Is Your Fear of Networking Leading to Job Search Mistakes?

Job Search Mistakes and Errors – Classic Example

The Wall Street Journal Laid-Off and Looking Blog just posted a great story profiling F. Ellen Whaley, an out-of-work introverted executive fearful of rebuilding her network.

The example could be a poster child for the classic job search mistakes and errors facing most executives and senior managers when they begin their job search. Read the full article here.

Here was my response to the example posted on this blog regarding ineffective networking as one of the key job search mistakes and errors made by those starting or stalled in a job hunt:

Great example of not considering the value of networking while working. The vast majority of candidates we work with in our Executive Search Practice come to us with a woefully inadequate network to begin their job search. Most have no idea where to start in using social media as a tool in leveraging networking.

Like the commercials about loans, the time to do it is when you don’t need it. Networking should be something you do through-out your entire career so when you need it – it’s there for you. When senior managers and executives start networking for their job search, it can take a minimum of 6 months to establish an effective network that will begin to generate an abundance of job referrals and leads.

My partner and I host a weekly internet radio talk show on job search on LATalkRadio.com at 11-noon PST. This show and the FREE archived broadcasts on our website dealing with job search networking and LinkedIn are some of our most popular downloads. A month ago we posted a FREE scorecard (available to members of our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group – join the group and get the FREE Scorecard) to assess the effectiveness of your LinkedIn Profile for Job Search – the response has been overwhelming.

Interesting side note: of over 2000 job search candidates that have shared their Linkedin Profile Assessments with us, less than 10% meet a minimum standard for using the tools LinkedIn provides for effective job search networking and personal branding.

If you’re an executive and trying to figure out why your job search is a failure, stalled, or ineffective, you might not need to look any further than your network itself and the activities surrounding it. A weak network and lack of classic “old-school” networking disciplined methods will cause your job search to go from 6 months to 12-18 months.

Barry

P.S.: On Monday Brad and I will be discussing on our radio show at LATalkRadio.com 11-noon The Top Ten Job Search Mistakes and Errors and the use of a brand new FREE Assessment Tool covering your entire job search – within minutes you’ll be able to discover do you have a job search headed for a downward death spiral or will you quickly being to generate an abundance of job search leads, referrals, and offers.

P.P.S.: We’ll post the link to download the new Job Search Plan Assessment Tool exclusively into our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group on Sunday prior to the Radio Show Discussion.

What if Your Job Search takes 2X-3X longer than expected?

Amazing how time keeps marching forward in your job search like the sand through an hour glass. Every day, week, and month not spent conducting an effective job search drains your wallet and puts an unbearable level of pressure on your job hunting activities.

Miriam Salpeter, who writes a blog at Keppie Careers,  recently posted an article titled “What’s the Cost of Being Unemployed?”  Great article.  Miriam gave a few good examples:

If you expect a $20,000 salary, your weekly salary is $384.61 and an 18 week job hunt will cost you $6,992.98.

If you are looking for a job with a $50,000 salary, your weekly salary is $961.54 and an 18 week job hunt costs you $17,307.69.

If you are hoping for a $100,000 salary, your weekly salary is $1,923.08 and an 18 week job hunt costs you $34,615.38.

Many readers of our blog are in the $150K-$200K plus range. What’s the cost of your job search moving from a traditional 6 months out to 12-18 months?

Here’s the comment I wrote to Miriam’s Blog posting:

Excellent point about the cost of an extended job search. Most of the candidates I work with are significantly north of $150,000-$200,000 in annual income. Imagine the cost of a search that has gone from a traditional 6 months and is now approaching 12-18 months.

Here’s the irony: We provide many good products and services, like you and other gurus/experts in this field. Yet, my experience is that the vast majority of managerial and executive candidates would rather flounder around for 12-18 months at the cost of $150K-$200K instead of investing $29, $59, $99 in a proven validated product/service that will take months off their job search.

I realize folks who are out of work don’t want to spend money unnecessarily. However, like most things in life you’ve got to make a few key investments and spend a little money to make money. Most candidates we encounter have no clue what to do in an effective job search – and they’re trying the same strategies which may have worked 8 – 10 -15 years ago. Whether it’s our products/services, yours, another well-known expert – my recommendation would be for job seekers to become masters of the job search process. To do that requires purchasing audio, video, kits, courses, books, and workbooks. On top of all that great content is an extraordinary amount of FREE resources which few people take advantage of.

I just wrote a recent article on my blog about mastering the job search. My partner Brad and I will be discussing this idea in our weekly radio show on Monday.

