Even so, do not relax yet.  It is important that you continue to do what you are doing – sourcing open positions, updating your online profiles, and revising your resume.  Your whole goal is to have at least two different positions offered to you.  You should be the one making the choice of where you work and what you do.  It is your career.  You don’t want your career choices to be made for you.

Interviews may be successful even if you do not get a job offer.  How should you prepare for an interview?  What should you focus your attention on while you are being interviewed?  How should you follow up on your interviews? 

 Preparation, Preparation, Preparation

All of my previous articles have focused on preparing you in a general way for the interviewing step; however, you should prepare for each and every interview.  The company has taken the time to learn about your background.  The following steps will allow you to show that you are committed to understanding the company’s background as well: 

1. Research the company before you show up there.  What is their product or service?  What industry are they in?  Find a way to rebrand your experience to fit that exact product/service and industry.  Prepare several questions about the company, product/service, and industry that you can ask during the interview.
2. Review the job posting.  What is the underlying need that caused that company to look for a candidate?  Find a way to rebrand yourself to fit that exact need.  Prepare several questions about position that you can ask during the interview.
3. Update your resume.  Print at least 6 copies to bring with you, along with your Detailed Work Experience document and your List of References.
4. Ensure that your professional internet presence is visible to that company.  Many executives are blogging.  Posting a well thought out and well written response to a blog posted by your interviewer before you are interviewed will help you stand out from the crowd of job seekers that the interviewer is sifting through.  Believe me, the interviewer is swamped with resumes, interviews, and they still have to do their actual job.  Help them out: do some of their homework for them.
5. Dress for success.  Yes, that is a cliché, but so true.  Always dress better for the interview than you expect to dress while working there.  Ensure that your clothes fit properly (don’t sag your pants, don’t wear a ball cap twisted off to the side, don’t wear sunglasses).  Wear a well-fitting suit.  Wear a white shirt.  Red is still a power color – put on a red tie. Show the interviewer that you are serious about your job search.  It doesn’t cost a lot of money.  Suits are less than 20 dollars at most second hand stores, and garment alterations are relatively inexpensive.

Interviewing Techniques

By the time that you are invited in, you have already made it through a screening process.  The company believes that you can do the job, or else you would not be there.  Now is the time to show that you are the best candidate for the opening. Chemistry is the key during interviews.  Approach the interview as a dress-rehearsal for the job.

1. Ask Questions.  Questions show that you are willing to learn.  If you ask the right types of questions, they will also show that you thoughtful, intelligent, and have done your homework.  Questions are a powerful tool.
2. Watch your body language.  Sit or stand tall.  Make good use of eye contact. Smile.  Body language is a good advertisement of you.  Use it to your advantage.
3. Give real-world answers to hypothetical questions.  When the interviewer asks you questions, do not start off your answers with “My last company handled that issue by…”  The interview is not about your previous company.  It is about you.  Answer questions by telling the interviewer how you have personally handled circumstances that are similar to the hypothetical questions asked of you.
4. Be direct.  Drive the interview to specific reasons why you are a good match for the position.  Do not give general answers, give specific ones.  If you have done your homework on the company, the position, the industry, it will be apparent to your interviewer.
5. Do not ask about compensation during the initial interview.  This topic will be covered in a future article (Reviewing Job Offers).  For now, steer clear of compensation.  In compensation negotiation, whoever asks first loses.  If the interviewer brings up the topic, let him or her know that you are negotiable and turn the conversation back to why you are a good fit for the job.  If the issue is pressed by the interviewer, turn it around on them by ask what the pay range is that they had in mind.  Salary negotiations should not be a part of an initial interview.
6. Do not revolve the interview around samples of your work.  Bring the samples, by all means.  Present the samples at the appropriate time.  Remember, though, the point of the interview is not to view your samples, but to learn about you. 
7. At the conclusion of the interview, ask if there are any other questions.  Once you have answered any further questions, ask what the next step is in the hiring process.  Show your initiative.  Ask what you could do to drive towards the offer.
8. Ask for a business card or contact information (phone number, email address).

 Follow Up

It is important to do what you can to follow up on an interview.  Send a brief thank-you email (or even a professional thank-you card) to the interviewer.  Personalize the note; do not send out a generic catch-all thank you. 

