Happy Memorial Day 2010!

Happy Memorial Day!

Enjoy the weekend, spend time with friends and family, or just do something fun for yourself. Your job search will still be there on Tuesday.

Have fun and be safe this Memorial Day weekend!

5 Tips on Slaying the Phone Interview

Job seekers can kill their chances during the phone screen. Often, experienced professionals don’t appreciate what a critical part of the interview process the phone screen is. The phone screen is much more than scheduling an in person interview…it’s the first part of the interview, but it’s usually handled by an HR clerk or internal recruiter.

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How To Write Your Resume For The 4th Audience

Most candidates write a resume directed to the hiring manager, but that ignores other audiences who contribute to corporate hiring decisions. Today's article focuses on the 4th audience - the hiring managers' boss, peers and teams.

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Top 3 Ways To Write A Thank You Note

One of the easiest (yet often unused) ways for a job seeker to stand out is through a post-interview thank you note. Thank you notes are more than being polite, they are an additional opportunity to sell yourself as a great fit for the job.

Here are some ideas of how to supercharge a simple thank you note ...

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Who's Hiring - Top employers week of 5-24-10

Who's Hiring is a weekly survey of companies showing the highest hiring activity for the week of 5/24/10.

The business service, hospitality, retail, telecommunications, and health care are the top industries currently hiring based on a survey of active job advertisements from the nations’ leading job boards.

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Who's Firing - Layoffs week ended 5-21-10

Who's Firing summarizes weekly research of companies announcing and rumoring layoffs for the week ended 5-21-10.

For the past week pharmaceutical, airlines, government, financial services, and health care employers announced the largest layoffs.

( Continued ... )

Interview in a Snap: Best of reCareered

30 Seconds…

That’s the maximum time it takes an interviewer to form a first impression of a job seeker according to a number of experimental Psychologists. Some have found that it’s all over with the handshake in the first few seconds. Keep in mind that not everyone interviews this way….it’s just the vast majority that make decisions based on first impressions.

How can you use this information to make a great first impression that quickly?

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Job Search Time Management

Today's successful job search is a time management exercise. As employment markets have gotten more competitive, with some markets close to 10 unemployed for every advertised job, successful candidates realize they have to approach their search differently. You can increase your success rate by concentrating on successful job search activities, letting go the activities that take a great deal of time with little to show for it.

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Top 50 Web 2.0 Sites For Job Search In 2010

This list describes the top Web 2.0 tools available today specifically for job seekers. While some readers might like Facebook games or location-based Foursquare updates, they really don't have much to do with your job search. All of the websites below offer tools that can help job seekers differentiate themselves, research companies and opportunities, expand their contacts and find their next position.

Web 2.0 changed the nature and tactics of job search - it continues to offer candidates more tools to get themselves found, find opportunities, contacts, hiring managers and company research.

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How Employee Referral Bonus Programs Can Work For You ... Or Against You

Today, most large and mid-sized companies use employee referral bonus programs in their recruiting. It surprises most candidates that these programs can actually hurt their chances to get a company interview. Here are some ways you can improve your odds by changing how you apply to a company using an employee referral bonus program.

Many companies offer referral bonus programs to employees for referring friends and contacts for internal positions. These programs can provide an incentive of anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars to employees referring a candidate who is hired. Most candidates think that being referred by an employee is the "golden ticket" to getting a company interview - this concept is often a mistake.

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Who's Hiring - Top employers week of 5-17-10

Who's Hiring is a weekly survey of companies showing the highest hiring activity for the week of 5/17/10.

The hospitality, telecommunications, retail, business service, defense and health care verticals are the top industries currently hiring based on a survey of active job advertisements from the nations’ leading job boards.

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Who's Firing - Layoffs week ended 5-14-10

Who's Firing summarizes weekly research of companies announcing and rumoring layoffs for the week ended 5-14-10.

For the past week government, energy, pharmaceutical, defense, and health care employers announced the largest layoffs.

( Continued ... )

How To Take Control Of The Interview: Best of reCareered

How can a candidate take control of an interview and direct the conversation? Find out how directing the conversation gives a candidate a better chance at a successful interview.

Far too many candidates give the interviewer full control of the interview process, believing their job is to respond to questions. Others may fear that taking interview control might upset the interviewer, disqualifying a candidate for a job.

Usually, these approaches are both mistakes. Most companies today want to hire people with initiative - taking control of the interview can not only show initiative, but give the candidate a better chance to relate their accomplishments to the company's specific issues.

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Online Portfolios Give Candidates A Leg Up

Online portfolios can be used to differentiate yourself from other candidates, by providing samples of your work product.

I've seen candidates completely turn around interviews just based on their work product - their personal portfolio. Used by creative and graphics professionals for years, portfolios can provide an advantage to job seekers in most functions today.