Barry

P.S.: On Monday in our Radio Show we will release our long awaited Self-Assessment Scorecard to determine if your Job Search Plan is adequate to complete a quick and effective job search.

Get Ready for the launch of our FREE Tool for a Self-Assessment of your Job Search Plan

On Monday at 11 AM PDT in our Weekly Internet Radio Talk Show on LATalkRadio.com, Brad and I will discuss, launch, and describe in detail one of the most powerful tools you’ll probably ever use in your job search planning and preparation.

This Self-Assessment we’ve developed will become one of the most important tools in your entire job search toolkit. You’ll take it at frequent intervals and refer to it constantly in tweaking your job search for exceptional results

I know those are very bold statements. However, Brad and I are very excited about this tool. We’ve been working on it for quite some time. We’ve “field-tested” it with hundreds of candidates – revising, adjusting, and modifying it based on their feedback. We’ve validated over a 3-6 month period that the Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Tool can dramatically reduce the time it takes to find a new job. In some cases, candidates have reduced their job search by 50% or more from the average timeframe most candidates will take at their level.

The Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Tool follows the structure of our Career Success Methodology, described in great detail in our recent book titled “This is NOT the Position I Accepted” and expanded upon in our Job Search Home Study Course.

If you follow our Career Success Methodology — which is the ONLY systematic approach to conducting a job search that has been deeply researched, field-tested with live candidates, and validated for success – you’ll significantly reduce the time it takes to complete your job search.

There are lots of experts out there – resume writers, interview coaches, personal branding experts, job board consultants – however, none of them bring an integrated approach and systematic methodology to the process of conducting a job search.

The Career Success Methodology starts with Day One of your Job Search and takes you through every step of the process to the end-point of negotiating your expectations, resources, compensation, benefits, and long-term opportunity.

If you take this Job Search Plan Self-Assessment, even if you don’t invest or agree with our Career Success Methodology, you’ll still be able to identify the key areas in your job search which still require significant work and improvement.

After just a few minutes, the scoring will reveal why your job search is taking too long, why your job search is stalled, or why your job search is NOT generating the level of job leads, referrals, interviews, and offers you wish you could obtain. Most of these problems stem from making the same job search mistakes over and over again.

Join us Monday on LATalkRadio.com at 11 AM PDT to discuss, comment, and share your insights from the Job Search Plan Assessment Tool. We’ll provide the link to the tool in our LINKEDIN Discussion Group by Monday morning at 8 AM PDT so you’ll have an opportunity to score yourself prior to joining us for the radio show.

In the Radio Show, Brad and I will talk about how the Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Tool will help you overcome the most common Top Ten Job Search Mistakes. We’ll walk you through each of the main scoring categories and talk about steps to improve your job search and reduce the time it takes to find a great opportunity.

Barry

P.S. Join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group for one of the fastest growing and vibrant job search discussion groups on the Internet

Job Search Mistake #1: Not Having a Systematic Approach to Conducting a Job Search

Is your job search systematic or more dependent on luck?

Many candidates approach a job search “willy-nilly”. The approach goes something like this “I’ll tell my friends I’m looking for a job, I’ll call the 3 recruiters I know and tell them to start circulating my resumes, I’ll dust off my old resume and update it for my last job, I’ll sit down tonight and look a few job boards to see what jobs are being advertised.”

After 25 years of executive search, over 1000 search assignments, and beyond 100,000 candidate interviews, I can guarantee that “willy-nilly” approach to your job search is a recipe for disaster. Unless luck intervenes, you’ll probably fall victim to one of two unfortunate job search failure scenarios:

Job Search Failure Scenario #1: You’ll take 2X-3X longer to conduct a job search than is necessary. If the average time to conduct a job search for your level of position is 4 months – it will probably take 8-12 months. Imagine the savings if you could knock a few months off your job search.

Job Search Failure Scenario #2: You’ll take a job that is not a good fit out of desperation and lack of clear thinking and planning about what is the right role for you. This job search scenario will force you into what we term is the “Circle of Transition”. You can read more about the Circle of Transition in our blog post on this subject and download a visual representation of this depressing cycle many individuals fall into during their career and from which they cannot escape.

A systematic plan requires the ability to conduct effective job search preparation, develop a compelling resume through a personal success profile, prepare to win every phone interview and face-to-face interview, master networking, and create a powerful personal brand that makes you visible to recruiters, human resources, and hiring managers.

We’ve developed a FREE Job Search Planning Self-Assessment Tool to determine if your job search is systematic or if it’s “willy-nilly”. This tool can help you restart a stalled job search, get your job search off to a rapid start, and most importantly, help you to reduce by half the time it normally takes to complete an effective job hunt for an ideal opportunity.