1. Thank the interviewer.
2. Briefly recap the interview, reminding them of why you are a good fit for the position.
3. If you forgot to mention any items during the interview, this is your time to bring them up.
4. When appropriate, let them know that you are working on the Next Step (see item number 7 under the heading Interviewing Techniques).
5. When appropriate, ask for feedback on your resume and your interviewing techniques.

It is important that you do not make a pest out of yourself.  It is not ok to phone or email the interviewer every day or even every week asking for the job.  Once again, your goal is to make the company aware of you, not annoyed by you.

Managing your job search is a complicated process.  It is important to stay on top of all aspects of the search.  You should still be sourcing open positions even if you have successful interviews.  Until you have a job offer, you should still be looking to see what is out there.  Always consider yourself at square one.

Hard Work Always Pays Off.

Look at your job search as an opportunity
We have all had jobs that were just that – jobs.  They were ways to bring home money, but they were not really what we wanted to do with our lives.  Even so, we show up, work hard, earn a paycheck, and wait for the weekend to arrive so that we can get together with friends and grumble about how much work sucks.

If you are on The Hunt, you have the opportunity to change that.  First of all, think back to your childhood when grown-ups asked that age old question: What do you want to be when you grow up?  How did you answer then?  How is your answer different now?  What are you passions?  Your goals?  Once you have thought of these answers, then the next step is to ensure that you are prepared to move in that direction.  My challenge to you is to identify your career and move yourself in the direction that will allow you to realize that very position.  Find a way to be financially compensated for something that you love to do so much that you would be willing to do it for free. 

Sight In Your Target.
Identify the companies that hire people to do the type of job that you are looking for.  This might seem like a no-brainer, but it is an important step (this step also ties back to the topic of Building A Strong Professional Internet Presence – once you have identified the companies, find out where their executives blog on the Internet.  Interact with them: Post blogs, respond to blogs, ask questions.  Get your name and your ideas out there).  Target these companies for openings.  Submit your resume for available positions.

It is important to note that I did not suggest that you make a pest out of yourself.  It is not OK to directly follow up with them every day, every week.  If you have done it correctly, they will know who you are.  The goal in setting yourself up with a solid public foundation is to get them to want to work with you, to wantto hire you.  No one wants to hire the guy who is jumping up and down waving his arms and shouting ‘Hire me! Hire Me!”  There are better ways to ask for the job.

No, the idea here is to simply make the companies aware of you, not annoyed by you.

Be Willing To Do Whatever It Takes
There are all kinds of avenues available for job seekers.  Some are no longer terribly effective – monster.com, dice.com, job fairs.  There are thousands - no, hundreds of thousands – of people using these avenues.

They might not be highly effective, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use them.  In fact, you have to use them.  The idea is that you have to use any and all available means available to you in order to hunt down employment.  You might be one of the lucky few who make their way through the unfortunate recruiters who have no positions to fill and the countless parasites who sell garbage work-from-home-just-buy-our-useless-training-software-first offers, you might find a job using one of these avenues.

But don’t bank on it.  Use your growing network (Building a Strong Personal Internet Presence) to hunt down opportunities.  Network with other job-seekers.  They might interview for a position that they are not qualified for but know that you are!  Send via snail mail (or even hand-deliver) your resume to companies that you would like to work for.

Looking for a job isa full time job.  Perhaps you are receiving unemployment, perhaps you are receiving a severance package.  That does not mean that you can relax.  It takes 8-12 hours per day of dedicated searching to find a position.  The quality of the position that you find will be directly proportional to the effort that you put into your search. 

Be Prepared for Rejection
It happens.  You will receive lot’s of letters of regret before you get a position.  That is ok.  You have to dig through the No’s to find that one Yes.  Remember your odds – 1 in 73.  That means that you may have to interview with 73 companies before you get hired.  That could take a while, so what are you waiting for?  Stop wasting time reading this!  Go get started building your professional Internet presence, understanding the job market, writing your resume, and get into the job hunt mindset!

Hard Work Always Pays Off!

People have posted so many resume writing articles on the internet that I am not going to give a step-by-step guide.  Instead, I am going to go over some general tips that I have found successful.

Resume Matches Online Profiles

In previous posts, I discussed the importance of a strong professional internet presence.  Your resume should always match what your online profiles say.  The last thing you want is to be in an interview and have an apparent conflict be brought to your attention.  Suddenly you will find yourself back-pedaling, sweating, stammering, and trying to explain yourself.  Remember, your interviewer has probably already Googled you before you are invited in for an interview.

