If you want to succeed in your career change, your job search, or anything else, it’s important to understand that attitude is everything. Your mindset toward yourself, your circumstances, and toward the people around you will largely contribute to your success or your failure.
How successful people think…
Inside the mind of every successful person is a very special conversation. Successful career changers, job seekers, interviewees…all have these winning thoughts…
“I do NOT give up!”
“I will do better each time!”
“I will make myself do what I must do to get what I want!”
“What can I do now to make sure I succeed?”
“What do I need to do first?”
“What do I need to do next?”
“How can I motivate myself?”
“Who can help me?”
“What organizations, people, and resources are available to help me?”
Indeed the mind of a successful people person is busy. Its busy finding the way, busy focusing on how it can be done, busy focusing on doing what must be done to win the prize!
That’s exactly why successful job seekers find jobs and why successful career changers actually make it to a better career!
How most people think…
Unfortunately it’s estimated that most people only focus on why something can’t be done. Their thoughts are more like this…
“The economy is too bad!”
“No one is hiring!”
“I’ll never get a job!”
“I am too old!”
“It’s probably too late for me now!”
“Why does everything bad happen to me?”
Indeed, the internal conversation of a successful person leads them to success. And as you can imagine, the habitual thoughts of unsuccessful people continually drag them toward yet another failure!
The coolest thing I ever learned about success is that I get to choose my own thoughts. I choose whether to respond favorably or to react negatively. I can choose to succeed by using my powerful mind to help me find the way. You can to!
Who do companies hire when times are tough (or anytime really)? People who add value of course. Do you know what value you bring to a company?
If you want to improve your current career, change careers, or if you’re just getting started in the world of work, you want to leverage your strengths.
When you focus on finding ways to apply your unique value, you’ll find that you automatically enjoy much greater career success.
Try the following steps to uncover and maximize your exceptional strengths.
1. Take several career tests and identify the types of careers you are most interested in, ones that you have an aptitude for.
2. Take several personality tests and identify the types job positions
(within your optimum career fields) you are a great match for (sales, management, engineering, training, administrative, technical, manual laborer…).
3. Ask others who know you well what they think you’d be good at.
4. Create a list of all your strengths, interests, talents, and natural
abilities.
5. Pull together your results from all the above and examine them closely. Get a real good feel for where you can be successful, a good feel for your value.
6. Research careers you are interested in and the various job positions available in those careers.
7. Select your top three career choices. These should include careers within an industry you can get excited about.
8. Figure out what job training, experience, or other education you will need to move you toward the career you desire.
9. Create a plan that will give you step-by-step directions for getting
Write down every step you need to take to attain your ideal career.
Know what you want, create a plan to get it, then follow your plan to take you from where you are now to the career you truly desire.
Start right now to do what you need to do to get where you want to be!
Companies are hiring new people all the time. Employees retire, leave for other jobs, or leave for other reasons. All companies experience turnover in good economic times and bad. So regardless of the economy, companies still have to hire.
If a company with 2000 employees has an annual employee turnover rate of 15%, they’re going to need to hire about 300 people. Even if they are eliminating some positions, they’re still going to need to hire at least 150 of those in many cases.
The fact is there are jobs out there, you just need to know how to find these hidden jobs.
Here are a few tips to help you find hidden jobs in today’s tough job market.
1. Make a list of 15 to 25 companies you would love to go to work for. Of course they should be companies that have departments you could potentially work for. An accounting department, warehouse, IT department, secretarial or administrative department, groundskeepers…any department you have a background in and could add value to.
2. Contact each company and ask for the name of the person in charge of the department you are interested in. Say something like, I need to mail a document to the head of your accounting, IT department, administrative department (whatever department you’re trying to get a job in)… Call all 25 companies and see how many heads of departments you can get the names of. Write down their names, and get the correct spelling. Also get the correct mailing address for these individuals.
SPECIAL NOTE: Try calling early in the morning around 10:05 a.m., during lunch hour (to get a different person), around 2:15 in the afternoon, or after 4:30pm. For any companies that don’t provide contact information for the department you’re after, just try calling them again over the lunch hour, or earlier or later in the day (trying to get someone different to answer the phone of course).