This FREE Job Search Planning Assessment takes our 25 year mountain of research across every dimension of job hunting and walks you through the steps of our Career Success Methodology –  a deeply researched and validated systematic job search system.

The FREE Assessment will be made available within the next 24-48 hours only to those who are members of our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group. This is an exclusive offer to the 2,000 plus members of our Discussion Group. You can join the group by clicking here.

By the way – as an added bonus, we have also developed a FREE Assessment to determine if your LinkedIn Profile is effective in making you visible to recruiters, human resources, and hiring managers. This FREE LinkedIn Profile Assessment is also available through membership in our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group. You’ll see it immediately upon joining as one of the featured discussions.

Our Job Search Home Study Course takes the Career Success Methodology and presents it through a comprehensive workbook, templates, and audio programs. After completing the Job Search Home Study Course, you should be able to dramatically reduce the time it will take to find a great opportunity. If you’re not happy with the course, use our guarantee to return it at no obligation.

Barry

IMPACT Hiring Solutions Weekly Job Search Blog Round-up: August 22, 2009

In case you missed some of the individual blog postings this week, here’s a round-up of some of the more popular posts Brad and I wrote for the Job Search Blog:

It’s Okay to Swear in the Interview: Learn the secrets of a structured response to every interview question. Follow this format in responding to interview questions and hiring managers will move away from box checking to engaging with you in a conversation and dialogue about the job.

Your LinkedIn Profile as a Multi-media Expansion of Your Resume: LinkedIn provides a wealth of tools for job seekers for personal branding, networking, self-promotion. Are you using all these tools to become visible to recruiters, human resources, and hiring managers?

Keyword Searches in Resumes: You might think you’re perfect for a job – but hiring managers would disagree after reviewing your resume. By not focusing on the proper key words – are missing out on job opportunities?

Honesty + Guts Works in the Interview: Can you look a hiring manager in the eye and challenge them in the interview if you disagree with their expectations or perspective. Are you praying things might be different when you join the company. The interview is the time for honest and direct dialogue without being confrontational.

Brad and I wish you much success in your job search in the coming week.

Barry

Are You Difficult to Connect with on LinkedIn in Your Job Search?

Many candidates are obsessive about protecting the confidentiality of their contact information on LinkedIn when they are in a job search, even when they indicate on their LinkedIn Profile that they are open to career opportunities.

Why?

This doesn’t make any sense!

Here’s the sad part: Most recruiters, human resource professionals, and hiring managers will skip right by you on LinkedIn searches for candidates when recruiting if you make it too difficult to connect with you. When I do a search on LinkedIn for candidates in our Executive Search Practice, if you make it too hard to connect I’ll move on to the next candidate – I might sound a little harsh – regardless of how much you might be a perfect match – I just don’t have the time to play games or dig too deeply – particularly when there is lots of other great talent available.– I’ll define “too hard to connect” as the following:

• You have no phone number on your LinkedIn Profile
• You have no direct email on your LinkedIn Profile
• You have not checked the settings for “open to career opportunities”
• You have not checked the settings for “open networker”
• Your group settings prevent me from sending you a direct message if we are in the same group

You could be missing out on great opportunities because of inappropriate fears of confidentiality or security. What’s the risk that someone has your cell number or email address when you’re looking for a job. At a minimum, what’s the risk in adding to your account the “open networker” designation so that recruiters and others do not have to use up their precious allotment of inmails?

I’ve had my phone number and email address on my LinkedIn Profile for years. I can count on one hand the number of solicitor calls and inappropriate emails from that contact information. It’s irrational to think you’ll be bombarded with solicitors and crank calls/emails. Take a risk and make yourself available – you’ll be amazed at the increase in the number of calls and emails you get when recruiters, human resource professionals, and hiring managers reach out to you when they are recruiting to fill an open job.

Take a look at my profile on LinkedIn as an example. I would also recommend joining our Discussion Group on LinkedIn and participating in the discussion regarding LinkedIn Profiles for your Job Search.

Barry

How to Mistreat Your Recruiter

Recruiters also need a little love

Why do many executives and managers mistreat recruiters when they are employed – yet beg recruiters to return their calls and present them on search assignments when they are unemployed or into a major job search for new position?

Is there a touch of irony to this scenario?

Let’s discuss precisely what it means to mistreat your recruiter:

1. When the recruiter calls you to discuss an job opportunity, you don’t return the call, are rude, or slam down the phone impatiently stating you don’t have time to talk.