Resume is Always a Work In Progress

Resumes should never be viewed as “finished.”  You should constantly be updating, rewriting, and revising your resume throughout your job search. 

Whenever you have a chance to speak with an interviewer (email, telephone, or in person), look for resume feedback.  You don’t have to come right out and ask for resume feedback, but at least listen for places where you can improve your resume.  For example, if an interviewer asks you to clarify a bullet item that is on your resume, you should then clarify that bullet item on your resume before sending it out to other companies. 

I have also found it helpful to tailor my resume to each and every position that I am applying for.  Before you submit your resume, look at the job requirements and reword your resume to show how you are a perfect fit for the position.  Keep in mind that before the hiring supervisor looks at the resumes of potential candidates, Human Resources puts the resumes through a screening process.  Often times this process is done via computer.  Resumes are scanned into a computer.  The computer then processes your resume looking for industry buzzwords that are specific to the position you are applying for.  Even when the content of your resume indicate that you are the perfect match for the position, if the correct industry buzzwords are not present, the computer will reject you as a possible candidate.  The best way to find these buzzwords is to look within the job posting. 

Use Frustrating Statistics To Your Advantage

There is a frustrating but important statistic to consider:  the average employer will look at your resume for 17 seconds before moving on to the next resume.

Think about it: there are 73 qualified candidates for each job opening, on average.  That means that every time you submit your resume, you are more or less putting your resume in a stack with 72 other resumes.  The hiring manager is tasked with looking through all of those resumes and selecting a few to invite in for interviews.  What ends up happening is that (s)he quickly skims each one, stopping only when something catches his/her eye.  How can you use this to your advantage?

My solution was in the format and construction of my resume.  I actually designed three distinct documents:  an Initial Resume, a Detailed Work Experience document, and a List of References.

Initial Resume

The resume that I initially submitted to potential employers was a single page that contained a lot of white space.  Please contact me (jcrews@ppitechcom.com) if you would like for me to send you a copy of my resume to use as a reference.

Here is a description of each of the sections:

Under my name, I listed an objective.  I tailored this objective to each position I was submitting for.  Often times, I even specified the company name I was submitting to (ex. Objective: to secure employment as a technical writer for PPI Technical Communications).

Next I listed my experience highlights.  In this section, I listed the names of my last two employers.  Beneath each of those names, I listed just a few of my major accomplishments in bullet format.  This section needs to be written for a high impact.  One idea is to put actual figures in there.  For example, if you revised a training program that increased student proficiency from 42% to 91%, put that in there.  Those figures are powerful, easy to understand, and show the end result of your efforts.

The next section listed my awards, honors, and certifications.  Once again, this is in bullet format.

At the bottom of the page, I listed my professional strengths:  three powerful ideals that I wanted my employers to think about when they considered me as a potential candidate.

At the bottom of this document, it may be a good idea to include the following sentence:

“Detailed work experience and reference list available upon request.”

I cannot stress enough how important it is to leave a lot of white space on this type of resume.  Make it clean, easy to read, and powerful.  This will be your first communication with an employer.  You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Detailed Work Experience

This document is what most people consider to be their resume.  It is (go figure) a document that details your entire work history.  Since this document is NOT your initial contact with potential employers, feel free to make this document as long as you need to. 

This document should always be honest.  If there is an item in your professional past that you do not want to advertise, I would recommend omitting it rather than lying about it.  Remember, there is a lot of information about you on the internet… and many employers are now doing complete background checks on their job candidates.  If you lie about something you will probably be caught out, and then you definitely will not get a job offer. 

Reference List

You should have at least three references.  At least one should be a professional reference.  One may be a personal reference.  When it is possible, include a client/customer reference.  Client references are always the most powerful.

It takes a lot of effort to find a position.  Maintaining your resume and your Professional Internet Presence are two items that take up a good portion of the time.  Make them high on your priority list. 

Hard work pays off.

• CNNMoney reports that unemployment in our country hit a 21 year high back in February, and we have been on a downward spiral since then.  Currently we are at an 8.6% unemployment rate.
• 3.3 million jobs have been lost since November.  3.3 million!
• The last statistic I saw indicated that there are 73 candidates for each job opening in America. 
• Unions and other professional brotherhoods are offering to accept sweeping pay cuts in order to ensure that their professional brethren remain employed.

I won’t continue to list the woes of the US job market.  You get the picture. 

