Get a Job, Here's How

1 - Learn how to ask:

Warming up cold emails: from Keith Ferrazzi in Never Eat Alone

• Use an interesting subject line: lead with your connection or your value prop

• Be Brief and Conversational: Write your note, then cut it in half

• Have a clear call to action: Request 15 minutes on the phone and offer suggested dates and times

• Be grammatically perfect

Sample email:

Hi Beth,

I have a favor to ask: I‘m looking to go back to work full-time and saw a Digital Marketing Manager position at BB&T posted on LinkedIn. I know you have successfully juggled work and family for many years and would love to chat about BB&T and see if you can share any information about the position that I've applied for.

I'm always up for grabbing a cup of coffee but if a phone call fits into your schedule better then that would be great too. I've pasted the job posting below. I've also attached my resume so you can get a feel for my background. Thanks for any help you can provide!

My request:

I have an interview tomorrow for a job at Company with Sean and I saw on LinkedIn that you are connected to him. Just wondering if you have any background on him and what he's like?

Thanks for the inside scoop!
Katie

Response:
I went to business school with him and worked with him right after school. He lives two blocks away from us. I’ll call him!

Tip for writing a great email; Write your email and then cut it in half

Use email finder websites like hunter.io to get your message through – this is not stalking!

2 – Master the 15-minute networking call:

1. Greet & Introduce
2. Be thankful
3. Position the meeting as valuable to them
4. Describe your agenda & confirm

Ask thoughtful, open-ended questions starting your questions with phrases like:

1. Tell me about...
2. My research shows...
3. Describe to me...
4. Why...

Ask about

1. New initiatives
2. Business drivers
3. How they got there
4. Career advice

This is not the time to ask for a job! You are building a relationship and gathering information.

Convey your messages and share information

1. What 3 things do you want them to remember about you?
2. Use your research to share information
3. Ask for advice

“Here’s my plan for finding a job in software development. Can you think of anything else I should be doing? Who else should I speak with?”

Wrap it up, take notes and follow up

1. End the meeting on time with a thank you & a reminder
2. After the meeting, immediately jot down notes
3. Follow up

Use your notes to write a personal thank you email

Follow up again after they’ve made an introduction, you’ve read the book they suggested, etc.

3 – Get Active on LinkedIn

Like

Share

Comment

Join Groups

Connect to people you don’t know

Connection request:

Hi, xx,

I’d like to connect so I can continue to follow your success.

Thank you.

Hi, xx,

I’m currently conducting a job search. I’ve always been interested in your company and would like to get connected so I can learn more about what you’re doing.

Thank you.

Now that you know how to adapt your job search to a virtual job search, go do it. I believe in you.

Mir talks about how to work with a resume and LinkedIn profile writer. This is really important because these are your job search tools! Your resume and your LinkedIn profile represent you, they are your face to potential employers. And you can easily get thrown out of the consideration pool for a job if your resume stinks or your LinkedIn profile is lame. Also, Mir pointed out to me earlier that your resume may not even be seen by a human being if it's not optimized to get past applicant tracking system filters.

Working with a resume writer is a great way to ensure that your resume reflects current thinking and trends in hiring. A good resume writer will be a wordsmith, great with language, able to suggest ideas, formatting, action verbs that you might not have thought of.

If you’re going to invest in a professional to help you with these tools, you want to make the most of your investment by working productively with them. And Mir is going to tell us exactly how to do that.

Career transitions can be so incredibly stressful because they often coincide with other life transitions--job loss, a layoff, a relocation, a divorce, your last child heading off to kindergarten, and so on.

Sometimes your confidence isn’t as strong as it could be, and I’ve seen that working with my team to write, revise, and finalize that resume leaves people feeling more prepared to speak about their skills and experiences at the interview, more energized about their prospects, and more confident in general.

I’m a firm believer that every job we ever have leaves us with lessons learned and transferable skills. In college, I waited tables at an Italian restaurant and had one of my best managers ever teach me about the importance of ensuring positive customer experience.

