Use Job Search Hacks to Get Hired Faster

Job searching alone is like hitchhiking a scary ride with an unknown stranger on a 180-mile long deserted, no-exit road with hopes you'll make your destination. When you lack time or expertise to plan career moves carefully, sometimes the loss of ground is not apparent until years later. You can get trapped in a black hole and frustrated that your career is not advancing to full potential. Ever feel imprisoned in positions that lacked adequate reward, satisfaction, challenge or a future?

There are many reasons for these job jails:

? You've become too specialized.

? You've become too generalized.

? You failed to look ahead and plan for the future.

? You held out too long hoping for the "right break."

? You accepted jobs that never made use of your best talents.

? You remain too long in positions that offered no challenge or mobility.

Use these seven job search marketing hacks and you'll get in front of decision makers faster. What's a "hack?" A "hack" is a clever solution to an interesting problem, so says the experts at O'Reilly Media, Inc., a leading-edge book publisher that offers cool technology workarounds on everything from navigating Google and eBay to digital photography and gaming. Hacks are the "down and dirty" of getting a task done. Your mission here is to get a great job, high on adventure, low on headache.

Hack #1: Know the job market.

Locate and identify geographic employment hot spots. Search out emerging industries. Grow up and ditch the pabulum of pursuing comfortable industries that are on their way to obsolescence.

Hack #2: Know your functional and industry options and employers' needs in these areas.

Pinpoint your top three positioning (career focus) alternatives to what you're now doing. Find the chief five employers that serve that market segment.

Hack #3: Know your most marketable skills, competency, and relevant background.

Create a personal branding; the things that make your "package" distinct. Blaze past your competition and neutralize the yawn factor in candidate- selection boredom by linking your portfolio of contribution to employer need.

Hack #4: Know how to win multiple, simultaneous interviews.

Spot the core three strategies to gain exposure that penetrates both the advertised and unadvertised job markets. Isolate which one is used the least but rewards the most, in terms of results.

Hack#5: Know how to create effective resumes and letters that sell solutions.

Build a campaign action plan that sends your tombstone resume to an early grave. Leverage your knowledge to solve employer problems through tailored special-ops marketing tactics that creates "you" stickiness in decision makers' minds.

Hack#6: Know how to multiply your access to those who have the power to hire.

Networking is out. Building strategic relationships is in. Be there?where. Informational meetings with those who have knowledge that you need puts you in the driver's seat when hiring patterns emerge.

Hack #7: Know how to give your inner critic a name and tell it to be quiet.

Visualize the results you want, not the ones you fear. Trigger the right reactions in your targeted prospects by looking for ways you might be sabotaging yourself, then adapt, improvise, overcome.

A professionally-run job search gets you there faster. It gives you defined direction and leverage to compare, negotiate, and deal from strength. Try to imagine the alternative; hitchhiking to nowhere at the mercy of blind luck. Can you think of one rational reason why you'd want to take this trip alone?

Marta L. Driesslein is a senior management consultant for R.L. Stevens & Associates Inc., http://www.interviewing.com, a career marketing firm and organization celebrating over 24 years of providing strategic marketing solutions for its clients' career transitioning needs.

---

Get a Life Why Dont Ya?!

It's okay to take your job seriously, to be a... Read More

Career Change - Creating Wealth & Happiness

Whether you have a business idea or not, here's what... Read More

Job Search: Age-Proofing Your Resume

Older job hunters fear interviews where their age cannot be... Read More

Resume Tune Up

Employers have fears, uncertainty and DOUBT (the FUD factor) over... Read More

10 Steps to Escape the Job World and Create the Life You Really Want

1. GET THE POINT ? OF LIFE, THAT IS.... Read More

Surviving Corporate Politics Part 2: Keeping Up Appearances

Never a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression, or... Read More

Work Is A Four-Letter Word

I can hear the jokes already and most of them... Read More

Put Some Mystery in Your Life

Mystery shoppers. For some it conjures up images of private... Read More

Master Responding to Selection Criteria and Win Your Next Job!

As a human resources specialist for many years, I've seen... Read More

Successful Job Seeking ? The Importance of Your Cover Letter

As an employer I receive many job applications each week.... Read More

Ten Things About Your Career Development

There are some tactics you can action whatever you wish... Read More

Interview Thank-You Letters

The number one etiquette tip for interviews is writing a... Read More

Career Tips: How To Start A New Career

These days most people accept that jobs are not for... Read More

Ten Healthcare Fields That Cant Wait To Hire You

Healthcare is one of the hottest career fields in America... Read More

Old Hiring Foxes vs. The Hedgehogs

You are about to compete for the best people again.... Read More

Top Ten Guidelines For Working With Executive Recruiters

1. Select the right type of recruitment partnerDetermine whether you... Read More

Make Your Résumé Sizzle with Success Stories

In today's competitive job market you can't afford a résumé... Read More

A Career in Image Consulting

You might have seen them while watching TV shows such... Read More

Self-Preservation Techniques For The Unemployed

Looking for work can be difficult, frustrating, anxiety-provoking, and demeaning.There... Read More

Create A Rappin? Resume

(Percussion sounds emanating from who knows where while you listen... Read More

Are You Making These Common Job Interview Mistakes?

Going to an interview without a plan of action is... Read More

What You Should Know About A Medical Billing Specialist

Whether you are a person who is thinking about becoming... Read More

Working In Iraq: Is It For You?

The US Army Corp of Engineers and numerous private companies... Read More

Everyone Should Have a RED BALL in the Job Search

May I explain what about what a red ball means... Read More

Rewriting Your Resume? 7 Easy Ways To Give Yourself An Upgrade

In today's competitive job market, a first class resume is... Read More