential customers and potential employees.

LinkedIn shows you company employees who are in your LinkedIn network, Groups that may be associated with the employer, and other information about the employer. Jobs with the employer may be posted, too.

Many employers also have established company pages on Facebook, promoting the company as an employer with the ability to make job postings public if they choose.

Many, many employers have an HR or recruiting account on Twitter used to send out job postings. Find and follow those accounts. Again, employers often pay attention to who is following them, even on Twitter.

  6. Stay active and visible in social networks.  

Focus on establishing and maintaining one social network profile when you are getting started with social media. Then, add additional networks as your time and attention allow. If you have time to be active in only one social network, LinkedIn is probably the one which will be most effective for professional social networking.

When you “go silent” after establishing a profile, few recruiters will spend time trying to contact you. Perhaps you shared an excellent article that was exactly on-topic for the job they have open. However, if you posted it early-2017 with nothing else posted since, your account appears to be abandoned, and recruiters will usually move on to the next candidate.

Read Expand Opportunities by Optimizing Your LinkedIn Contact Information for more information on being reachable after you are found.

  7. Monitor your online reputation.  

Social recruiting is not without dangers to job seekers, as mentioned at the top of this article. Without actually seeking negative information, employers constantly uncover content online disqualifying candidates from consideration.

To stay informed, practice “Defensive Googling” once a week, preferably using a private browser window like “Incognito” (on Chrome) or “Private” (on Firefox). Using an Incognito/Private browser enables you to see what the search engines show the rest of the world, like an employer. Otherwise, the search engine will show you what it thinks you like to see rather than what everyone else sees.

More aboout Personal Online Reputation Management.

The Bottom Line

Social recruiting is a fact of life. It is not going away, and job seekers must learn how to manage it. People have been fired for using social networks inappropriately, and they lose job opportunities for the same reason.

More Information about Social Media for Job Search

• Job-Hunt’s Guide to Social Media and Job Search – Information about successfully navigating all of social media
• Job-Hunt’s Guide to LinkedIn for Job Search
• Job-Hunt’s Guide to Facebook for Job Search

About the author…

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Facebook, LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post How to Leverage Social Recruiting for Your Job Search appeared first on Job-Hunt.

These talented and knowledgeable people contribute articles to Job-Hunt – or have contributed articles in the past – to help job seekers with their job search.

The experts provide information about the traditional job search topics including resumes, cover letters, job interviews, and recruiters, plus the new and evolving technology including LinkedIn and other social media.

Plus experts provide advice for new grads entering the job market, boomers, veterans, and also people who are seeking jobs with the U.S. federal government.

In addition, experts share important information about different kinds of employment that are becoming more common, especially working from home and even temporary work.

Click on the expert names, below, to see their biographies and the articles they have written.

  Help with the Job Search Process  

• Job Search: Biron Clark and Bob McIntosh
• Resumes: Erin Kennedy
  Also Martin Yate and Susan Ireland
• Interviewing: Martin Yate
  Also Beth Colley and Laura DeCarlo
• Salary and Compensation: Stacey Hawley
• Networking: Beverly E. Jones
  Also: Liz Ryan
• Working with Recruiters: Jeff Lipschultz
• Career Change: Virginia Franco
  Also Randi Bussin
• Personal Branding: Meg Guiseppi
• Beating Unemployment: Susan P. Joyce
• Company Research: Debra Wheatman
  Also Parmelee Eastman

  Employment/Income-Generating Options  

• Work from Home: Nancy Collamer
• Freelancing and Contracting: Brie Weiler Reynolds 
  Also Julie Walraven
• Temporary Employment: Wynter Wyman
  Also Cathy A. Reilly

  Help with the Online Job Search Technologies  

• Online Job Search: Susan P. Joyce
• Social Media Job Search: Hannah Morgan
  AlsoArnie Fertig and Joshua Waldman
• Facebook for Job Search: Hannah Morgan
• LinkedIn Job Search: Laura Smith-Proulx and Ed Han
• LinkedIn Executive Job Search: Laura Smith-Proulx
• LinkedIn SEO: Susan P. Joyce
• Google for Job Search: Susan P. Joyce
• Personal Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Susan P. Joyce
• Online Reputation Management: Susan P. Joyce

  Help Bouncing Back from Job Loss  

• Job Loss Recovery: Nan S. Russell
• Layoff Guide: Susan P. Joyce

  Help for Specific Groups of Job Seekers  

• Job Search for New Graduates: Chandlee Bryan
• Boomer Job Search: Phyllis Mufson
  Also Renee Lee Rosenberg
• Mid-Career Job Search: Barbara Schultz
• Veterans’ Job Search: Patra Frame
  Also Diane Hudson

  Help with Specific Industries  

• Federal Government Job Search: Camille Carboneau Roberts
• Information Technology (IT) Job Search: Don Goodman and Mark Feffer

Are You Qualified to be a Job-Hunt Expert?

