You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to recognize that job seekers face obstacles today that they never imagined in the past. A lot has changed in the last few years, and you’ll need to adjust if you want to succeed. Competition is intense and more and more companies are turning to temporary, or contingent, workers in place of full-time employees. Since the pace of change is unlikely to slow, if you want to be successful, it’s up to you to keep up.
Related:How To Build An Effective ‘Marketing Yourself’ Plan
Make sure you are prepared to compete successfully. Find out how to market yourself in today's economy:
Evaluate And Identify Career Trends In Your Field
Open your eyes and ears and keep abreast of what’s hot in your industry. You need to know what skills and experiences employers seek for the jobs you want. How can you uncover this information?
Review job descriptions; what keywords show up again and again?
What topics are keynote speakers including in their presentations at your professional conferences? (You can discover this online, even if you don’t attend.)
What topics are thought leaders in your field writing about and discussing? (Read their blogs, newsletters and social media updates to find out.)
When you have informational interviews with people in your field, what do they identify as their biggest obstacles, pain points and concerns?
What do online tools (websites and social media sites) tell you about your industry?
Choose A Career Specialty
Even though employers are doing more with fewer people, the trend is to hire candidates with niche expertise. If you are a Jack (or Jill) of all trades and can do a lot of things, but don’t have a specialty area, it’s time to decide what you’re really good at and focus your energies on being the best in the business.
Need some help deciding what you should market as your go-to skill? Use the research you did to evaluate trends in your field to discover the most salient issues in your industry. If necessary, enroll in continuing education courses to fine tune your unique talents. Then, highlight those niche abilities.
You will stand out in a crowd of applicants when you market your specialty expertise. Then, you will be able to make your targeted case via strong application and marketing materials.
Demonstrate Your Career Expertise And Expand Your Network
Don’t just say you’re an expert in your field – show people that you have your finger on the pulse of your industry by using social networking tools to highlight exactly what you know. When you post frequent, smart updates on Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn and engage in conversations with colleagues and thought leaders, you prove you have useful ideas and opinions.
The result? You’ll grow the number of potential allies in your network who are willing to refer you for job opportunities. Statistically, referrals are the best way to land jobs, so you’ll be well on your way to getting a position.
Learn How To Market Yourself
Using social media to demonstrate your expertise is a great first step, but it’s not enough to just engage in topical online conversations. You need to think about how to market yourself as if you were a company. Even if you aren’t seeing it in your field yet, studies suggest freelancers will eventually make up about 50% of the workforce, up from 35-40% currently.
If you can’t describe what you know and why someone should hire you, expect long periods of unemployment in your future.
Review your online bios; do they tell a compelling story about you? Does your LinkedIn headline include keywords and a pitch to inspire someone to want to learn more about you? Are you taking advantage of all the opportunities to make sure people who want to hire someone like you can find you online?
Do you have a professional avatar that makes you appear friendly, yet intelligent? All of these are key elements to help you maintain a competitive presence in your field and have a chance to land jobs – and gigs.
Is your job search turning into a grind with no end in sight? It may be time to take a step back and reevaluate your entire approach.
In cold weather climates, the beginning of spring is a time to clean the house and get organized—a practice known as spring cleaning. Through the years, spring cleaning has taken on a larger meaning with people using the time to organize and declutter things in their lives.
For professionals on the job hunt, a little spring cleaning (metaphorically speaking) could be a great way to reinvigorate your job search. Here are a few strategies your job search spring cleaning should include.
Reevaluate Your Job Search Approach
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Make a list of the last handful of jobs you applied for and see if you can identify any positive or negative trends. Consider things like:
How did I learn about this job?
How did I apply for the job?
Did I earn an interview?
What was the ultimate result?
A lot can be learned about your job search approach just by answering these questions and identifying patterns. For example:
Negative Trends
You discovered five jobs through job boards, applied to all of them via the job boards, and never heard back from any of them.
The common pattern here is applying through job boards. This isn't to say that job boards don't serve a purpose in the job search process, but they have their limitations, and you can't run your job search entirely off of them. When you apply through a job board, there's a good chance that your materials will never get past the applicant tracking system (ATS) and never be seen by an actual person.