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3 Ways To Leverage Job Boards And Discover The Hidden Job Market

Job boards are the low hanging fruit of job search, but attract extremely high amounts of competition. While job boards aren't the best way to apply for jobs, they can be invaluable for some little known ways to discover the hidden job market.

Job seekers apply through job boards because they are visible, they appear to be the easiest way to understand a company's job openings, and because a company's HR department requests this type of application. On the negative side, job openings represented by job boards are much more competitive than what's called the "hidden job market" - therefore, job board applications aren't in the candidate's best interest if they can develop a more direct path.

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If You Can't Describe It, How Can You Find It? - Dream Job Visualization

How can a job seeker find a job, if they can't clearly describe what it is they want? An early step in a candidate's job search is goal definition, or visualization of your job search.

This is often difficult for candidates to accomplish effectively. Doesn't it seem strange that a job seeker can't clearly explain what they are seeking?

There are a few reasons and suggestions of how to create an effective description of your target job:

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Who's Hiring - Top employers week of 5-10-10

Who's Hiring is a weekly survey of companies showing the highest hiring activity for the week of 5/10/10.

The hospitality, retail, telecommunications, health care, defense and business service verticals are the top industries currently hiring based on a survey of active job advertisements from the nations’ leading job boards.

Read more ...

Who's Firing - Layoffs week ended 5-7-10

Who's Firing summarizes weekly research of companies announcing and rumoring layoffs for the week ended 5-7-10.

For the past week retail, government, publishing, banking and energy employers announced the largest layoffs.

( Continued ... See the rest of this week's top layoffs )

6 Ways To Become the Top Dog Before Your Interview: Best of reCareered

Did you realize that nearly all hiring managers pre-rank candidates before they’ve interviewed even one? If you’re the top candidate before interviews, then it’s basically your job to lose.

So how can you position yourself as the top candidate?

It takes a lot of planning, and takes into account all 4 audiences of your resume. Check out the post on 4 audiences to see how to write for all your audiences. Why? If you don’t write for the database or HR, then your resume won’t get seen by the hiring manager. That makes it pretty tough to be the top candidate.

( Continued ... Tactics #1 - 3 to make you the top dog )

Why Every Job Seeker Needs To Blog

Blogging ... sounds hugely time consuming and maybe intimidating to those who don't have one.

But blogging is one of the single most powerful things a job seeker can do to advance your job search. Blogging can help candidates across the board, whether you are active or passive, white collar or blue collar, experienced or noob, left brain or right brain. And anyone can do it ... you don't even have to write in order to blog (really!).

Why does every job seeker need to blog? Blogs provide so many ways for job seekers to stand out, especially because so few candidates use these tools.

( Continued ... Why Blog? )

Top 3 Job Search Strategies To Set Yourself Apart

The job market may be improving slightly, but it's still ridiculously tough out there.

I often hear candidate frustration over hiring managers' extremely exacting criteria - criteria that seems impossible for any candidate to fulfill. It's not the employer's fault - there's an over supply of labor, so why not be picky from their point of view?

Often the reason for this frustration can be simplified to one of three major reasons:

1. "Me too resumes" - Your resume looks the same as hundreds of competitors, making it impossible for you to stand out
2. One size fits all resumes - Your fit may not be clear from the face of the resume
3. "Stretch positions" - The candidate realistically can fulfill less than 90% of the criteria

Today's article describes 3 strategies to help you stand out from the crowd.

( Continued ... Create A Resume That Differentiates You )

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April 2010 Hiring Trends Show Slow Employment Improvements

At the end of April 2010, the major job aggregation sites released hiring data and analysis, indicating slow but measurable growth. Today's article summarizes job reports from Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, and Execunet.com.

The slow job growth demonstrates some early signs of a recovery. However, job growth was inconsistent, effecting some cities, industries and job functions more than others. Some job markets remain in the dumper - Florida and certain California job markets are still in deep trouble with up to a 1:9 ratio of unemployed workers to job advertisements. Detroit remains in trouble, but registered some small improvements.

Not only is this valuable for job seekers, but for business analysts, corporate strategists, marketers, salespeople, investment analysts, financial advisers, and others who are interested in job growth.

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Who's Hiring - Top employers week of 5-3-10

Who's Hiring is a weekly survey of companies showing the highest hiring activity for the week of 5/3/10.

The retail, telecommunications, health care, business services, and hospitality verticals are the top industries currently hiring based on a survey of active job advertisements from the nation's leading job boards.

Read more ...

Who's Firing - Layoffs week ended 4-30-10

Who's Firing summarizes weekly research of companies announcing and rumoring layoffs for the week ended 4-30-10.

For the past week manufacturing, transportation, government, energy, and automotive employers announced the largest layoffs.

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Your Resume's 4 Audiences: Best of reCareered

Most job seekers write their resume for the hiring manager. That's it.

Did you realize that your resume has up to 4 audiences, not just one? Miss what's important to any one of those audiences and you'll be passed over for interviews and offers.

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