99% of the time, the job seekers who hire my team trust the process and our guidance, and understand how important their input is. In order to create a document that is accurate, persuasive, tailored for the intended audience, and is something that the client is not only excited about, but the client also has to rely on us and we have to rely on the client. It really must be collaborative.

Every now and then, though, we have clients who fall into either one of two camps, and they are on the two extremes of the same spectrum.

Sometimes we have a client who does not want to be involved at all in the process of writing, revising, and finalizing their documents. Of course, we need to pick your brain, ask you questions, incorporate your answers, and make sure that everything we’ve included in your resume is 100% accurate--from your various jobs’ start and end dates all the way down to how many direct reports you have, what size budgets you manage, and what kinds of outcomes you’ve achieved.

We can’t write a resume in a vacuum, so I would say one pitfall to look out for when deciding to hire a writer is thinking that this is something you can simply outsource without having to provide any input along the way.

On the other end of the spectrum, we sometimes have a client that doesn’t trust the process and, therefore, doesn’t benefit from all that we can bring to their project. In these instances, the “quote-unquote” “finished resume” often looks a lot like the resume that the client had to start with. That’s because any ideas or suggestions we offered weren’t embraced--or were only adopted in part. In my mind, in these instances, I always wonder, “why did you even hire a writer if you just wanted to write your resume yourself?” So that’s another pitfall to look out for.

What could potentially happen if a job-seeker doesn’t do this the right way?

Well, you’re just not getting the full benefit of the service you’re paying for. Personally, if I’m going to spend money on something, I want to know that I’m getting a great value for the money I’ve spent.

If you can, as a client, come to the table with a truly collaborative spirit, the finished resume and LinkedIn profile will be stronger. After all, you are the subject matter expert in your career, in your industry, in the tools you use, and regarding your career goals. You have to bring that background to the project.

The expertise that my team and I bring to the project is in knowing the current trends in resume design, understanding how applicant tracking systems work, knowing what hiring managers look for in a resume, experience writing resumes for other professionals in your field, and strong writing, editing, and proofreading skills.

How-To:

Let’s dig in. What would you say is the first step to working...

How to get started on your job search - bias toward action

Making the most of a networking event with Caitlin Hooks - the tips hold true even for virtual events -

Caitlin told us to

• Step 1: Research thoroughly

• Step 2: Engage pointedly

• Step 3: Follow up strategically

Basically - figure out who’s going to be there and who you want to meet, show up early, be prepared, do some research so you know what you want to talk about with people, and then afterward follow up with people you met to solidify the connection and keep the relationship going. BTW, much of this advice still applies to virtual events. That was episode 2.

Episode 3 was all about Joining a job search group and my guest was my friend Ellen Dalbo. Did you know that people who took part in “job search work teams” got employed 20% faster than those using traditional methods? This is according to the book “Team Up!” by Orville Pierson. Churches run groups, there are MeetUps for every kind of interest and job field and if you’re local to the Raleigh area, join Back to Business. Back to Business – the growth of a community is a big goal of Back to Business, and we have been able to connect women returning to work after a career break with each other, and with employers. Joining a job search group is a point reinforced by Dr. Dawn Graham in episode 33 who said that a job search is a social event and we should talk about what we’re looking for so others can help us. I love it when it all comes together like that!

And speaking of asking for help with your job search, this is a theme that Steve Dalton, author of The 2 Hour Job Search and I spent some time discussing. I love Steve’s take on why we have to get comfortable asking other people for help. The 2 Hour

I asked Steve if The 2 Hour Job Search process still holds even in our covid-affected environment of 2020.

Preparing for an interview with Al Dea was episode #4. Al says that before you walk into an interview, you should Craft Your Story. You should take the insights you get from your research about what this company is looking for in candidates, and come up with the narrative that you want to tell about why you are the best person for the job. He even says to think of yourself as a product on amazon.com - and be ready to sell yourself as a solution that the company needs.

Jeremy Schifeling from Break into Tech describes the different tech roles - I love how he makes this so easy to digest and understand. Take a listen, this is masterful as he takes us through everything from business operations to Corporate development to Product management!