One simple fix is to research who the hiring manager or recruiter is that posted the position and email your materials to them directly.
The more efficient fix would be to take a proactive approach by putting together a bucket list of companies that you want to work for and start making connections on LinkedIn with people who work at those companies. You may already know some people who work there or have connections that can refer you to some individuals.
This is a great way to network your way onto a company's radar.
Positive Trends
You applied to three jobs via referral, were invited to two job interviews, and made it through multiple rounds of interviews for one of the jobs before being passed over for someone with a little more experience.
The pattern here is that getting referred to a job by a professional acquaintance is a great way to land a job interview. This indicates that you're leveraging your network well and you should continue to focus on your networking efforts.
The next step is to review the interview process and determine what went well and what needs to be improved. Sometimes the interviewer will provide feedback, and that feedback can be valuable. However, not everyone is comfortable with giving feedback.
Chances are you probably have a good idea about areas of improvement and the skills you need to gain. Put together a plan for addressing those shortfalls.
The good news in making it deep into any interview process is that it indicates that the company likes you as a potential employee (even if the timing just wasn't right) and the experience could be a roadmap to a job with that company at a later date, or another similar opportunity elsewhere.
Give Your Resume & Cover Letter Some Much-Needed Attention
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Are you continuously sending similar resumes and cover letters to each job opening with only minor adjustments? If so, your strategy needs some serious spring cleaning.
The reason why it's so important to tailor your resume is that throughout your career, you acquire numerous skills, but the job you're applying for may only be focusing on 6-8 of those skills. In that case, those skills must rise to the top of the resume with quantifiable examples of how you successfully used those skills at previous jobs.
Remember, recruiters go through hundreds of resumes. They need to be able to tell from a quick glance whether or not you're a potential candidate for the position.
While updating your resume, you could also spruce up your LinkedIn profile by highlighting the skill sets that you want to be noticed for by recruiters.
As for writing a good cover letter, the key to success is writing a disruptive cover letter. When you write a disruptive cover letter, you're basically telling a story. The story should focus on how you connect with the particular company and job position. The story could also focus on your personal journey, and how you got to where you currently are in your career.
If your resumes and cover letters aren't unique, now is the time to clean things up and get on track.
Build Your Personal Brand
Just because you're looking for work doesn't mean that you don't have anything to offer. Use previous career experiences and passions to build your personal brand.
Ask yourself, "How do I want other professionals to view me?"
Pick an area of expertise and start sharing your knowledge and experience with your professional network by pushing out content on your LinkedIn and social media accounts. Good content can include blogs, social media posts, and videos.
By sharing content about your experiences and passions, you slowly build your personal brand, and others will start to notice. The content could lead to good discussions with others in your network. It could also lead to reconnecting with connections that you haven't spoken to in years, or making new connections.
You never know when one of these connections could turn into a job lead or referral. The trick is to get on people's radars. So, when you're cleaning up your job search, be sure to build a plan for personal branding.
Maintain Healthy Habits During Your Job Search
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Your job search is important, but it's even more important to know when to pull back and focus on personal health and spending time with family and friends.
There are actually things that you can do for your own enjoyment that could help your job search in the long run, such as:
Grab coffee with a friend - It's good to engage in light conversation with friends during challenging times. And if your job search does come up, remember that most people have been through it themselves and you never know when a friend may provide you with a good idea or lead on a job.
Volunteer - Volunteering is a great way to get involved in the community and help others. In addition, if you develop a little bit of a career gap while looking for a job, you can always talk about how you filled that time volunteering, if you're asked about it during a job interview.
Continue to focus on other passions - Are you a fitness nut? Blogger? Crafter? Continue to do the things that bring you happiness. And if you're in a position to profit from your passion through a freelance job or side hustle, even better!
Spring is the perfect time to clean up and improve your job search so you can land the job you want. If you're struggling to find a job, follow the tips above to reinvigorate your job search—and watch your career blossom!
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This article was originally published at an earlier date.