10 Little Things You Can Do To Move The Needle In Your Job Search

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Hunting for a job is no fun. It's a lot of hoops to jump through, and it can be demoralizing at times. Hit a roadblock? Here are ten little things you can do to move the needle in your job search.

1. Be nice to people. I'm not referring to just interviewers and recruiters, by the way. Be friendly. Say "Hello." Say "Thank you." Facilitate professional and personal introductions. People tend to help out nice people, and if you're on the market, and you made a positive impression, you may be front of mind when they hear about a job opportunity or are looking to fill one of their own. Jerks get referred less often than nice people.
    

2. Let recruiters know you're available on LinkedIn. There's a little box on LinkedIn on your profile page where you can tell recruiters combing the system that you're open to hearing about jobs, and how they can reach you. Why not make it clear you're looking? Here's the link.
    

3. Take quick and easy training. Applying to jobs that require Salesforce CRM experience, and you don't have it? Or maybe you need to buff up on your project management skills. Go to LinkedIn Learning, Lynda, or any of the other online training portals and take a seminar. Then add the class to your resume – it'll show up as a keyword (and a skill in your toolbox).
    

4. Circulating your resume? Send or upload a version made in Microsoft Word. Most Applicant Tracking Systems (employer databases) are optimized for Word since it's the most common word processing platform in the business world. A resume saved in Google Docs or Apple Pages formats and uploaded into an ATS might not keep its formatting. And an unattractively formatted – or just plain jumbled – resume may get ignored by a recruiter, regardless of the cause.
    

5. Contact your college's career placement center. So what if you graduated 20 years ago? Most colleges allow their alumni to utilize the campus career services office. In addition to providing access to job postings and career fairs, advisors can provide career coaching and facilitate connections to employers with whom they've built relationships. Remember, your college wants you gainfully employed – it's good for the school's reputation, well-placed alumni can provide students with internship and career opportunities, and a happy, income-earning alumni often become willing donors.
    

6. Be generous with "thank you" notes. It's a no-brainer to send "thank you" notes after a job interview – or at least it should be. This simple act of post-interview gratitude can propel your candidacy forward. And remember to show gratitude to anyone who does you any sort of favor in your job search.
    

7. Ask your former employer if they could use some help. Assuming you left a prior job on good terms and would be interested in going back, call your old manager. The combination of a low unemployment rate and an innate familiarity with your ex-employer's culture and workflows could position you as a desirable candidate.
    

8. Call a headhunter who has placed you with an employer in the past. You may not be on their radar. But if they were successful in placing you before, they may be willing and able to consider you for a new job.
    

9. Use a professional-sounding email address on your resume. It really doesn't matter whether your address ends with gmail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com, or aol.com (I get that question a lot, by the way – people are worried about age discrimination based upon having an old ISP. Don't sweat it, unless we're talking about having CompuServe as your carrier. It's more dangerous to put your college graduation date on your resume if it's more than ten years ago). What does matter is not coming across as not being serious about the job search – avoid tags like partygirl23@gmail.com, sexydude71@aol.com, or ihatedogs@bellsouth.net.
    

10. Use your cell phone number on your resume. Be reachable, quickly. A missed call, or delaying a return call, could cost you the job. Side note: Have your voicemail set up with a greeting that says your name somewhere in the message, so that recruiters know they've reached the right number.
     

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Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

The Joys of Salary Negotiation

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After you've sent a resume to a company, somebody in human resources will call you up to screen you for fit. They will invariably ask you what you will are looking for in terms of salary.

This is where it gets tricky. It's a game of chicken – salary discussions, especially at the beginning of the process, are especially difficult because the first party to give away their position loses their leverage to negotiate.

Your goal here is not necessarily aligned to the company's goal in terms of compensation. Assuming the position is a good match for both parties, here's where your interests diverge.

Your goal: To get the best salary offer you can.

The company's goal: To get the best candidate into the position in the most cost-effective manner possible. Less money is better.