2. When the recruiter asks you for a referral on an existing search, you indicate that no one comes to mind or you cannot think of one person out of the hundreds you’ve interacted with over the past few years. There is no risk in making a referral – is that not what networking is all about?

3. When the recruiter asks for an introduction to one of your peers or other executives who are looking to employ a recruiter to fill a position, you refuse to make the introduction.

4. When the recruiter who placed you or has worked with you before, calls to check in, buy you lunch, develop a relationship to get to know you better, you drop the phone like it’s a hot potato – why would you want to be caught meeting with a recruiter – wouldn’t that give your peers back at the office something juicy to gossip about?

Brad and I have been conducting executive search for over 25 years. Learn more about one of the most successful Retained Executive Search Practices in this country. We’re highly sought-after speakers, facilitators, and keynoters on the subjects of recruiting, hiring, and job search.

The first people we think of on a new search is “who do I have a relationship with that is an outstanding candidate?”. Our second step is then to start networking through our relationships for candidates we don’t know intimately right now.

What defines a “relationship” with a recruiter. It’s an individual who goes “above and beyond” their peer group in building a long-term mutually beneficial relationship with a a recruiter – one who doesn’t mistreat their recruiter.

Are you guilty of mistreating your recruiter?

Remember – recruiters also need a little love (or at least a pat on the back).

When was the last time you hugged your recruiter?

Barry

P.S: Don’t forget to check out the extensive archives on our site of FREE tools, templates, audio, and examples Brad and I have posted for the candidates who do show us a little love now and then.

Don’t forget to join Brad and I in our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group by clicking here for the invitation.

We would like to hear how you’ve either mistreated your recruiter or hugged them by going beyond your peer group to create a relationship.

What Fish are In Your Networking Pond?

Let’s continue along my last post about fishing and networking. As you’ll recall, we were extending the wonderful post about fishing as a metaphor for job search networking that Anna Farmery from Buzz Networker had brought to our attention a few days ago.

One of the points that Anna raised was what kind of network are you looking for – or to continue our fishing metaphor – what type of fish should be in your network?

I’ll be so bold as to suggest that most of the fish in a job seeker’s network STINK!

It’s not that most networking contacts are bad people – but rather the network that a typical job seeker has assembled to help generate job leads and referrals is nothing short of useless in most cases. Brad and I take you through this introspective look at your network in our networking chapter in our book “This is NOT the Position I Accepted.”

One of the services that IMPACT Hiring Solutions provides is Job Search Networking Strategy and Coaching. Every day, Brad and I are immersed in reviewing the networks and networking activities of job seekers within our job search network (those that have participated in our tele-seminars and webinars, those who have downloaded our FREE Internet Radio Shows on conducting a Job Hunt, and those who participate in our LinkedIn Discussion Group for conducting an effective Job Search.

Although I have not yet quantified the data (do you sense another survey/research project coming on?), I’d surmise that less than 5% of the networks most candidates are using – are useless and yield very little in terms of job leads and referrals.

Why?

It’s because you have the wrong fish in your network. As a candidate involved in a job hunt, you need four classes of fish to have an effective network that can generate an abundance of job leads and referrals.

The four classes of fish (network contacts) are:

1. Hiring Managers who might potentially hire you for a position
2. Contacts who would know the hiring manager (peers competing for a similar position and peers of the hiring manager)
3. Recruiters who fill the positions you want
4. Personal Service Providers (lawyers, benefit consultants, CPAs, construction company project managers, landscape service businesses, leasing agents, etc.) The key to having these folks in your network is the ones who are “trusted advisors to their clients” (more about becoming a trusted advisor in a future post).

If you can assemble a network of individuals balanced among the 4 classes of fish we’ve defined, you’ll begin within 3-6 months to generate more job leads and referrals than you can handle. It goes without saying that once you’ve pulled all your fish together, you’ve still got to do all the little things that comprise best practices in networking activities.

Pulling together the “right” job search network is only the first step in reducing the time it takes to conduct a job hunt in half. This is the core theme of our entire Job Search approach: The Career Success Methodology – Cutting your job hunting transition time in half!

Thousands of job seekers have shared their success stories with us that by following the Career Success Methodology they’ve reduced the time it takes to find a job by 50% or more compared to their peers conducting a similar job search.

Having the right contacts in your network who can deliver an abundance of job leads and referrals is only one important element of the disciplined job search approach found in the Career Success Methodology.