3. Once you have the contact name for the head of the department you’re after, send them an excellent cover letter and resume describing the value you can bring to their department and their company.
4. Follow up with a phone call three or four days after they should have received your resume. If you don’t have a contact phone number for them, call the company front desk and ask to speak to the person you sent the resume too. You can just tell the front desk that you need to verify with so-and-so that they received your package in the mail.
5. Once you make contact with the head of the department, talk with them about potential opportunities and about the value you can bring to their organization. Don’t bug the heck out of them, just make a good new contact inside the company. Ask them if it’s okay to follow up periodically with them. If they say yes, make sure you follow up with them.
Use this five step process to make new contacts inside the companies you want to work for. Develop positive relationships with these individuals and you may be surprised when they keep you in mind for a new opportunity in their organization.
Whether you’re contemplating a career change or you just need to find a job fast, you’ll want to use as many job search resources as you can find.
One job search resource that can help you find a job is a job board.
The Internet is filled with job boards. I heard somewhere that they’re over 42,000 different job boards on the Internet alone. Job boards don’t share information with each other, so if you’re going to use them as part of your job search, you’ll need to register with as many different job boards as you can find.
So where do you find these job boards? The quickest and easiest way to find job boards related to your industry is of course to use the Google search engine. All you do is enter the search term job board followed by whatever industry you are looking for. For example “job board project management”, or “job board technology”, or “job board facilities” or “job boards retail”… and so on.
You may want to look for job boards first in your own local area. To do this, simply enter the term “job boards” followed by the industry you’re looking for, followed by your city and state. This will help you narrow down local job boards where you can look for open positions.
Job boards are not the only source for finding jobs of course, they’re just another tool in your job search tool box! The more tools you use the faster you’ll find that job!
When you need to find a job it’s important to take advantage of every job search avenue you can think of. In recent years a lot of job search coaches have said it’s a waist of time to apply for news paper job ads, but using the newspaper to find a job can still be useful.
In fact, if you use careerbuilder.com it’s tied to over 130 newspapers nationally. Also many major newspapers have their own classified ad sections dedicated to job openings. The newspaper job ads are still a valid avenue for finding a job.
Here are a few tips to help you find a job through careerbuilder.com and other newspaper sources…
1. When applying for jobs on careerbuilder.com or online newspapers, remember to go back over the past 60 days of archived job openings, because a number of these are not filled after their first publishing. It may be worth applying for these positions that have been open for a while.
2. When using online classified ads or careerbuilder.com be sure to sign up for any automatic job alert features they may have. This will allow you to be automatically notified of any job matches for your particular background.
3. Review the “Recent Promotions” section of local newspapers and business journals. When you find recently promoted managers or executives in your career field send them a copy of your resume.
4. Read local business journals and look for companies who are expanding and growing. There may be opportunities within these growing companies.
5. When you meet new hires in your own company find out where they used to work, there may be a job opening at their former company.
Add these five strategies to your job search repertoire and keep increasing your odds of getting a job fast.
February 4, 2010 | Posted by CareerSuccessTraining
Suppose you could go inside the mind of a hiring manager. The place where you could actually understand their idea of the ideal candidate. The place where you could find out exactly what they’re looking for. What would it be like if you knew all the little secrets of how their hiring decisions are made? Do you think this information could give you an advantage over other job candidates?
I’ve recently met several people who have been out of work for a long period of time. One person for over nine months and the other person has been unemployed for over a year and a half. What I found interesting is that both of these individuals seem to have good marketable skills, and even pleasant personalities. But when I began to dig into how they approach their job searches, I could understand why they were having so much trouble finding a job.
It made me think of several times in my life when I had to find a job. Times when the economy wasn’t in very good shape, and there was a lot of competition for jobs. Oddly enough, during those times I lacked formal education and training, I even lacked experience. And yet I never had to go much beyond 30 days to find a job. And not just find a job, find a better job than the last one I had. So how was I able to do that?