I do see a glimmer of hope, however.  Let’s look at one of those bullets again:

• CNNMoney reports that unemployment in our country hit a 21 year high back in February, and we have been on a downward spiral since then.  Currently we are at an 8.6% unemployment rate.

“21 year high” indicates that we have actually been through WORSE, does it not?  In fact, we have.  1982 found the US unemployment rate sitting at 10.8% vs. today’s 8.6%.  We climbed out of the latrine known as the 1982 job market; we can climb out of this one as well.

Another bit of hope: 

• Unions and other professional brotherhoods are offering to accept sweeping pay cuts in order to ensure that their professional brethren remain employed.

People are joining together in a grass-roots style to bring each other along.  More important than the grass-roots style movement (although that is important), is the idea that somewhere, individuals and groups of workers are doing something to combat the severe downward trend in the job market!

Why is the job market so dismal?  When I began considering this question, I arrived at the obvious yet circular answer: jobs are disappearing because companies aren’t making money.  Companies aren’t making money because no one is buying anything. No one is buying anything because consumers don’t have any money.  Consumers don’t have any money because they don’t have jobs.  They don’t have jobs because jobs are disappearing.  Jobs are disappearing because companies aren’t making money.  …and so on ad nauseaum.

The government is very concerned and they are doing everything that they can, however they necessarily operate on a macro level: trickle-down economics, tax-payer supported bail-outs, stimulus checks.  It just may be, however, that the solutions that have been attempted are akin to attempting to perform intricate brain surgery with a chainsaw.

I believe that the answer is very simple: trickle-UP economics!  We must break the self-feeding circle of no-jobs-due-to-companies-not-making-money-due-to-no-consumers-due-to-no-consumer-money-due-to-unemployment.  If you are unemployed, find a job.  If you have a job, you can buy things.  If you buy things, companies will make money.  If companies make money, they will need to hire more employees.  If companies hire more employees, more people will have jobs.  If more people have jobs, ahhh, you get the picture!

Finding a job today is nothing like it was two years ago.  Two years ago, you could rely on your resume, professional credentials, education and experience.  Those things are all still important; however it is absolutely imperative that you assume that potential employers will Google you before they decide to interview you.  You are who Google says you are, not who your resume says you are.

If you are starting a job search and you have NOT made a conscious effort to build a strong professional presence on the internet, now is the time to begin.  Have patience – it takes time.  Have fun with it – you might find that you enjoy it… and you also might find that you accidentally network your way into a new career.

Hard work always pays off.

We see large companies flailing in despair, reaching out for any life-saver that might be available – a government bailout, mass layoffs, and bank loans. The devices that are available, however, are only band-aid solutions that will allow these corporate entities to continue to do business-as-usual for a limited time.

Business-as-usual is not the answer.

We are standing on the crest of corporate change. That can be a terrifying place to be when there are no signs pointing to a tried-and-true path to walk. What is the answer? What is the path? Unfortunately the answer isn’t quite apparent – we haven’t done it yet. We have the ability to shape the future of our economy right at this very minute. We have the ability to build our own corporate playground. We have the responsibility to take the first step forward in a direction – any direction – and allow our actions to define the way that we, Corporate America, does business.

That being said, we are not going to be able to move in any direction if we all bury our heads into the sand. Where should we start?

One answer is the unemployed population. The competition is so fierce in the job market that unless you have extremely strong, visible credentials, you will not be considered as a potential candidate in any field.

Joe Pulizzi, author and entrepreneur, offers some very valuable tips on setting up a solid foundation for networking efforts in his presentation 10 Steps to Personal Branding Success. The presentation is offered free of charge, and may be found at http://tinyurl.com/qajaeh.

Joe mentioned 9 key ideas:

1. Update your online profiles often. He specifically recommended Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

2. In addition to a frequent and consistent blog, he suggested commenting on other’s blogs (which will then link back to your sites) and answering online questions. Joe suggested LinkedIn Answers and Yahoo Answers as possible places to search for questions to answer.

3. Write a Book.

4. Create and distribute content of interest to your customers, employers, friends, and fellow networkees.

5. Write for everyone, no matter how big or how small.

6. Become active in 2 – 3 professional associations.

7. Fill the role of public speaker as often as possible.

8. Watch your Google profile. You are who Google says you are.

9. Get behind one Charity/cause.

These 9 steps are not a guaranteed path to finding your dream job, becoming successful, or asking out the girl of your dreams. Instead, this is a starting point, the beginning of a path that you can walk. Where you take it is up to you.

Hard work always pays off.