Jobspeaker: “Manage your Job Search” FREE Service now available

Posted by jobspeaker in Job Market on December 27, 2009

Jobspeaker is excited to announce the availability of our next feature: Job Management. Using our FREE service, the Jobspeaker Firefox Add-on and our Jobspeaker Website you can now manage all of your jobs in the one place online. With the New Year almost upon us and hopefully a new job market beginning to open up we want to help job seekers land their next position. Our service helps you save, rate, and track jobs from any job board (e.g. careerbuilder, biospace, hotjobs, craigslist, etc.) or jobs listed from any company (e.g. ibm, genentech, facebook, safeway, etc.) all in one place. Get started organizing your job search today: www.jobspeaker.com or download our Firefox Add-on now.

Our new service enables you as a job seeker to find the jobs just once, then save them to jobspeaker and have a permanent record of the job. Then you can rate them, track them and make notes on them as you progress in your job search. You can compare jobs directly on one page using our jobs dashboard and monitor your own progress. Spending hours everyday finding the jobs you’ve already found across many different job sites or keeping a list on computer/paper is not necessary once you start using Jobspeaker.

We are the only service that is your “personal job aggregator” – you find the jobs and we’ll help you manage the process of landing that perfect job. We’ve developed this service because we believe that it’s you, the job seeker, who knows best where your jobs might be listed. You know, better than any service, the job boards that might list the jobs that interest you, the companies that you’d like to work for and the people you’d like to work with. So, while you search for those jobs, our Jobspeaker service helps you manage all those jobs in one place.

Try it out today and let us know what you think.

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Understanding and choosing the right Job Search Strategy(s)

Posted by jobspeaker in Job Market on December 14, 2009

This post is Part 2 in our 7 part series on how to manage your job search.

So you need to start looking for a job? Perhaps you just got laid off, you’ve just realized that you need to proactively find a new job or you just need to re-launch your job search after a break. Well, what now?

In this blog post, the second of our series on how to manage your job search, we recommend understanding the most common strategies that can be used during your search. In doing so, you can choose which strategy(s) suits your particular circumstance. Here are the most popular job search strategies today and a brief explanation of each:

  1. Work Existing Off-Line Relationships
    Whether you play bowling once a week, recently participated in a cooking class, participate in networking events, run a professional organization or are a member of your local golf club — if you have access to a member group that enables you to network to 10+ people that you haven’t talked to before then this is a good strategy to employ.

  2. Network to New Offline Relationships
    If you are now looking for work and you have exhausted your usual contacts, then it’s time for you to mine new territory. This doesn’t have to be a painful experience. Pick a group with a large enough contingent that meets on a regular basis. Look for a new subject area that you’d like to explore: a new hobby or a new professional interest area that you need to know more about. Trying to associate this potential new group with your job search makes sense, but it also needs to be fun. More than ever, employers are interested in your hobbies as a way of seeing how you pursue your interests, so go explore.

  3. Work Existing Online Relationships
    A lot of people are using professional online networking tools like Plaxo and LinkedIn, which are truly great resources if used in the right way. Assuming you have a good-sized online network then it’s time to selectively ask those contacts for help. Don’t just send them an email saying “I’m looking for work, can you hire me?” – be more selective and look for specific individuals who are properly connected to the companies that you would like to explore. If you are not already networked online, it’s time to start.

  4. Network to New Online Relationships
    This is best done in conjunction with your target company discovery. Expanding your online network during a job search in some haphazard way is not going to help. Review your target companies and then look to expand your network that gets you into or close to people in that organization (preferably the decision maker).

  5. Work with Recruiters that you know
    Recruiters are one resource that you should not neglect during your job search. Recruiter results vary significantly so hopefully you know which ones you prefer. If you have some recruiters who you like working with, make sure this strategy is one that you employ, but not exclusively. More and more employers are looking for candidates directly so you can’t rely on recruiters alone. Don’t forget to use our Recruiter Rating and Discover tool to help you rate/find recruiters you like.

  6. Find New Recruiters
    A good recruiter is a way to leverage up your resume. He or she should be able to get you into companies and roles that you are qualified for but otherwise would have had difficulty accessing. They should vet the roles for you, know what you like or dislike and not push you into a job that does not fit you (so they can earn a fee). Find recruiters who are respected, recommended and have a good track record of placing people in your industry at your level.