I’ve also spent some time thinking about how I hire people. Because today I am a hiring manager. Now the fact is I was in ninth grade dropout till I was 27 years old, and I still don’t have a college degree of any kind, but I now hire and manage people who have master’s degrees! I read a lot of resumes and I know which ones get my attention. I interview a lot of candidates and I know why most people fail, and why the very few succeed in winning a job offer.
In thinking about this whole job search issue, I’ve identified the five basic differentiators between those who succeed easily in finding a new job, and those who don’t. Here they are
# 1. Mindset: There is definitely a huge difference between the mindset of those who win jobs easily, and those who struggle to find a job. Let me ask you a question. Who do you think is more successful in life, an optimist or a pessimist? If you were going in for surgery, would you prefer your surgeon be an optimist or pessimist? And if you were a hiring manager would you rather hire an up beat, well-balanced, positive focused person, or someone who’s down in the dumps and bummed out because they can’t find a job? Having the right mindset makes a big difference when you’re looking for a job. I’ll address this in more detail in the next article I post.
# 2. Job Search Strategy: There seems to be three basic job search strategies I can easily identify. The first one is no strategy, followed closely by the ineffective job search strategy. Judging by the conversations I’ve had with job searchers, I’d have to guess that about 95% of jobseekers fall into one of these first two categories. But when I examine my own experience with finding jobs, and I talk to people who are very successful at landing jobs quickly, I discover that we do many of the same things. And these specific methods of job searching make up the third category which is a super effective job search strategy. An effective job search strategy involves far more than just posting your resume all over the place, or answering a few job posting ads. I will go into this in deeper detail in a future post.
# 3. Resumes and Cover Letters: Employers and hiring managers are bombarded with so many resumes and cover letters that it’s impossible to go through them all. Unfortunately for job seekers, about 95% of these look, feel, and sound very similar. So most of these get thrown out without even a shot. Another 2% try to be creative but come off the goofy, also thrown out. Finally about 3% of resumes get through to a hiring manager. These are written in a specific way that are easy to read, contain all the information a hiring manager loves to hear, and look professional, and unique. These candidates get interviews.
# 4. Interviewing Skills: Here’s where people either kill their chances of getting a job, or where they win a job offer. It’s simply amazing that so few people ever master the art of interviewing. Part of the problem is that a lot of people don’t understand what a hiring manager is really looking for. They assume it has to do with their educational level, their skill level, or their job experience, but these are not the most important things to a hiring manager! I can tell you from my own experience that I hire highly educated, highly skilled, highly qualified individuals, and the last thing I’m concerned about is where their college degree came from, or if they even have one! I want to know a few simple things like… Can they do the job? Will they be good at it? Will they get along with me, our team, our customers? Will they be a pain in the butt to manage or easy to manage? That’s the short list! Most managers care far more about these, and a few other things, than they do about education or experience. Believe me, I’ve hired highly educated people with incredible experience who’ve turned out to be the absolute worst employees’ ever! Candidates who know what to communicate and how to communicate to a hiring manager, will be considered for the job.
# 5. Interpersonal or People Skills: This one is huge! Hiring managers are people. People hire people they like, people they feel comfortable with. The job candidate who has mastered a few basic people skills can win over a hiring manager and increase their odds of getting the job. On the other hand, a highly educated, qualified, skilled up person, who lacks people skills, will always have a tough time winning a job offer.
In upcoming posts I will break these points out in more detail and give you valuable tips that will help you land a job anytime you want or need one!
February 22, 2010 | Posted by CareerSuccessTraining
One thing that will really impress your interviewer is if you ask excellent questions. It shows you’re thinking!
Remember to always ask questions in a respectful way and in a positive way (you don’t want to give the impression that you’re trying to find fault).
Here are some great questions you may want to ask your interviewer after they’re finished asking you questions…
1. What are the most important objectives you’d like to see accomplished in this position over the next 3, 6, and 12 months?
2. What do you feel are the greatest challenges I would face if I accept this position?
3. What are your thoughts on how these problem could best be handled?
4. Why is this position currently open?
5. What type of support does this position received in terms of finances, people, and other resources?
6. What sort of freedom would be allowed in determining my own work objectives, deadlines, and productivity measurements?