Job-Hunt.org is visited by more than 1,500,000 people every month with over 2,500,000 page views each month.

Are you an expert on a topic that could help job seekers find jobs? Can you write an original 800 to 1000 word article on your topic once a month or twice a quarter?

There is no charge to write for Job-Hunt. Our goal and our purpose is to help job seekers understand and succeed in today’s ever-changing job market. We also want to help those who help us help job seekers become more visible so they can help more people.

To find out more about contributing to Job-Hunt, read Becoming a Job-Hunt Expert.

Send examples of your work, a short bio about why you are an expert in a particular field, and your contact information to feedback @ job-hunt.org.

About the author…

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Facebook, LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post The Job Search Experts on Job-Hunt.org appeared first on Job-Hunt.

Each Guide is comprised of articles on a specific job search topic: job interviews, LinkedIn, resumes, layoff recovery, reputation management, and more than forty other topics.

If you are not a job seeker and wish to use any of the Job-Hunt Guides, contact us for permission. These Guides are protected by U.S. Copyright law. Do NOT republish or sell any of these Guides in the USA or anywhere else.

On this page:

Online Job Search Tools, Work from Home, Traditional Job Search Process and Tools, Avoiding Job Search Hazards, Handling Career Change, Unemployment, and Job Loss, New Grads, Veterans, Boomers, Introverts, and Other Groups, Government, IT, Finance, and Other Industries, and Free ebooks About Job Search.

Expert Advice in Job-Hunt’s Guides

Reader’s Digest describes Job-Hunt.Org as “vacuum-packed with solid advice.” The Guides described (and linked) below will make it clear why that description fits.

Each Guide is written by one or more experts in that field. These experts constantly contribute articles critical to successful job search.

Scroll down this page to find the Guides divided into topic and sub-topics.

Guides to Online Job Search Tools

In the last few years, technology has dramatically changed how employers find and hire employees. And, those changes in recruiting have impacted job search in ways that job seekers have never seen before.

Understanding the new technology, from how to use Google and social media (particularly LinkedIn) to effectively using job boards and even email, is essential now. These links take you to Job-Hunt Guides on those topics:

• • Guide to Finding Jobs Online
    This Guide shows where jobs are posted online.
  • Guide to Personal SEO
    This Guide helps you understand how important “search engine optimization” (SEO) is to a modern job search. Learn what your keywords are, and where (and how) to make them visible to recruiters, employers, and other potential members of your network.
    • Guide to Being Found on LinkedIn (LinkedIn SEO) helps you understand how to apply SEO principles to LinkedIn so that you have the right keywords for you in the right spots in your LinkedIn Profile.
  • Guide to Social Media & Job Search
    This Guide gives you an over-view of the major current social media networks and how you can leverage them for your job search.
    • Guide to Using LinkedIn for Job Search
      LinkedIn is, by far, the dominant social network for professionals managing their careers as well as looking for new jobs.
      • Guide to LinkedIn for Executives
        Even executives need a LinkedIn presence for their professional visibility and credibility. It will be checked by competitors, colleagues, and potential employers.
    • Guide to Facebook for Job Search
      Facebook can be very effective for job search. It can also be very damaging. This Guide helps you leverage Facebook for positive results in your job search.
    • Guide to Twitter Job Search
      Twitter can be an excellent source of job leads for the employers and fields you follow. Twitter can also be very helpful in identifying good contacts and expanding your network.
  • Guide to Personal Branding
    Like personal SEO (above), personal branding is a new necessity for both your career and your job search. This Guide helps you understand the basic concept and also to discover/develop your personal brand, plus where and how to make it visible so that it helps your job search.
    • • Guide to Personal Branding with LinkedIn
        LinkedIn is an essential part of online visibility for most professionals, and, done well, LinkedIn can be the foundation for your personal brand, whether you are building it, maintaining it, or changing it.
      • Free ebook about personal branding –
        • Personal Branding and Your LinkedIn Profile
          LinkedIn is a very important tool for building your personal brand. Particularly if you are an executive, this ebook helps you leverage your personal brand using LinkedIn.
        • Personal Marketing Plan
          This ebook helps you to pull all of the pieces together to create a solid personal brand and then to leverage social media to make progress in your job search.

