2010 is coming to an end...what to do?

We touched on the topic of a Christmas job search a few weeks back but let’s say you’re actively looking for a new job and are not getting any positive results this month. The truth is that a lot of people are busy in December for a variety of reasons and often defer stuff to the new year. Hiring is often one of the things that they defer to the new year and perhaps they just don’t want to conduct interviews over the next few weeks before the holidays knowing that either the people they’re interviewing or other people involved in the hiring process will be away to slow things down anyways.

Having said that I know a friend who is interviewing right now for a high end job and has been told by the hiring company that they have several candidates to consider and they plan on hiring someone in the next few days.

Assuming they’re true to their word and that things get done as they expect, one of the people they’re interviewing – one of whom is currently unemployed…that would be my friend – will end the year on a positive note at least as far as their career is concerned as they will have a new job to go to early in 2011.

So as I’ve mentioned in the past, companies do hire well into late December and I’ve seen people get job offers on Christmas Eve and even New Year’s Eve too.

So let’s say you’re one of those people who is actively searching for a new job and you’re still searching in December while other people have decided to take the month off. Good for you! Hopefully something will come out of it either this month or into the early new year.

What else can do you this month to keep things moving along so that you can improve the chances you start 2011 with a new, better job? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Use up your health benefits: Assuming you have health benefits, use them up before December 31 when they most likely run out and renew on Jan 1. Go to the dentist, get a massage, whatever might help you improve or maintain your health. Plus you might as well as get this stuff out of the way now before you start a new job in early 2011 and might find yourself too busy at work to go. If you’ve got benefits, you might as well use them.

2. Search for new contacts on Twitter and LinkedIn: One of the great things about Internet sites like these two is that you can utilize them outside of work hours…in other words, these sites operate 24/7 every day of the year and you can take a few minutes here and there to make new contacts and meet new people who might positively influence your career. With LinkedIn, you have to watch out for trying to link up with people you don’t actually know unless you have a paid account but I’ve received numerous link requests from people I’ve never even heard of before. Assuming they have a professional profile, I usually don’t have a problem linking up with them. Who knows, they might know someone who can help you out or who is looking for someone like you. If you don’t have a professional (i.e. work related) Twitter or LinkedIn account, I’d certainly suggest signing up.

3. Check out a new website called Quora: If you click on the link, you’ll be taken to my new profile on Quora which I just created so you can see what it looks like. It’s a website created by a number of former Facebook execs that focuses on questions and answers. Someone asks a question and the Quora community answers the question. The answer can be updated with the goal of having the answer page providing the best possible answer to that question. From what I’ve seen many of the questions tend to focus on professional topics so you can sign up for a free account, follow people, have them follow you and contribute to the conversation by answering questions about things you know about. Chances are that as the site grows, you’ll have opportunities to be introduced to new people and you might even find that when people search the Net for an answer to a question, your response shows up in the search results.

4. Update your resume: Assuming you’re not updating it regularly anyways, this is a great time – especially if you have time off work during the holidays – to spend a bit of time dusting off the resume and updating it and making improvements to it. If you’re searching for different types of jobs, creating several versions for each job type is another thing you should look at doing to ensure each one targets the job in question specifically.

Networking and getting yourself known can be key to job searching

Since we already spoke a few days ago about what sorts of businesses might be hiring around this time, another timely subject is getting noticed before the end of year and getting your face in front of people who can positively influence your job search i.e. hiring managers.

These days job searching has long since gone to one where people believe that quantity rules over quantity, one where many believe the key to getting a new job is a matter of firing off hundreds of resumes by email and hoping something materializes. As I’ve said before it’s counter intuitive to think this way because if it’s easy for you to fire off hundreds of resumes – and it is – then it’s equally easy for everyone else to do the same thing so what’s the point?

In recruitment we see first hand the need to cull through the long list of resumes that get emailed to us, many for jobs that the person who is applying isn’t even qualified for.

So the question becomes how to stand out from others in a positive way and how to get in front of hiring managers when email just isn’t cutting it?

When I was first looking for a job when I was out of university and had moved to New Zealand to begin my career, I started my job search by doing something that I thought might help to make me stand out from others who were applying to the same jobs I was. I had a local printer print my resume on a calendar which I had laminated and then distributed to 30 or so companies that I wanted to work for.

I did get a few job interviews and a few hiring authorities complimented me for my originality but I didn’t actually get a job from my calendars at least not directly. When I was in the process of delivering my very last calendar, I happened upon a recruitment agency who as it turned out, did know of someone who needed a fresh grad like me and ended up hiring me several days later.

