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Reliability, Graciousness, and Beauty of Character

Happy Job Hunting! Here are some tips…

Reliability, Graciousness, and Beauty of Character

Some people make fun of me for joining a sorority in college. Most are quite shocked because I'm not a typical "sorority girl." No one in my organization was a dead on stereotype of a "sorority girl." Because we were local, we had the freedom to make our letters, not have our letters make us.

Our motto was to always have reliability, graciousness, and beauty of character. As long as you hold these qualities, you will be appreciated and remembered. Even if you don’t like the person you are talking to, always be classy are respectful because you never know where your next referral for a job will come from J

I was a technical recruiter at my last job in downtown San Francisco. I was referred by someone I hadn’t talked to since high school (7+ years ago). He messaged me by accident on facebook to come to his party.

I replied with "ummm...what party?"

He realized that he messaged the wrong person and then asked me how I was doing. One thing led to another and we started talking about my job hunt. He submitted my resume to his company for me and I was hired two weeks later. If I had just blown him off, I wouldn’t have gotten the job.

Network Network Network!

Happy Job Hunting! Here are some tips…

Network Network Network

They say that job hunting is now more about who you know than what you know. This is true. I didn’t know anyone when I moved to LA except for a few people. I found my job on my own (sans recommendations or recruiting company), but the more people you meet and talk to, the more likely you’ll find a job through an acquaintance or friend or colleague.

I would get my hair done and tell everyone there I was looking for a job. Tell the barista at the coffee shop, the checker at Trader Joes, and anyone at your gym who will listen.

Use online resources to network!

1. Meetup.com

Look up meet ups in your area that focus on the field that you want to get into. These meet ups are great. You can ALWAYS take something away from it. I went to a meet up in San Francisco before I moved down to LA for Green Energy (not a field I wanted to go into, but a friend wanted me to accompany them, so I went) and that was where I learned about re-applying to positions more than once or twice. I knew NOTHING about green energy, but I learned how one young man found his job.

Some questions to go into a meet up with...

How did you get into the field?

How did you find your company?

Are you currently looking for work? What are you doing for your search?

What do hiring managers in this field look for in someone when hiring?

What do you find gives someone a leg up in the hiring process?

What do you see yourself doing in the long run? (you never know all of the different career paths that your field can provide for you)

Here are the types of groups that I looked for on Meetup.com

Start ups

Human Resources

Young professionals

2. Linkedin

Linkedin is one of the top resources for employers to find their employees. Here are some tips on how to utilize your LinkedIn.

Your profile picture should be appropriate (this means no duck faces ladies!). Stay tuned for my section on social media marketing in the future!!

JOIN GROUPS! Join groups on LinkedIn that are in your field. Jobs are posted in those groups! It’s a great resource for job hunting advice and the latest news. It also looks good to your employers when you follow groups in your field. It shows that you have an interest and want to make that interest your career, not just a job to pay the bills.

Resume Make-Over

Happy Job Hunting! Here are some tips…

Constantly revamp your resume

Your resume is a work in progress. It’s never done. I totally redid my resume from scratch 3 times before finding a job. There would be days where all I would do was rewrite my resume and not apply to any jobs. Ways to make your resume the best it can be...

Look at as many different resumes a possible (friends, family, and online searches). If you Google search resumes, make sure to search for resumes that are specific to your field and level. That way you can see what other people at your stage are doing.

You can pay someone to write your resume, but it’s pricey and you still have to continue to revamp your resume on your own.

Send your resume as a PDF to your employers so that no red underlines on funky words show up when they open.

Personalize your resume to match what a job description/cover letter is looking for. HR employees are not experts in anything but HR most of the time. They look for buzz words that can be found on the job description. Personalizing your resume to match a lot of those buzz words that the job description talks about can help a lot. I’m not asking you to lie, just say what you were originally saying, but with different vocabulary.

3rd Party Recruiting Companies: Best Friend or Worst Enemy?