Sometimes you need professional help to get your most important job-seeking assets in great shape. That’s when you’d call my friend Mir Garvy from Job Market Solutions - she’s an expert resume writer and LinkedIn profile writer. I called on Mir to take us through the process of working with a professional LinkedIn/resume writer in episode 7. Here’s Mir talking about how she helps clients develop a resume that will get past that Applicant Tracking System.

Mir came back for an encore in episode 10 to provide us with some great Linkedin tips. Here are my 2 favorite tips for LinkedIn: (1) Have a compelling opening statement for your About section and be sure it’s keyword optimized. And (2) Tell the story behind your resume in your Linkedin profile and share a heartfelt reason why you do what you do.

Glassdoor is a good source for company ratings and in E8 I talked to my niece Ellen Dunn who was an Account Executive there about how to make the most of Glassdoor in your job search. Ellen’s best tips: Use Glassdoor to prep for interviews because people share on that site the interview questions they were asked. Also, use Glassdoor to make sure you know your worth when you are negotiating an offer. If you’re going to convince someone to give you more money, you’ll need good data to back up your claim, and you can get that on Glassdoor.

Now, in addition to negotiating, one thing you simply must be able to do as a job-seeker is talk about your strengths in a confident manner. So I spent some time with Damien Zikakis, a career coach based in Michigan, to talk about the StrengthsFinder assessment. Damien shared in episode 9 that we can make greater strides in our self-development when we focus our resources on developing our stronger talents into strengths as compared to focusing on fixing weaknesses or trying to develop lesser talents. If you’re interviewing for a job, Damien says that your ability to describe your Strengths and how you capitalize on them, both individually and as part of a team, will set you apart from other candidates. And that just might be the edge you need in an interview. So take the CliftonStrengths assessment and then lean into your strengths.

Companies have been putting more effort into...

My guest is Karen Weeks, SVP of People at Ordergroove in New York City. Karen is a career switcher herself, having started in theatre and now working in HR, coaching, and teaching at Baruch College in New York. She’s also got her own podcast called “Getting Off the Hamster Wheel.”

Together, Karen and I tackle the challenge of making a career pivot. She’s got tons of great tips, including these 3 steps you can take to make a new start in a different career:

1. Figure out why you feel stuck and where you want to go
2. Determine what skills you already have that you can apply to this new field
3. Start talking about it! Do informational interviews, join organizations, read up, share articles and brand yourself as someone knowledgeable in the field.

Let’s face it, changing careers can be tricky! Karen also offers advice for how you can actually show on your resume that you’re a person with a growth mindset who takes the initiative to learn new skills. If you’re going to start in a new field, you’ll definitely need to impress a hiring manager with your willingness to learn.

Find Karen Weeks on LinkedIn or at Weeks247.com

Listen to her podcast “Getting Off the Hamster Wheel” here

Farnoosh Brock went from electrical engineer and rising leader at a fortune 100 tech company to being a coach. Speaker, author and sales trainer in 2011 when she started her company, Prolific Living, her work around crucial conversations and trusted relationships inside the serving mindset framework has helped many businesses and individuals to raise their income, influence, and impact.

In addition to her latest book, The Serving Mindset. Stop Selling and Grow Your Business, Farnoosh is the creator of the Crack the Code to Get Promoted corporate leadership and advancement course, as well as the author of three health books and a wellness program. She is also an avid yoga practitioner, an amateur golfer, and a world traveler.

Farnoosh and Katie discuss that the first step to determining where to enter the workforce is to ask "Why you want to reenter the workforce."

Getting really clear on that helps you to get to know yourself, understand what's important to you at this stage and what is going to energize and invigorate you at your next role.

Sometimes people know what they DON'T want to do, but they don't know what they do want to do. To find the answer to this question, start by doing an assessment of your skills and abilities. Then ask if you are passionate about it. If you are both skilled and passionate that is an area to focus on finding a role. That's the intersection of your skills and passions. That is your zone of genius.

The statistics used to be that people would have seven different jobs over the course of their career, but now the numbers say that people will have seven different careers over the course of their working years.

As your deciding what type of work to go back to, it can be helpful to ask about each of your skills: "Is this energizing me?" That's a great question to really help guide you toward doing work that you're happy doing.