     

     

• Guide to Personal Online Reputation Management
  Your personal online reputation has a much bigger impact on your job search and career than you may know. Having a poor — or no — online reputation may eliminate you from consideration.
• Guide to Using Google for Your Job Search
  Google offers job seekers many tools to help them manage their job hunting, and this Guide explains how to use those tools successfully, starting with more effective search queries.
• Guide to Email for Job Search
  Email is essential for communication now, but it can cause problems and cost opportunities if used inappropriately in a job search. This Guide shows you how to use email most effectively in your job search.
• Guide to Job Boards
  From Indeed.com (today’s largest source of job postings in the world) to Craigslist’s local online classified, job boards are everywhere. Some are excellent, some are not particularly useful, and some are downright dangerous (or, simply scams). This Guide helps you analyze job boards and use them appropriately, particularly Indeed and Craigslist.

Guides to Working from Home

More options for earning a living are developing. For some people and some situations, being a “temp” is the best option — generating income working for a temporary staffing agency. This avoids needing to go to an employer’s location, and offers the ability to “test” different employers and jobs.

For many of us, technology is enabling more of us to work from our homes. Employers are allowing — or encouraging — employees to work from their homes as “remote workers” or “telecommuters.” In addition, many people are turning to self-employment as a good option, working when, where, and how they choose.

• Guide to Work From Home Jobs
  Working from home can take many different forms, from working “remotely” for your employer to running your own business. This Guide helps you understand your options and choose a direction that will work best for you.
• Guide to Gigs, Freelance,and Contracting Jobs
  These can become great careers or a way to fill an “employment gap” while you look for a “real job.” They can also be a great way to work from home, generating income, working when and where you want.
• Guide to the Temporary Work Option
  Working for a temporary agency which connects you to short-term jobs can be an excellent way to explore new careers, get a “foot in the door” with a new employer (while deciding if you would like to work there), fill an employment gap on your resume, or just generate income without worrying about getting along with co-workers.

Guides to Traditional Job Search Process and Tools

While technology has had an enormous impact, resumes are still very important, and job interviews usually clinch the job offer (when done well). Also smart job seekers understand what recruiters want, how to leverage temporary employment effectively, successfully navigate the job search process, and much more. Read these Guides to catch up on what is most effective now:

• Guide to Getting Started with Your Job Search
  This Guide provides the foundation for moving ahead with your job search, helping you understand all of the different aspects of it, including the process and the tools you can use to succeed.
• Guide to Successful Job Interviews
  While an effective resume gets you a job interview, the job interview is the make-or-break event that may land you the job. Or not. This Guide helps you answer the common job interview questions and also helps you understand the process from beginning to end.
  • Smart Answers to Interview Questions
    Recruiter advice on how to answer the most commonly asked questions in your next job interview. This Guide covers the top questions as well as offering sample answers to help you develop your own responses.
  • Smart Strategies for Behavioral Interview Questions
    These are the questions recruiters ask that begin with “Tell me about a time when…” or “Give me an example of…” They are challenging to answer without a strategy, shared here with sample answers.
  • Guide to Writing Thank You Notes After a Job Interview, including Samples
    If you are not sure what format to use (email, hand-written, or typed) or how to write an effective thank you after your job interview, this Guide provides advice plus thank you note (and email) samples for you to adapt to your own situation.
  • Free ebook about job interviews:
    • Successful Job Interviewing
      Written by a recruiter, this ebook helps you effectively prepare for your job interviews.
• Guide to Effective Resumes
  Resumes are one of the traditional tools used in a job search, and they are still very important to your success. This Guide provides both articles which explain how to create a successful resume as well as sample resumes so you can see how different special situations are successfully managed.
  • Sample Resumes –
    Both formal and ATS versions of the resumes for 12 typical situations in job search today, including:
    • Older laid off
    • Just fired
    • Making a career change
    • Mom returning to work
    • New grad
    • More…
• Guide to Informational Interviews
  Informational interviews are an excellent way to collect information before you start to make a change in your career, and they are also an excellent way to expand your professional network.
• Guide to Job Search Networking
  Networking is the key to success in a job search! Job seekers who don’t understand networking have a serious handicap in their job search. This Guide offers you a foundation understanding of effective networking as well as many networking tips and tricks to use for a successful job search.
• Guide to Freelancing and Contracting
  Freelancing or contract jobs can be a temporary gap filler that provides a good income for a set period of time. For an increasingly large number of workers, freelancing is a new career. It typically pays better than a “real job” and cuts you loose from getting too caught up in the internal politics of a typical organization. But, the hazards are ending at a specific point, finding the next “gig,” and managing your own tax payments.
• Guide to Temporary Employment
  Often temporary employment is a necessity. It can also be a great way to check out an employer while you “audition” for a permanent job. And, for many, it is a convenient way to earn an income without an endless commitment to a single employer. This Guide helps you be a successful temporary worker.
• Guide to Job Search Navigation
  A job search (and a career) require navigation to be successful. In this Guide, learn how to navigate your way to a new job.
• Understanding Employers —Understanding what’s happening on the “other side” of the hiring process is key to being successful in your job search.
  • Guide to Working with Recruiters
    Recruiters are key players in any job search because they are usually the people who manage the process. Working well with them is not optional, and this ebook, written by a recruiter, will help you understand their perspective and work with them successfully.
  • Guide to Your Best Job Search Mindset
    Employers have a different view of the job search process than most job seekers do, naturally. This ebook offers you the employer’s perspective — of you and your actions.