So while the calendar didn’t get me a job, it did get me a few interviews and the process of delivering them by hand did end up with me meeting a recruiter who I wouldn’t otherwise have met who did help me get my first real job.

Would doing something like this work these days?

Whether it’s your resume on a calendar, your name and phone number on a coffee mug or perhaps a personal website with your CV on it, methods like this might be conducive to jobs that actually require some creativity or to hiring managers who appreciate people who think with some originality.

It’s one way of standing apart from others who are applying for the same jobs you are and in a positive way.

Networking is typically one of the best methods of standing out from your fellow job searchers and it also helps you build a network of people who might assist you during your job searches – and vice versa – and at a minimum help to make you more comfortable “selling” yourself and meeting new people. With the holiday season coming up comes more opportunities to get out and meet new people, shake some hands and exchange some business cards that might come in handy down the line.

Following up with a hiring manager after an interview is an easy yet often overlooked method of separating yourself from your competitors. A simple follow up email post interview that is well-written and brief can help to keep you top of mind in the eyes of a hiring manager especially one who values a human touch and someone who exhibits professionalism. Many job searchers attend interviews and never bother following up again even to check on their candidacy so they’re typically quickly forgotten. The person who follows up will often be remembered.

These days – and in this economy – putting the human touch to your job searches can help in ways you might not imagine and help you rise above others applying for the same jobs who don’t bother to do the same.

A Christmas job search is a timely topic given that we’re approaching the holiday season. I recently got a good question from a visitor to my Find Your Dream Career website where he asked about the times of the year where job searching either goes up or down.

Specifically he asked me if job searchers tend to stop looking for jobs in December and January when the holiday season tends to slow things down or if the summer months also tend to see hiring come to a halt.

You can check out the link above for my answer to his question but here is what I told him that I’ve noticed in my experience.

In my experience, job searching in December and January can be a great time to search for a few reasons:

1. Many people (i.e. people who you might otherwise be competing with for jobs) will temporarily stop job searching believing that finding a job around Christmas is unlikely or impossible.

2. There are plenty of part-time and seasonal Christmas jobs that open up for the holiday season. Think of who often needs extra staff during December: retailers, restaurants, caterers, hospitality businesses among others.

3. Sometimes the hiring budget runs out at the end of the calendar year and if a hiring manager wants to hire a staff member, they need to do if before year end. I know of people who received job offers on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve too.

4. Companies simply need staff asap and hire now because that’s when they need the person, regardless of the time of year.

The same can be said with several of these points during other times of the year where you might think hiring comes to a halt. Summertime is one such period where holidays do often slow down the hiring process and sometimes delay it full stop but again if a company needs a staff member, they’ll hire them when needed.

Seasonal jobs open up at different times of the year depending on where you live but certainly in this part of the world, Christmas is the big one.

The bottom line is that if you take the holidays off and stop searching for jobs until the new year, you might be missing out.

While listening to the radio this morning, I heard a business columnist commenting on possible job and hiring trends for 2010 and he suggested the following:

Replacing low performing workers: Companies often attempt to do this on an ongoing basis anyways but with 2010 expected by many people to at least be better than 2009 and at best mark noticeable improvements economically, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that companies will take a look at people who are possibly better than employees that they have currently. Certainly, people who work in a sales environment are just one example of where poor performers might be replaced by new staff who have a track record of high performance elsewhere and would be expected to outperform the incumbent.

Flexible work environments: This has been a trend already but many companies who don’t currently offer this sort of arrangement might look at offering this in the near future. Flexible work arrangements can mean various things such as:

1. Reducing the work week from 5 days to 4 days (ie. staff stay an extra 2 hours each day from Monday-Thursday and get Fridays off)

2. Reduced hours for staff to save the company money

3. Work-from-home arrangements on a part-time (ie. several times per week) or fulltime.

Having staff working from home or having a home office-type system might mean that a company can save significant money by reducing the number of offices they own/lease and operate by having staff work from home rather than in an office whose costs are borne by the company.

Rehiring laid off workers: Certainly many in the auto industry are expecting/hoping that they’ll fall into this category if they were laid off in the latter half of 2008 or sometime in 2009. In other industries rehiring staff who were laid off temporarily might be something that companies are able to do as they see their business turning around and see business starting to pick up.

An interesting dilemma in this case is occurring right now with the General Motors-owned automobile manufacturer Saab who GM is trying to sell. Saab was close to being sold to another company but when the sale fell through, GM decided to scrap the brand. Instead, GM is now negotiating to sell Saab to another company and instead of thinking about shutting the company down, Saab is also apparently planning on picking up production again since they have orders to fill.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2010!