7. What type of events and opportunities are there for successful, progressive employees?
8. How will the person in this position be evaluated for performance?
9. What you feel are the greatest keys to being successful in this position?
10. What significant changes do you foresee for this position, and for this company in the near future?
Ask great questions and show your interviewer that you’ll take this job seriously and that you do think things through! Use this simple tactic to ensure you always impress your interviewer.
February 25, 2010 | Posted by CareerSuccessTraining
Here are 5 very simple things you can do to gain instant rapport with anyone, including your next job interviewer!
Instant Rapport
People often tell me how much they enjoy talking to me. They remember conversations we’ve had and it seems I left them with a very good impression.
It’s kind of funny because I consider myself to be a pretty average conversationalist. All I do is try to incorporate a few simple interpersonal skills I know. I learned these simple principles over 20 years ago and they still work perfectly to this day.
Next time you find yourself interacting with another person, do these 5 things and you’ll find that others seem to instantly like you…
1. Give them a genuine heart felt smile and smile occasionally throughout your conversation with them.
2. Remember to use their first name throughout your conversation.
3. Listen to them and be genuinely interested in them and in what they have to say.
4. Talk about topics that are of interest to them.
5. Give sincere compliments to them when you notice something about them that you like.
Be genuine and take interest in others and they will almost always respond in kind!
Try these 5 principles whenever you interact with others and you’ll soon find that you are one popular person. Try them in your next job interview and you’ll find your interview goes pretty darn well!
February 26, 2010 | Posted by CareerSuccessTraining
Imagine what it would be like if you were trying to hire someone for a position in your company. And let’s say you just received 500 resumes for a single open position. How would you begin to select the best candidate out of those 500?
And The Winner Is...
Now of course the real point of this article is to help you understand how you will be evaluated for a job opening. It’s a reverse engineering thing.
Back to our scenario…You’re an employer and you just received 500 resumes for a single position. You have to narrow down the playing field and select the very best candidate for this position. How are you going to do that? Well, here’s what most employers look for to differentiate between candidates. These are the top 5 skills employers really want you to have…
1 Enthusiasm. Any candidate who has a passion for the kind of work they are applying for will always get a gold star. If they have a passion for the work, a passion for the industry you’re in, and a passion for your company, they get three more gold stars. Passionate employees generally make good employees. When you apply for a job, show your enthusiasm.
2 Leadership Ability. Employers love candidates who are motivated to succeed. Employers really love candidates who express their commitment to help the company succeed. Team players don’t even come close to candidates who show a commitment to their own personal success and to the success of the company. Leadership ability gets high marks.
3 Action Orientation. Candidates who express their ability to take action and get things done are always in demand. Anyone who shows signs of accomplishment and has a bent towards getting things done rates high.
4 Effective Communication Skills. The best candidates know how to communicate their value effectively. If a candidate cannot express themselves they’ll have a hard time being selected for a position. That’s why really good candidates practice how they respond to interview questions before they even get to the interview (hint).
5.Culturally Like-Minded. Let’s say you’re hiring a forklift driver for a warehouse position. A candidate shows up in a tuxedo, speaking in an English accent and using very long complicated words. Probably not a good cultural fit. Or, let’s say you’re hiring for a financial investment counselor position, and a candidate shows up with earrings in both ears, one in the nose, and one on the upper lip. The candidate also has a number of noticeable tattoos on the face arms and legs. Again, probably not a good cultural fit. Candidates who research a company’s culture before they show up for an interview, and do their best to match the hiring company’s culture, will always do better. A candidate who truly matches the company’s culture is of course the best fit.
Keep these five simple things in mind and you’ll greatly improve your chances of getting hired!
If you’re facing a job layoff or looking into a potential career change, here are 5 things you can do to help with the transition.
1. Evaluate your passions, interests, and expertise by completing a personality profile and career assessment.
2. Learn as much as you can about different career fields, look for a career change that matches your interests and skills.
3. Find a way to shadow professionals working in any careers you are interested in. Observe them performing their work first hand so you can get a better idea of what’s involved.