Guide to Avoiding Online Job Search Hazards

Unfortunately, new technology has created some new hazards, like protecting your privacy, job hunting without getting fired, and managing your online reputation. Old hazards have morphed into new versions, particularly related to scam jobs, scam job boards, and employer identity theft. These Job-Hunt Guides will help you navigate some tricky waters around those topics:

• Guide to Protecting Your Privacy
  In an online job search, smart job seekers take precautions to protect their privacy. This Guide explains why and how to do that.
• Guide to Avoiding Job Scams
  Unfortunately, people in a job search are exposed to a number of scams, and without knowing what you might be facing and how many of the scams operate, you can be badly hurt by them. So, read this Guide to understand how to spot and avoid online scams in your job search.
• Guide to Personal Online Reputation Management
  Employers and recruiters use the Internet’s search capabilities to research potential job candidates. What they find can make the difference between being considered for a job and being ignored. So, today, online reputation management is really not optional. This Guide offers the why and how to protect your reputation online.
• Guide to a Stealthy Job Search
  Employers are not usually happy to discover that an employee is job hunting. Often, that employee loses their job immediately or has a very uncomfortable discussion with their boss. Unfortunately, today, it is easy for employers to discover that an employee is job hunting. This Guide offers help to avoid that situation.

Guides for Handling Career Change, Unemployment, and Job Loss

Job loss is tough, regardless of the cause. These Job-Hunt Guides provide you with help recovering from layoffs or being fired and landing a new job:

• Guide to Career Change
  A transition could be involuntary, precipitated by an external change like a layoff, or it may develop as you move on to a new phase in your life and your career. This Guide offers you help in understanding your many options, determining your next career, and transitioning to this new phase in your career.
  • Free ebook about career change:
    
    • Starting Your Career Reinvention
      For a successful career change, you need to understand yourself — what you want to do and what you like to do. This ebook provides a process that will help you figure out what should be next for your career.
    • Implementing Your Career Reinvention
      Once you know the direction you want your career to take, you can move in that direction. This ebook describes 5 steps to implement your career change.
• Guide to Beating Unemployment
  Finding a new job is usually an immediate need for someone who has lost their job or who is unemployed. This Guide offers detailed advice on how to manage the issue in resumes, LinkedIn Profiles, job interviews, and other steps in the process of finding a new job.
• Guide to Job Loss Recovery
  Losing your job can be a very big blow to both your confidence and your bank account. Successfully handling that blow can make the difference between a short and a longer job search. This Guide offers you help recovering from job loss.
• Guide to Layoff Recovery
  A layoff is a job loss that is not usually related to employee performance. Someone is laid off typically simply because they are in the wrong department or job at the wrong time (when the department or job are being reduced). This Guide helps you successfully recover.
  

   

  • Free ebook about layoffs:
    

     

    • Guide to Layoff Self-Defense
      Smart job seekers don’t assume that they will not be laid off, particularly if their employer has laid off other employees. This ebook helps you to lay the groundwork for surviving if you are laid off (or, maybe, for leaving before it can happen to you).

Guides for Specific Groups of Job Seekers

Many groups of job seekers face unique issues, based on their age, experience level, or personal preferences. This section of Job-Hunt.Org helps members of those groups, from boomers to veterans, introverts to new grads, .

Learn what your group needs to know to succeed by reading the appropriate Guide(s) for you.

• Guide to Job Search for New Graduates
  New graduates face the issues associated with any start up, and, of course, strategies exist for managing those issues. This Guide offers new grads solid advice for starting up their careers and successful job search.
  • Free ebook for New Grads:
    
    • Converting Your Internship to a Full-Time Job
      Often an internship can be a short-cut to a full-time job. This ebook helps you craft that transition. .
• Guide to Job Search for Veterans
  Veterans and active-duty members preparing for transition to the civilian job market have both advantages to leverage and disadvantages to overcome for a successful job search. If you are a veteran or in transition, this Guide provides you with guidance for dealing with the issues and making the advantages obvious to civilian employers.
• Guide to Job Search for Over 50 and Boomers
  Boomers face many issues in their job search, from the possible disadvantage of no longer being young (and inexpensive) to the advantages resulting from a strong network built up over their lives. This Guide helps Boomer job seekers manage the “age issue” and reconnect with their networks, both resulting in successful job searches more quickly.
• Guide to Job Search for Working Moms
  Working mothers face unique issues — from explaining “the gap” when they job search after staying home with their children for a while to balancing priorities and juggling schedules while interviewing. This Guide helps working moms navigate to job search success with advice from a genuine working mom.
• Guide to Attorney Job Search
  Attorneys and lawyers have very specific and unique requirements and processes in their search for a new job. From resumes to social media, they face requirements that few other job seekers and job candidates face. In this Guide, an attorney who has also hired attorneys explains the process.

