Beginning steps to build and use profiles on the leading social media platforms. Great stuff from CIPHR!
The Ultimate Social Media Guide to Getting a Job by CIPHR.com at CIPHR.com
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You Are Not a Used Car
It’s obvious, when you think about it, that your resume and your job search is an exercise in selling. But there are many different kinds of selling. In “Simple Daily Habits of the Delightfully Successful”, HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah presents a working definition of sales that doesn’t sacrifice your self-respect:
…Not used car-style sales. Selling doesn’t involve pressure or manipulation. Selling is the ability to explain the reasoning, logic, and benefits of a decision or a perspective in order to get buy-in. Selling is the ability to overcome skepticism or doubt. Selling is the ability to convince other people to go where you want to go.
The practical lesson here: your resume should be this kind of sales proposal. Make the reasons to hire you, and the benefits of hiring you, obvious. Lay out the evidence. Make your case.
If you want the job, do the work of showing why hiring you is in their best interest. It’s not about manipulation or trickery. It’s about delivering value.
Done well, you get the job, they think it was their own great idea. Everybody wins.
Ghost Stole Your Resume?
A woman in Georgia claims a ghost stole her $5,000 resume, and I was asked to comment. I suppose my work is a kind of ghost writing…
What didn’t make it into the article: I wondered why a ghost would need to steal someone’s resume. Then I realized that we have many stories about the dead coming back to life–but not one mentions how they’ll make a living.
Librarian’s Tips to Get a Library Job
I love libraries, but it can be incredibly hard for librarians to make a career of their calling. Here’s one of my favorite librarians (and one of my favorite off-kilter friends) with job search advice for her would-be colleagues: If it were up to me…I’d get the job.
How to Prepare for a Job Interview with Thomas Edison
Apparently Thomas Edison invented bizarre interview questions, too. Could you score the required 90% or better with questions like these?
Who was Francis Marion?
Where is the River Volga?
Who invented logarithms?
What is the first line in The Aeneid?
What war material did Chile export to the Allies during the War?
Where is the Sargasso Sea?
Of what is brass made?
Who was Leonidas?
Who discovered the X-ray?
Where do we get shellac?
Why is cast iron called Pig Iron?
Who was Bessemer and what did he do?
In modern times, Edison would hire champion Trivial Pursuit players, I suppose. More at Mental_Floss.
Online chat: Job Search Strategy to Find a Job NOW
I’m hosting this week’s HireFriday chat on Twitter. January 6th Noon ET, 11 Central, 9am Pacific. Details on the HireFriday site.
The perfect job search requires mastering a number of skills: career goals, assessment tools, resume writing, cover letters, references, networking, interviewing, salary negotiation, work/life balance, etc. There are hundreds of books and thousands of articles teaching these skills. You could read and practice for years.
But you don’t have years. You need a job now.
So today, we’re going to talk about job search strategy for the real world, not the perfect world. Job search tactics that reflect what’s missing from most advice: a sense of urgency!
Q1: How do you know what job search tactics are a priority?
Q2: How often do you change your job search tactics?
Q3: What job search tactics seem too time-consuming or difficult?
Q4: Who do you call first to build a network?
Q5: What online job search resource produces fastest results?