4. Identify volunteer opportunities associated with your target career field and sign up. This will give you an opportunity to test out your interest.
5. Investigate educational opportunities that can bridge the gap between your current background and your new career interest. Then plan out and sign up for the classes that will help you get where you want to go!
Follow the simple career change advice outlined in these 5 steps and you’ll find an easier time of making that shift to a more rewarding and satisfying career.
Is there a common trait or skill that sets successful job seekers apart from the unsuccessful ones? When I think about all the successful candidates I’ve interviewed over the years, one trait sticks out. Planning!
Career Planning
It’s really no surprise that a common factor of successful people, successful businesses, successful projects… is that they all have a good plan, maybe even a project plan. On the other hand most failures, failed businesses, and failed projects have no planning or poor planning in common. It’s exactly the same for individuals who want to find a job or who want to change careers.
Almost all successful people have a plan to succeed in their careers and they pursue it. It’s really pretty logical. First you figure out what you want to be have or do, then you create a plan to get it, then you follow your plan till you get it!
Here are several reasons why you absolutely want to develop your own job search or career success plan right away…
1. When you create a plan to succeed in anything and strive to follow that plan, you’re chances of success are far greater (90% or better) than if you wander aimlessly without a plan. Without a good plan to succeed your chances of being successful are almost none!
2. Planning is 100% proven to produce far better results in almost any area of life. Try building a new home without a plan (blueprint). Planning has worked miracles for successful businesses, business projects, personal projects, and for successful individuals around the world. A good plan produces a much greater chance for success, and lack of planning causes a greater chance of failure. The same is true for finding a job or changing careers.
3. Plan to succeed and you will, fail to plan and you’ll find yourself a victim of circumstance more often than not. A good plan will help you find the way around unpleasant circumstances. You’ll experience far greater success in your job search or career (and in life) when you figure out what you want, when you make a plan to get it, and when you follow your plan till you do!
It’s often termed the professional version of a blind date; two people attempting to understand as much about each other as possible in a short period of time. Trying to see if they’re a good fit for each other. Those who are employed may find themselves in this predicament over a business lunch. Job seekers know it as the job interview.
For a job seeker, this is the chance you’ve been waiting for. Your resume has made it to the top of the hiring managers stack, and now you’ve been invited to show an employer why you should be hired. Now what?
Facing this challenge with a job interview strategy will help to cut down on stressing out and position you as a fantastic asset to the hiring manager. Here are 5 simple things you can do to increase your value before you go to any job interview. The job interview starts well ahead of the first face-to-face meeting.
1. Begin Developing An Entrepreneurial Mentality. Consider yourself as a company leader. Get focused on how you can help maximize profits, lessen expenses, enhance customer service. Think about the knowledge and experience you can bring that they’ll salivate over!
2. Study Their Corporate Culture. Uncover from others who work there, news papers, local business journals, their website…precisely what their corporate culture is like before your interview. Have the ability to state how you fit in with their beliefs and plans.
3. Be aware of Their Political Landscape. Learn who the crucial players are in their business. President, CFO, CIO, and VP’s, Directors, and Managers working in the Team you’ll be working for. Find this out from their Employee Relations Team, the internet, or any other sources you can find. Uncover as much as you possibly can about their challenges and objectives from their leaders perspectives.
4. Be Relevant. Everything you think, express, and do in the interview should express that you will provide serious value to them! You comprehend their issues and have views, abilities, and practical experience which could help solve those problems. You understand their goals, so also communicate your ideas, skills, and know-how that can help them achieve their goals, much easier, more rapidly, and with greater certainty.
5. Play To Win. You know the old saying, “You can’t win if you don’t play. The real truth is, you probably won’t win the job offer if you don’t play the interview game to win! Give every interview your best effort.
Each one of these strategies will help make you an excellent interview!
Carry out these 5 straight forward job interview strategies and you’ll consistently conduct fantastic interviews!
March 16, 2010 | Posted by CareerSuccessTraining 
Categories: Career Change | 
Tags: Career Change, Career Change Advice, find a job, job change, job search | 
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