Guides for Specific Industries and Locations

Industries can differ dramatically in the process for successfully landing a job. In these Guides you will find help in understanding the requirements, processes, and unique characteristics of a specific industry. From the US Federal Government to information technology (IT) to attorneys and more, these Guides will increase your understanding of specific fields. That understanding will help you be more successful:

• Guide to Startup Jobs
  There’s one category of jobs which is misunderstood more than any other. It’s working for startups. Startups are not well-understood, and many wrong assumptionsare made. This Guide helps you understand how startups work, and how working for one may be a great career move for you.
• Guide to Federal Government Job Search
  If you are trying to land a job with the U.S. Federal Government, you face a job search environment which is fairly unforgiving, but very structured and rules-based (at least officially). This Guide helps you understand how the process works and what you need to do to meet the requirements.
  • Free ebook for Federal Government Job Search:
    • Create an Effective Federal Resume with the USAJOBS.GOV Resume Builder
      A key part of being considered for a job is doing a good, clean job of making your resume visible in the USAJOBS.GOV resume database. This ebook helps you accomplish that goal.
• Guide to Information Technology (IT) Job Search
  The field of information technology continues to grow in importance as IT becomes increasingly embedded in our lives. This Guide helps you navigate your way to a job in this industry.

Job-Hunt’s Free eBooks

For several years, Job-Hunt has provided free ebooks to help you be more successful in your job search. This is the complete list:

• All of the free Job-Hunt ebooks on one page – the Job Search Guides.
• eBooks for Everyone:
  • New Year, New Job!
    101+ tips from Job-Hunt’s Experts in how you can successfully leverage the BEST time of the year to land a job.
  • Personal Branding and Your LinkedIn Profile
    LinkedIn is a very important tool for building your personal brand. Particularly if you are an executive, this ebook helps you leverage your personal brand using LinkedIn.
  • Guide to Layoff Self-Defense
    Smart job seekers don’t assume that they will not be laid off, particularly if their employer has laid off other employees. This Guide helps you to lay the groundwork for surviving if you are laid off.
  • Successful Job Interviewing
    Written by a recruiter, this ebook helps you effectively prepare for your job interviews.
  • Choosing Safe Job Boards
    Not every job board is useful. Some are scams and some are ineffective. This Guide explains how to evaluate job boards, separating the good ones from the useless and/or dangerous.
  • Using Craigslist for Job Search
    Craigslist can be a wonderful source of local jobs, no matter where you are in the world. The Guide offers tips on leveraging Craigslist for your job search as well as how to spot and avoid scams.
  • Personal Marketing Plan
    This ebook helps you to pull all of the pieces together to make progress in your job search.
• eBooks for Career Changers:
  
  • Starting Your Career Reinvention
    For a successful career change, you need to understand yourself — what you want to do and what you like to do. This ebook provides a process that will help you figure out what should be next for your career.
  • Implementing Your Career Reinvention
    Once you know the direction you want your career to take, you can move in that direction. This ebook describes 5 steps to implement your career change.
• eBook for Introverts:
  • Job Search Networking for Introverts
    Networking is probably the biggest challenge for introverts. This ebook provides help for introverts (and shy people) to address the issues associated with networking.
• eBooks for New Grads:
  • Converting Your Internship to a Full-Time Job
    Often an internship can be a short-cut to a full-time job. This ebook helps you make that transition happen.

For more information on the experts who write this information for you, visit the Job-Hunt Job Search Experts page.

Are you an expert in a job search-related field? Here’s how to join the Job-Hunt Job Search Experts.

About the author…

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Facebook, LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Free Guides to a Shorter and Smarter Job Search appeared first on Job-Hunt.

These tasks that will focus your job search activities for success.

Do NOT skip Part 1, Starting Your Job Search! Skipping the important tasks in Part 1 will not save you time. Rather, your job search will be longer than it needs to be because it won’t have a solid foundation and direction.

Step 1: Launch Your Job Search

Now you shift your focus to the real work of your job search.

1. Choose Your Target Employers, Research Them, and Plan Your Approach

At the end of Part 1, you shopped for employers. Now, focus on those employers. Your employer list can have 10, 20, 50, or more employers on it. Initially, focus on the 5 or 10 who are your top choices.