  7. Use Online Job Boards
    Everyone knows about the online job boards: they have been very successful in creating an image for themselves as the place to go to manage your job search. We don’t agree, however we also understand that you can’t ignore them either. So use them efficiently to make your job search more effective (see our upcoming release for tools to help you manage job boards) to understand who is hiring and what positions might be interesting, but do not make this the centerpiece of your job search.

  8. Use Offline Job Boards
    Even though the newspaper industry is now reeling from the effect of falling classified ad revenue, newspaper, magazines and other publications still have ads and in some smaller niche industries, this is still the only place to find the jobs. So if you’d like to use this strategy make sure that the jobs that you want are published offline in a publication that you are now or will receive and review on a regular basis.

    9. Generally you should apply several of the strategies listed above – those that best apply to your situation and your industry. Today there are numerous ways that allow you to conduct your search without leaving your home but our advice is to get out and go meet people. You need to practice talking about yourself and no matter how good you are at online networking, face-to-face networking is best. Networking and learning new things can be a fun and an exhilarating experience so go out there and enjoy yourself!

    A note about language – you’ll notice that we use more sales language in talking about how to deploy these strategies, that’s because it is a sales process. Like it or not when you are in a job search you are selling yourself and you’d better get good at it!

    Next:
    Step 3: Why Google may not be your ideal target company – 5 questions to ask

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    Jobspeaker is a service to help job seekers manage their job search – sign up at www.jobspeaker.com.

How to Define the Goal of Your Job Search

Posted by jobspeaker in Job Market on December 3, 2009

This post is Part 1 in our 7 part series on how to manage your job search.

Defining Your Goal:

Before you start out on any journey it’s important to know your destination. In this case it’s a life-long journey so it’s best to be realistic. In other words, don’t set your goal to be CEO of GE when you have only 2 years of experience. You need to set goals that are attainable, but also stretch your abilities and afford you the opportunity to learn. The approach we are suggesting is best shown by using an example:

The Subject: Jean Hughes
She wants to move from project management to product management, and ultimately product marketing. She sees herself in a VP of Marketing role within 5-10 years. She has 4 years of experience in project management and enjoys her job but would prefer to work in areas that she feels more passionate about, has more aptitude for and where some of her education might help (she has a degree in Business & Marketing). Jean has defined her goals as follows:

# Jean’s Goal Jean’s Notes Jobspeaker Comment
1 Marketing Project Management I want to get more exposure to the marketing function than in my current role, so I think I can leverage my project management experience into managing projects on the marketing side of the business. This is a good approach, particularly in this job market. It’s not settling but it is being realistic about her experience and the job market today. While it’s similar to her current role, it’s different in a very significant way that provides her experience within or alongside the marketing function.

Thus, she is leveraging both her project management experience and her education while learning more to better position herself for the next role*.
2 Consulting: Marketing Analyst Working at a consulting firm will give me more exposure to lots of companies and their different marketing strategies. I may have to take a step back but ultimately this will benefit me long-term. By thinking long-term, Jean has decided that taking a step back in her career may be the best thing right now, in order to position herself better for her next career move*.
3 Senior Marketing Manager Perhaps at a smaller company my project management experience and my industry exposure combined with marketing education can be enough to propel me directly into this role. This is Jean’s aspirational role that would make her transition into the marketing function quicker and increase her rate of learning towards her longer-term goal.

Jean is also comfortable with the sink-or-swim aspect of this role – she has learned quickly before in some of her project work and so it’s likely the pros outweigh the cons. She enjoys the pressure that this enforced learning environment might require.
4 VP of Marketing This is my long-term goal. Keeping an eye on the long-term goal is a great idea.

The basic premise here is that you can’t afford to focus exclusively on one role and that you should employ a strategy that will give you tiered options: a role that you know you can attain based on your experience today, a role that is a stretch, a role that takes a different approach and even a role that is your dream job just to keep you focused. Then you’ll be better able to understand the pros and cons of each of the options and put them in the context of your long-term career goals.

* You’ll notice that we talk a lot about “next career move”. We do this because you can no longer rely on an employer to employ you for your career or to manage your career for you, you must do it yourself. Therefore, it is assumed that this approach to managing your career is now or is becoming THE strategy for job seekers. This is our recommended approach as it puts job seekers in the driving seat by pro-actively managing their careers and taking a step-by-step approach to learning the skills they need to get to the role they want over time.

Next:
Step 2: Understanding and choosing the right Job Search Strategy(s)

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Jobspeaker is a service to help job seekers manage their job search – sign up at www.jobspeaker.com.