Barry

How Recruiters Find People

In my 29 years of recruiting, I have talked with and trained over 200 recruiters around the country in advanced recruiting techniques. Given this, I’ve learned two things 1) the recruiting industry is not homogeneous and 2) we all may be different, but there is one constant; how we find people. There really isn’t anything all that unique about how recruiters go about locating potential candidates. We all use our networks and other people’s networks. This includes both on-line networks such as Linkedin (Click here to join our Linkedin Job Search Group) and off-line such as networking groups in our community.

So why is this important to candidates? Because the most often asked question of recruiters is, “How do I get in touch with retained recruiters?” The answer is a simple one; “You don’t need to.” You don’t really want to get in touch with every recruiter, that is impossible. You only want to get in touch with those recruiters that have a search that meets your background. All the other recruiters don’t matter! So the real question should be; “ How do I get recruiters looking for me, to find me?” Now that is an easy thing to do, but like most things it isn’t simple.

The answer is one word; NETWORKING. Since recruiters maximize the use of their networks and others, all you have to do is be so well networked that a recruiter can’t help but find you. If you really are well networked, as recruiters tap into their networks, your name will always come up as a referral. The more often recruiters hear, “You should call ____, they sound exactly like what you are looking for” the higher the probability you will get a call.

So, if you want to have recruiters calling you, make sure they can find you.

GET YOURSELF NETWORKED in multiple industries and with multiple functions. Don’t forget that Linkedin is used extensively by most recruiters, so it is critical to have your profile up to date and complete. You can download for free our 8 Point Success Matrix For A Linkedin Profile, just click here.

Is Fishing like Job Search Networking?

Anna Farmery of the Buzz Networker put up a blog post the other day titled “Why Networking is like Fishing” that should serve as an important reminder to those conducting a job search.

Networking for Candidates

The funny thing about this title is that it is the opposing strategy for job seekers of the technique we teach in our “You’re NOT the Person I Hired” workshop for hiring executives and managers. We teach that you must be able to “fish in deep waters” to attract the best talent. Posting onto the various job boards a job description that is masquerading as an ad is rarely an effective strategy for finding great talent.

If the best technique to be found by recruiters and hiring managers is networking and the best technique to find great talent is through networking – the intersection of these two overlapping strategies by candidates and recruiters/hiring managers should result in great matches.

Seems obvious – right?

Why doesn’t it work most of the time?

Job Search Networking – Fact or Fiction

It doesn’t work because most candidates do a terrible job of networking, personal branding, and positioning themselves to be found. Most recruiters/hiring managers do a terrible job networking by fishing in the deepest ends of the pool for great talent.

So what really happens in most hiring situations? The recruiters/hiring managers revert back to pre-historic approaches to finding candidates by running ads and candidates devote the vast majority of their job search to responding to job ads. Is there any wonder why top talent fails to find great opportunities and companies fail over and over to bring top talent to their doorstep?

Brad and I will be releasing over the next week or two a self-assessment for you to determine if you’re networking plan needs a major check-up. Stay tuned for this release. Our surveys and research within our job search network on LinkedIn (which you can join by clicking here) indicate that less than 20% of executive and managerial candidates have an effective networking plan.

Here are a few questions to be thinking about while you await the release of our networking plan self-assessment tool:

1. Do you have a written networking plan?
2. What do you believe are the top 5 best practices in a networking plan of action?
3. Have you ever seen a formal networking plan with action steps, metrics, objectives, and tasks?
4. If you develop plans for projects at work – why wouldn’t you do it for your job search?
5. Can you list the top 20 articles/blog postings/content/books and other audio/video related content on job search networking that you’ve read within the last week and have taken 1-2 ideas from to incorporate into your job search.

Are these tough questions? Most candidates we’ve surveyed wouldn’t be able to answer them. If you can’t, your probably are facing a major need for a networking check-up OR the alternative is a prolonged period of unemployment that could have easily been cut in half.

Resources for Developing a Networking Plan

1. In our Book, “This is NOT the Position I Accepted”, we dedicate an entire chapter to the concept of Job Search Networking.
2. In our Job Search Home Study Kit, we have exercises, templates, and guidelines for developing a powerful networking plan that could help reduce the time it takes for you to find a job by at least 50%.
3. Brad and I have talked about networking numerous times – both about job search networking on-line and off-line – in our weekly Internet Radio Talk Show on LATalkRadio. We’ve taken all our Radio Show Broadcasts and put them in an audio archive for you to listen to and download.
4. If you’re in need of a “Networking Check-Up” for your job search, be sure to check out our Networking Strategic Plan Coaching to get an immediate boost over your competition.

Barry