Research these employers. Visit their websites.

Learn about their products and services, their locations, their people, their plans, their finances, etc.

LinkedIn Company Profiles plus your LinkedIn Connections can be a very big help. See Job-Hunt’s free Guide to Company Research for how-to information. And, of course, Google can be a big help, too (see 50 Google Searches to Avoid Layoffs and Weak Employers).

This information you find will be useful for:

• Networking into the organization.
• Identifying opportunities, hopefully before others find out about them.
• Customizing your resumes and cover letters.
• Impressing interviewers with your knowledge of the organization in job interviews.
• Helping you develop good questions to ask in job interviews.
• Assisting you in determining which part of the organization would be best for you.
• Eliminating employers who turn out not to be as good as you initially thought.

Using your job search tracking system (see Step 3 of Part 2, below), and plan your job search campaign. Through your network (off-line as well as online), find the people who work at the target employer and reach out to them. Do NOT bluntly ask if they know of any jobs open, unless you know them really well. Read Job-Hunt’s free Guide to Job Search Networking and Guide to LinkedIn for Job Search for more tips, and see 7 below for more resources.

2. Shift Your Networking into High Gear

With your list of target employers, focus your networking efforts on reaching them. Use your personal network, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, and all your other sources of connections.

Data and people tell us that networking is THE way a successful job search ends for most successful job seekers. Yes, you will hear stories and know a few people who found a job through CareerBuilder or Monster. That definitely happens, but it is estimated to happen less than 10% of the time.

Every year, the # 1 way employers fill jobs is through employee referrals. An employee knows someone who would be a good fit for the employer, and they hand the resume to the hiring manager or the recruiter. The new employee lands a job, and the employee who made the referral is usually rewarded with $$$ by the employer. A win/win!

So start reaching out to your network and expand your network.If you belong to a professional association, look for a “career center” (or something similar) on the association’s Website, or go to a few meetings to see if you can connect with other job seekers.

• Read the excellent series of articles in Job-Hunt’s free Guide to Job Search Networking, including the tools and tactics to help you succeed, written by experts.
• Job-Hunt’s free Guide to Social Media & Job Search contains a series of articles to help you understand and leverage the emerging social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
• Check the LinkedIn and Facebook Groups, too, for wonderful ways to connect and re-connect with people in your profession, industry, or past (and future!), like Job-Hunt’s Job-Hunt Help LinkedIn Group.

3. Increase Personal Branding, Personal SEO, and Online Reputation Management Efforts

Your best tools: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter

As mentioned in Part 1, without a solid LinkedIn Profile and smart activities on LinkedIn, you are at an increasing disadvantage in the job marketplace. In 2012, a Jobvite recruiting study has shown that 92% of recruiters are using LinkedIn and other social media for recruiting. Can you afford to be invisible for all those recruiters? No, you really can’t.

For ideas:

• For concrete suggestions on personal branding, read Job-Hunt’s free Guide to Personal Branding. Also, download the free Job-Hunt ebook, Executive Branding and Your LinkedIn Profile for more ideas, even if you’re not an “executive.”

• Job-Hunt’s Social Media & Job Search Experts offer excellent ideas for leveraging the social networks for your job search including LinkedIn (a must!), Twitter (really!), and Facebook.

• Learn how to effectively practice personal SEO, an essential skill today. Read Job-Hunt’s free Guide to Personal SEO for Job Search and Careers, including Add Misspellings to Your LinkedIn Profile for ideas on how to be found if you have an uncommon name, have changed your name (via marriage or some other method), or have a name that is just often misspelled.

4. Select a FEW Job Sites to Use

It has been estimated that there are 80,000 Web job sites. And there are thousands of other sites that have job openings – company Web sites, professional association websites, Chamber of Commerce websites, college alumni/ae websites, etc. That’s more options than you could probably use in a lifetime!

How do you navigate through all of this to your new job? Pick the ones that are best for you – that have the jobs and employers you want in the locations you want.

1. Finding the Jobs
   Read this article to learn about all the many places that jobs are listed, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. You’ll want to check them all out to find the ones that work best for you.
2. Choosing a Job Site
   Don’t post your resume or leave a profile on any site until you have read this article. Not every job site is a good, or even a safe, place for you to post your resume or to leave contact information! So, learn how to spot an unsafe site before you get started.
3. Using Web Job Sites
   Then, read Job-Hunt’s article to see how Web job sites usually work, what services to use and what services to avoid.
4. Watch Out for the Scams
   Take this quiz and then read the answers to see how well you can spot the job scams. On the Internet, even on otherwise trustworthy sites, you will find that bogus jobs have been posted by bogus employers. Be careful!
5. Dirty Dozen Online Job Search Mistakes
   Job-Hunt’s famous list of pitfalls (with some solutions, too).