Happy Job Hunting! Here are some tips…

3rd Party recruiting companies. Don’t be scerd of them.

Recruiting companies don’t always have a good rep. You just need to know what to watch out for. If you find a good one, you can get work right away! They move fast, so be ready to find work quickly if you work with a recruiting company.

Here are some crucial questions to ask a recruiting company before submitting your resume to them online. The answer to these questions should ALWAYS be “yes.”

Before you send my resume to a company, do you contact me first to see if I’m interested in the opportunity?

Do you negotiate my salary for me?

Do you give consulting on resume format and interviewing skills?

The salary that you present to me is AFTER you take a cut out of it?

Will I receive benefits through your company if I am contracting positions through you?

Do you fill full time and part time positions?

Will you only talk to me about positions that meet my requirements? (area, salary, position, size of company, field of company, etc...)

Are you local to the market you are submitting me to?

Being open with a recruiting company…

Once you find a recruiting company with good morals (doesn’t spam resume out) be very open with them. Some people are scared that if they tell a recruiting company where they are interviewing, the recruiting company will put one of their candidates in that position.

Here is the truth....

a. The recruiting agency is probably already calling into the company that you are interviewing at. It’s rare that you tell them of an open position at a company that they don’t already know about.

b. When you inform them of where you are applying to, they make sure to not talk about you to a company that you’ve already submitted your resume to. That way you (nor they) look unprofessional.

When you inform them of where you are interviewing at, it gives you a selling point for the recruiter to work with.

“This candidate is actively interviewing at a few companies in your area (company A, B, and C) so I’d love to get them in for an interview at your company before they are off of the market”

This makes you look desirable and urgent (a “hot candidate”).

The key is finding a recruiting company that you feel comfortable with and trust. There are recruiting companies out there that do not have you in their best interest (Cybercoders).

Some recruiting companies to look into...

Robert Half

CareerGroup

AppleOne

Workbridge Associates (IT/Web & Software Development)

JobSpring Partners (IT/Web & Software Development)

Premier Staffing

Submit It Again!

Happy Job Hunting! Here are some tips...

Submit it again!

If you stumble upon a job that you really want, submit your resume more than once! Try different avenues to submitting it.

b. Directly through the company website

c. Through the job posting website

d. Through people you might know at the company

If you are not EXACTLY what they are looking for, SUBMIT YOUR RESUME ANYWAYS!!! A lot of companies will want someone to keep around for the long run, so they are willing to take someone a little on the junior side so that they can grow. Yes, most people are weeded out by their resume alone, but if you are revamping your resume constantly, then you will last a little longer than someone who isn’t.

Check Every Job Posting Site Daily

Happy Job Hunting! Here are some tips...

Check every job posting site daily.

Go through a routine that allows you to scope all of your job sites daily so that you don’t miss anything. You want to try to be one of the first people to submit their resume.

Ziprecruiter.com

Bright.com

Listalert.com <-- pulls out all of the jobs off of craigslist that you want and sends them to your email so you don't have to search CL every day

Monster.com

Careerbuilder.com

Job postings for specialized fields (for me it was ihirehr.com since I wanted to get into human resources). These sites usually cost a little bit of a monthly fee, but it’s worth it if you are dead set on that line of work.

Finding A Job Is A Full Time Job

I have a few friends who are entertaining new job opportunities. They don’t have 10 years of experience under their belts. They are victims of owning a college degree and not finding work due to “lack of experience.” I graduated college 4 years ago. Finding a job has always been stressful, but I’ve managed to stay afloat and find work due to my persistence and lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Here are my tips for searching...

Finding a job is a full time job

Get up at 8am or 9am at the latest, make that cup o’ joe and set up your computer for a long day of “work”. For many people who are looking for the right opportunity to start a career, being someone at the right place and the right time is a big part of the hiring process so BE ON THE BALL. Your day ends when you can’t think straight anymore and the sight of your resume and cover letter makes you sick.

#job hunt #advice #young professional

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems down't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

Gilda Radner