Are you getting enough new and strange in your professional and personal life?  Talk to strangers!  Do something new that others, or even you, may view as strange compared to your normal behavior. Time to shake it up!

If your life is stagnant or if your job search is stalled, you might be suffering from a lack of ‘new’ in your life.  And I think most people view new as strange.  Clearly use your judgment and put safety first! But by inviting strange people and new activities into your life, it can help you see things from a different, invigorated perspective. I have been inspired for this post from two sources: (more…)

Effective executive recruiter relationships can play an instrumental part in career advances for the rising professional and the established executive. Whether you’ve worked with executive recruiters before or this is your first time, there is a lot to know about how to build effective working relationships with recruiters. To have an effective relationship with an executive recruiter, it is important to understand the business’s business model and role you play as a potential candidate represented by an executive recruiter. Job seekers that fail to recognize ‘how it works’ with an executive recruiter often find themselves frustrated and unrepresented. Keep in mind these eight points when working with an executive recruiter:
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Have your list of job search target companies and now need to find the right contacts to approach to get results from your job search? LinkedIn hired me to write three articles for their job seekers audience to offer guidance on how to build a target company list for a job search and then… (more…)

Unsure how to build a target list of companies for your job search to land interviews where you want to work? LinkedIn hired me to write this article for their job seekers audience to offer guidance on how to build a target company list for a job search and then… (more…)

Developing Your Executive Job Search Checklist

Whether on your own, through an executive job search club or by hiring a professional executive resume writer and job search consultant, today’s executive job seeker must be prepared to capitalize on the wealth of opportunities before them in today’s competitive employment marketplace. There is opportunity, but you must be prepared to edge out your competition by presenting yourself in the best way possible. There are no second chances.

To ensure you develop the tools needed for your job search, below is a list, by no means exhaustive, that has been compiled to get you started to assemble the tools and resources you will need to conduct a successful job search. (more…)

With all the job search activities a job seeker has to do in this employment marketplace to conduct a successful job search, it can easily become overwhelming.

Submitting resumes to job postings, going to networking events, reaching out to your contacts and introducing yourself to new people at target companies—and we have not even included social media interactions, interview preparation and many other actions. It’s enough to make your head spin, if you let it.

Through my years of recruiting and job search consulting, I have boiled all of the activity down to one real job search activity metric that needs to be tracked. Tracking this metric each week provide a litmus test for you to determine if all of your social media interactions, in-person venues, online research time and phone activity is purposefully focused or just plain busy work. You ask, “What is this one metric, Lisa?” (more…)

This blog post initially ran as a Guest Blog Post by @LisaRangel on Tim’s Strategy. 

Job Search Burnout

Despite it being a new year, many job seekers have been looking for a job already…in some cases, conducting that job search for a while and are burned out.

While some job seekers have new inspiration to start a search, I know some of you may be tired and burned out on your search and need a renewed source of perspective. Well, you have come to the right place.

When you are burnt out on your job search, you may need a mental break. Rest to rejuvenate is crucial, but what I think can be equally as effective is to give a good, hard look at the job search activities that you have been doing. Are you setting yourself up for disappointment and job search burnout? Ask yourself these questions: (more…)

Clearly after this election, there were some happy and not-so-happy people stemming from these election results. If your candidate won, you may be thinking, “Things will pick up now…I can feel it in my bones that I will find the job I want soon.” If your candidate was not elected, you have a tendency to ponder, “We are now on the wrong track. I am afraid I will never find the job I want.”  Here is the good news and the bad news…both of these people are right….and very wrong.

After speaking with job seekers, recruiters, business leaders and human resources managers this past week, the bottom line is this: if you think you will or will not find a job, you are right. A variation of the infamous Henry Ford quote, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you‘re right.” Finding a job is more about the actions you take each and every day and less about who is residing in the White House. While those who are happy about who is in office may benefit in the short term because of a positive attitude, the reality is these people will only find a job if they take proactive action to network and contact people to advance their job search. Any success they see will because of actions they take, not because their guy won. So then the good news for those whose guy didn’t win is positive job search results have nothing to do with who is in office, as well.

Regardless of your political persuasion, here are some tactics you can use TODAY to help jump start your job search and generate the results you seek: (more…)

Writing a great cover letter that is specific to each job search application is a must in today’s career marketplace. Using a one-size-fits-all, general cover letter for all your applications and communications is not an effective means to uniquely presenting yourself in a job search. The following six cover letter tips will help you write a concise, impactful cover letter that will improve your chances of getting noticed and receiving that call for the coveted interview: (more…)

Job seek­ers can no longer ignore their online pres­ence, according to the 2012 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey. Job seekers who are not present online, do so at their own peril. Those who are not on LinkedIn are vir­tu­ally invis­i­ble to employ­ers. Hiring managers and third party recruiters are enamored with the easy access to talent afford to them by social net­works. Social net­work­ing is simply pre­ferred by recruiters and employ­ers as a tool to acquire talent. If you don’t believe these state­ments just look at results of the newly released 2012 Job­vite Social Recruit­ing Sur­vey. 

• 92% of com­pa­nies will recruit in social net­works this year. (Up from 89% in 2011)
• 43% of recruiters who use social recruit­ing saw an increase in can­di­date qual­ity this year.
• 73% of com­pa­nies have suc­cess­fully hired a can­di­date through social media.

In addi­tion, LinkedIn has become nearly uni­ver­sal with 93% of com­pa­nies using the site for recruiting and… (more…)