The actual figure you agree upon is the reality.

Before getting into negotiation strategy, let's discuss a few facts about how corporate salaries are determined (by the way, this is a simplification, so I'm certain the compensation professionals out will have information to add):

1. Companies - especially larger ones - usually have salary bands in which employees need to fit. For a particular position, there is an assigned salary range. For example, the company may have determined that they are willing to pay between $15 and $20 per hour for an administrative assistant. They don't want to have too large of a salary discrepancy between several individuals doing the same type of job, but they also want a bit of wiggle room to offer more money if necessary for the right candidate.
    
2. Salaries are usually driven by market data. A company will subscribe to (and often provide information for) compensation studies tracking what the market will pay for a particular job. This data take into consideration several factors - skill sets, nature of the market, geography, and what competitors are willing to pay.
    
3. A company selectes a compensation philosophy. This goes back to the market data described above. After looking at the data, executives make a decision about their compensation philosophy as to how it relates to their own company. A company looking to aggressively hire high-performing talent or that competes in a fast-changing market like technology tends to extend offers at the higher end of the range. Other companies may look to hire at the general market salaries, tending toward the average.
    
4. Companies often have less flexibility on salaries for recent graduates and entry-level hires. This applies to your newly minted MBA just as much as it does to your nephew who recently received their bachelor's degree. Companies often have a concrete salary structure for these recent grads, with adjustments up and down for work location and the ranking for the school from which they graduated. In other words, a graduate with an Ivy league degree can often fetch more than the local state school.
    
5. There's a lot more to consider in the offer than just salary. Benefits matter. A lot. Companies often pay a great deal of money to provide a competitive benefits package. You know that health insurance the company's offering? Not every employer subsidizes the same amount to cover that, often leaving you - the employee - to pay a larger share of your premiums or co-pays.  There are other benefits, too - dental insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition reimbursement, vacation time, holidays, company car, 401(k) matches and so on - into which companies can pay dearly. A richer benefits package leaving more take-home money in the employee's pocket may give an employer a real incentive to offer a lower base salary, while still enabling an employee to make ends meet.
    
6. Variable compensation matters, too. I'm referring to bonuses, profit sharing, commissions, and long-term incentives. Not every job offers an incentive beyond the base salary. A bonus is real money, and a company's philosophy may direct them to offer a lower base salary in exchange for a desirable bonus target.

Here are some considerations when negotiating salary:

• It's to your advantage to avoid giving a specific expected salary figure – until it's essential.  It's not always possible to hold off on showing your hand. A recruiter may push you to give a specific number to ensure that you fit within their salary structure. But if you can hold off without coming across as confrontation, it's worth trying. The best scenario is to see if the job itself is a good marriage before locking down a specific number. You'll keep your leverage.
   
• Sometimes ignorance can work in your favor. This isn't always true, but in certain cases it absolutely can. If you're a recent graduate (or been at the same company for a very long time) and an employer is asking you what you are looking for in terms of salary, it's okay to say, "I don't have a specific figure in mind, I am looking for a compensation package that is in line for a recent graduate with an MBA from my university." A similar approach also works well if you know you've been underpaid against the market, you can say something like, "I'm looking for a salary that is in line with my experience and education."
   
• The employer may push hard to find out your salary expectations. In which case, you may wish to consider taking a slightly different approach with your answer - "In my current position I have been earning $x, I am looking for a salary that will take into consideration the accomplishments and experiences I gained in my present role." You're not telling the employer that you're asking for a specific figure - you're giving an idea of where you've been.
   
• Sometimes it doesn't matter what you want. See #4 above - the company may pay everyone the same salary for a certain job. In which case, you have the option of taking or leaving the offer.
   
• Ask about the benefits. A rich benefits package has real cash value. Consider all the non-salary components of the offer as part of the total compensation.
   
