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Finding the Right Opportunity |
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Fifty-four percent of the people answering our Poll say that finding the right opportunity is the hardest part of the job search. Here are some of the reasons we find people have that difficulty. Reason #1. People blast their resumes and expect employers to discover them. Picture this. You’re an employer. You receive hundreds, perhaps thousands, of resumes in a month. After you throw out the ones that have typos, you still have 10% left, but they all look alike. What are we taught in America? To belong. To fit in. To look like everyone else. Not to rock the boat. The nail that is sticking up gets pounded down. Solution. You need to change your mindset. You have to learn how to differentiate yourself. What makes you different? What makes you special? What makes you unique? What makes you better than other people with the same resume? This isn’t easy. It takes a lot of thinking and analyzing. |
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Job Search Mistakes - Part II |
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Sales Call Reluctance. Many people have an extremely difficult time networking, either on the phone or face-to-face, or both. Some people can network among those they know, such as family and friends, but not with people they do not know well. Others are able to network among business contacts, but shy away from family and friends. In sales, this is known as sales call reluctance. To learn more about this roadblock to a successful job search, read Dudley and Goodson’s The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance. The following questions will help you to link the twelve sales call reluctance types described by the authors, with typical job search networking and call reluctance behavior. Doomsayer. Do “what if” catastrophe and worst-case scenarios keep you from picking up the phone? For instance, worrying about going to an event in which everyone is more casually dressed than you are or vice versa. Do you avoid taking social risks, such as going to an event where you don’t know anyone or you might not “fit in”? Over-Preparer. At Norwood Career Advisors, we emphasize the fact that without careful planning, research, and preparation, your search is more than likely to go nowhere fast. At the other extreme, however, is “Failure to Launch.” It’s possible to spend so much time organizing your office supplies (or writing the perfect resume) that what you’re really doing is simply stalling to avoid making calls.
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The other day we were talking to someone who felt confident that he didn’t need our services, because he was a professional writer. Looking at his resume, however, we found several ways in which it could have been improved upon. The fact that the author had been out of a job for quite a long time was consistent with our belief that his resume might be part of the problem. Here are some reasons a professional writer might benefit from a professional resume writer’s advice: If you are a journalist, your objective is to be impartial—not to sell a particular point of view. To be credible, a reporter gives both sides of the story. A resume is a sales tool whose objective is to get the writer in front of a buyer. As a result, there is a difference in the techniques employed in writing a resume and writing an article in a newspaper. If you are the author of a book, you have had an editor who edits your work for content, grammar, punctuation, and typos. A good resume writer is first and foremost an editor. If you are a copywriter, you probably have little or nothing to do with the aesthetic decisions in the final product that your work was a part of. While a resume writer needn’t be another Picasso, when you’ve seen thousands of resumes, you know how to create visual impact where it counts. |
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