5. Carefully Apply for Jobs

This is the step that ruins many opportunities – sloppy job applications and poor job interview performance based on limited preparation.

Employers are buried under with resumes and job applications for every job they post. This is why customizing your resume and cover letter for each opportunity is critical, as discussed earlier. Your focus on a limited number of employers will make the customization easier to accomplish.

For more excellent research ideas, read Job-Hunt’s free Guide to Company Research. Then, check the employer’s website. Again!  Look for news or new announcements.

6. Thoroughly Prepare for Interviews

An invitation to an interview is not a guarantee of a job offer. It’s an opportunity to impress the employer and to gain sufficient information to determine if the job and employer are right for you.

Be prepared to succeed by reading the articles in Job-Hunt’s Guide to Successful Interviews like:

• Smart Answers to Interview Questions
• The Top 4 Job Interview Success Tips
• 50+ Possible Questions to Ask in Interviews
• 45 Questions You Should NOT Ask in a Job Interview
• 10 Deadly Job Interview Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
• How to Interview for a Temporary Job
• How to Handle Telephone Interviews
• How to Handle Lunch Interviews
• 5 Tips for Acing Your Video Video Interview
• Smart Research: Check Out the Hiring Manager
• The Winning Difference: Pre-Interview Preparation

There are many more helpful articles to assist you in preparing for interviews and completing them successfully.

7. Follow Up Relentlessly and Politely (Online and Off-line)

Follow up tells the potential employer that you really are interested in working for them.

• When you have identified a job you want or a company you want to work for, customize your resume for the opportunity and send it, with a targeted cover email message, to the recruiter and hiring manager. Follow up using paper and a postage stamp.
• Don’t assume that every e-mail message you send is received and read! Currently, spam (bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail) and computer virus-generated messages in circulation comprise an estimated 90% of all e-mail traffic. Companies and people have responded to this deluge of junk e-mail by using filtering software in an attempt to separate the “good” mail from the “bad.” So your message and resume may be deleted or diverted by one of these electronic gate keepers. See Job-Hunt’s articles on successfully using email for job search.
• Following up via phone and “snail mail” is a necessity. Be politely persistent.
• Immediately send a unique thank you after an interview to each person who interviewed you . It makes a big impression since fewer than 5% of job seekers bother with this step.
• If you are rejected, further distinguish yourself from run-of-the-mill job seekers by sending a thank you for the dreaded thanks-but-no-thanks rejection letter, when you receive one from an employer you really liked. Sometimes the person hired doesn’t work out, and the person who sent the thank you after being rejected gets the offer next. See Job-Hunt’s article on Turning Rejection into Opportunity – it definitely works!

See Job-Hunt’s Pro-Active Job Search article for more ideas.

7. Spend More Time OFF-Line than ON-Line  >>  Off-Line Is Where the Jobs REALLY Are!

The Internet is an awesome information source, but think of it as a “tool” in your job search toolbox. You will be hired by a person who will probably want to meet you and talk with you before offering you a job. So, use the Internet’s vast information resources to help you, but don’t limit your efforts to this on-line world.

Reality is that the vast majority of jobs (estimated at 75% or 80% of them!) are NOT posted on a Web site or even advertised in your local newspaper. They are never advertised at all! These jobs comprise “The Hidden Job Market.”

The people hired in the Hidden Job Market jobs are known to the organization before a job opportunity has been documented or, sometimes, even recognized. They are the “friends of the friends” of the hiring manager or of another employee. Don’t be discouraged! You can find those jobs, and the Internet can help you get started.

Your personal network is one of the best ways to find that next job (and the job after that, and the job after that!). Read Job-Hunt’s Guide to Job Search Networking and the “Tapping the Hidden Job Market” articles for ideas and information.

Millions of people are job hunting right now. We have some recommendations for how you can Stand Out From the Crowd. And, you’ve probably heard this message hundreds of times, because it’s true, back to the first task on this page – networking is the most effective way to find a job.

NEXT: Step 2 – Finding Jobs Online

About the author…

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Facebook, LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Implementing Your Job Search appeared first on Job-Hunt.

You’ve Landed Your New Job! YEA!

Congratulations! Celebrate, and enjoy your success! Update your LinkedIn Profile with your new job title and employer name.

If someone has been helpful, send them a note to let them know that you have your new job and to thank them for their support. Stay in touch with them, if possible, and help them if you can. A solid personal network is better than the Internet for finding your next job!

Then, make your next job search easier by keeping your successful job search/career “foundation” alive.

It has taken a lot of effort to find and build and nurture your job search network. These are people and resources that may help you succeed in your new job, and now you can help them in their jobs or in their job searching.