• A sign-on bonus may make up any difference. The company may really want to get you on board, but their salary bands (or some other reason) may prevent them from offering a higher salary. Or perhaps you are walking away from a bonus at your current job. A sign-on bonus might help close the gap during that first year.
   
• Be sincere in your negotiations. Tell the corporate recruiter that you really want to make this work and that company x is clearly your first choice (assuming this is true). Perhaps you are willing to meet somewhere in the middle of what was offered and what you asked for. The more you can make the recruiter feel that this is a partnership designed to meet a common goal, the better.
   
• The choice is ultimately yours. You don't have to accept the job at the salary offered just because the company offers you the position. If you've negotiated in good faith, then you should be able to walk away from an offer with no hard feelings. Which leads me to one last point...
   
• Avoid getting into the negotiations for counter-offers with your current employer. It's not recommended - find out why here.

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Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Why Your Professional Failures Could Be Job Hunting Gold

iStockphoto.com | gustavofrazao

Guest post by Rhys Johnson (TheDreamLife_RJ)

Because employers usually take only between a few seconds and a couple minutes to read through a resume, you might feel pressure to embellish your profile, or to lie. The reality is that even if your “too good to be true” resume gets you through the door, a skilled interviewer will be able to poke holes in your application if you can’t elaborate on specific details in a satisfactory manner. And even if your fib doesn’t get noticed right away your entire employment will be based on falsified information, which could be detrimental to your career further down the road.

It’s always a good idea to be honest on your resume. Sometimes the honest approach may entail including your failures. And with appropriate context, articulating the adversity you faced can provide an employer with compelling reasons to hire you.

As an intellectual exercise, Princeton professor Johannes Haushofer took honesty to a whole new level by publishing his own “CV of failures” online. The Washington Post shared that his goal was to inspire people to continue in their respective fields and help them deal with their own shortcomings. The Telegraph reports a similar story of a senior creative professional’s experiment of sending in a resume highlighting his imperfections, which got several responses and interviews – as compared to his traditional resume, which received only a single response.

Let me be clear – a professional resume is not the place to demonstrate either your flaws or your inability to achieve results. But while I wouldn’t advise an an approach such as Professor Haushofer’s for the serious job hunter, building a resume with examples of your ability to overcome professional adversity can bolster your candidacy, by demonstrating the positive elements and by providing great fodder for the interview. Here are some examples:

Example 1: Willingness to push yourself, and to take sensible risks.
A person who doesn’t fail is either perfect (which nobody is) or unwilling to try new things. An experience where you stepped out of your comfort zone in spite of your fear of failing can reassure potential employers that you’re willing to take good, well-reasoned risks which may pay the company dividends. Even if the project as whole didn’t succeed, highlight on your resume the aspects of the project that indeed went right.

Resume Example: “Led pilot project testing new lines of business. Sold idea to CEO, organized project team, and managed initiative through test phases.”

Example 2: Professional resilience and an ability to cope with failure.
Conveying that you can handle challenging situations is also something that potential employers want to know about you. The Balance explains that employers want to know if the person they’re considering for the job will be able to keep their composure and focus in times of hardship. Corporate life is full of ups and downs. In your resume, highlight the obstacles you handled with finesse and grace and, most importantly, through which you persevered and were able to achieve satisfactory resolution.

Resume Example: “Managed rapid department reorganization following layoff of 90% of team. Conducted needs analysis, and redesigned workflows to adjust to smaller workforce.”

Example 3: An ability to learn.
Failures can be the best teachers if you’re willing to learn from them. Highlight real challenges you’ve overcome, in which you were able to adapt your learnings into a successful project. The best such examples for your resume are those in which you were able to quickly adapt to a difficult situation.

Resume Example: “Successfully turned around project 25% behind target timeline, achieving on-time completion below budget.”

A resume that showcases your ability to overcome adversity will catch a potential employer's attention. The skills for your job can be taught and acquired, but ultimately, your attitude and mindset are the factors that will truly help you succeed.

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Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.