• Important: Go back over your diary to see sites where you have left your resume, registered for job sites to send you e-mailed opportunities, etc. Return to those sites to delete or “inactivate” your resume and to stop those e-mails so that your new employer doesn’t think that you are still job hunting.

  If a site won’t let you delete your resume (some don’t), change the name on the resume to something that is jibberish – a string of letters and numbers or something else unfriendly, so you won’t be connected to that resume by your new employer.

  People do get fired by employers who think that they are job hunting, so make sure that your job search is suspended when you start your new job.

• Note in your diary or tracking log the job site(s) led you to that job and/or had the most promising leads, best responses, most interviews generated, etc.
• Keep track of the versions of your resume that were the most “successful,” particularly the one that led you to the new job.
• Note which techniques were the most useful (search criteria that brought exactly the right jobs in the right places, etc.); you may never need them again, but just in case you do…
• List the Web sites that had the most useful information for finding good employers and preparing for interviews.

For Your Next Job Search

These days, very few jobs are secure. So, now that you have established a good foundation, including an updated resume and online presence in the social networking sites, don’t let it die. You don’t want to start all over for the next job search.

And there will be a “next” job search. Count on it!

1. Keep Your Network Alive (So It Will Be Ready Next Time)

As a savvy networker, you’ll want to help them any way you can, too. Remember the new networking mantra for the 21st century – WYGIWYG: What You Give Is What You Get!

Stay active and visible on LinkedIn:

• Continue to update and improve your LinkedIn Profile.
• Add more connections and recommendations in LinkedIn.
• Join appropriate LinkedIn Groups and participate in the Group Discussions.
• Write and publish posts on LinkedIn Pulse.
• Stay active on Twitter.

These activities can help you be more successful in your current job, as well as laying the ground work for that next job search.

Your network will make your next job search easier, and you want to help them, too. So stay in touch.

• Connect on LinkedIn, if you aren’t already connected.
• Send a check-in email periodically — like sharing a great (relevant) article or sending holiday wishes.
• Send out news about your profession or industry, via the appropriate LinkedIn Group for that industry or profession and also via Twitter.

Do your best to help the members of your network succeed. They may not all help you back, but you will find that many have in the past and will in the future, too. And those strong ties can help you both be more successful in the future, as your careers progress.

2. Keep Track of Your Accomplishments

Keep your LinkedIn Profile up-to-date, highlighting your accomplishments and those of your employer. Maintain a list of accomplishments in your current job that will enable you to update your resume very quickly, if necessary.

Quantify those accomplishments — dollars saved or sales made, percent of improvement (or savings or whatever), paying particular attention to important keywords like “profit” and “revenue.”

3. Maintain Your Profiles

Your LinkedIn Profile will actually help you do your job better, too, helping your employer succeed. You will also be able to learn new things, meet new people, find out about new technologies and competitors, stay ahead of (or at least even with) the competition, and more. And, fortunately, you will be better prepared should you need to launch another job search.

Focus on LinkedIn, currently the social network used most often by most professions for professional visibility. LinkedIn is also, of course, THE favorite network of recruiters.

More: Secrets to a Knockout LinkedIn Profile Summary.

4. Brag About Your Employer

Even if it’s a horrble place to work, there must be something good about it or you wouldn’t have accepted their job offer. So, find something positive to say about your employer and/or their products or services, and make that visible in LinkedIn.

Post updates about the organization (positive ones!), and also share something positive in your LinkedIn Profile Summary and also in the Work Experience section relevant to the employer. Maybe they are the “bigest CPA firm [or whatever] in the eastern suburbs” or “winner of the best [whatever] award.”

Hopefully, your employer will be reassured that your LinkedIn participation isn’t part of a job search, and you’ll be spreading the word about how great they are. That will reflect well on you (currently and in the future), and will also enhance your value in the job market.

5.Continue to Use Your Tracking System

It will help you keep your network alive and well for next time

When you have your new job, check out the hints for maintaining your job search network for next time because this will probably not be your last job search…

IN CONCLUSION

Yes, it is a LOT of work to find a new job! There are very few true short cuts, but the Internet has increased the apparent size of the job market, automating the application process while also adding some new complications (like protecting your privacy). In a way, the Internet has made it more difficult to find a job. For more on job hunting, read the articles written by Job-Hunt’s Job Search Experts on everything from resumes to networking to social media (particularly LinkedIn, of course), working with recruiters, successful job interviews, personal SEO, personal branding, and personal online reputation management.

Back: Part One or Part Two

About the author…

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Facebook, LinkedIn.
More about this author…

The post Part 3: Preparing for Your Next Job Search appeared first on Job-Hunt.