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, 2010 is here and all our economic problems are solved!

OK, that’s not exactly what I said. I spoke about my hope and optimism for 2010 and that like most people how I believe that this year will better for all of us than 2009 was.

In that regard, I’m going to remain positive until further notice and hope that you do the same regardless of whether or not you’re looking for a new job, are happy in your current situation or are thinking about doing some new and different for your career.

If you’ve decided that you have a New Year’s resolution(s) related to your career, you certainly don’t want to make any rash decisions but at the same time, it doesn’t hurt to get moving on it before January becomes February and then suddenly we’re in March and you haven’t accomplished anything.

There is no better time than the present to get 2010 started right.

2009 was pretty much a lousy one much like the latter half of 2008 was in terms of the economy and job market. Part of me thinks that things are getting better but I guess it’s relative.

Many of us are probably happy if we made it through 2009 with what we had at the end of 2008 and if we’re no worse off, then perhaps that’s a victory right there.

For those who have less in 2009 than they did in 2008 and are currently holding a job that you wouldn’t have thought about holding a year ago, perhaps 2010 will be the year you take back your career and get it back on track.

Hopefully, 2010 will bring better things for all of us and in that regard, it isn’t too early to start thinking about 2010 while 2009 is still here.

If early 2010 is when you are planning to start looking for your next job, you can start now – before the ball starts dropping and we ring in the New Year.

In that regard:

1. Dust off your resume and update if it already isn’t hasn’t been updated. Hopefully you’re updating your resume on an ongoing basis already but it you’re not, you should probably start. You never know when you’ll need it on short notice.

2. Assemble your references. Give them a call, make sure they’re still happy to be used as references and let them know you might need their help in the next little while.

3. Understand exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish by getting a new job. Are you looking for a more challenging job? A better employer? A new career? A shorter commute? More money? All of the above?

From what we’re hearing and seeing, 2010 should be the year when things start getting noticeably better although I’m guessing we won’t necessarily notice it right away on January 1. Let’s hope that it does occur sooner rather than later.

And in the meantime, Happy New Year!

Since Christmas has just passed and we’re now a few days before New Year’s, this is one of those times of the year when you can find yourself waiting around for longer than usual to get a response from someone who can influence your career.

Perhaps you’re waiting to see if you are getting an interview. Maybe you’re waiting for a second or third interview. Possibly it’s a job offer you’re expecting but you haven’t heard yet.

As a recruiter, you learn after awhile to pick up on time delays and you learn how to read between the lines even if a hiring manager you’re dealing with isn’t saying anything. If a hiring manager tells me for example that they liked a candidate of mine who they interviewed and expect that they’ll be back for a second interview, when a week passes and I’ve heard nothing from the hiring manager, you start figuring that something has happened (ie. they hired someone else) and that my candidate isn’t getting a second interview.

Typically it’s around that time that the hiring manager contacts me (often by email so they don’t have to tell me over the phone) to let me that they ended up hiring an internal candidate, or something like that.

As recruiters (and other sales-types will tell you) “time kills deals.” When a few days go by, it can kill any momentum you have and suddenly the deal that seemed so likely to occur isn’t so likely afterall.

If you’re a job searcher and aren’t necessarily dealing directly with the hiring manager, the waiting can be very nerve wracking and you start wondering what’s going on and why you haven’t gotten a response from the company yet.

At this time of year, the waiting can often be explained if the hiring manager or other decision maker is away for this week or has simply deferred hiring until the new year.

In some cases though, it’s because they’re off interviewing other people who the hiring manager suddenly decides are as desirable – if not more desirable – than you are. So now instead of being the one they were looking for, you’ve been reduced to one of the people they’re thinking about hiring.

Other times, it’s simply that you received information that wasn’t accurate or because you misinterpreted the cues you received. When I first started working as a recruiter, I recall that the first candidates I sent out for jobs ended up getting interviews and performed well. I got good feedback from the hiring company and I felt that the hiring manager led me to believe that one of these candidates was going to get a job offer. They were hiring two people so I thought my chances that at least one person was getting the job was very high.

I didn’t come right out and tell the candidates they were getting a job offer – I don’t do that unless the hiring manager has told me I should tell them this with 100% certainty – but in my mind I really thought it was going to happen and at least one of them was going to get the job.

It didn’t happen.

It turned out that the hiring manager liked these candidates but found two other people who he thought were better and were cheaper and he hired them instead.

Even my candidates were surprised they didn’t get an offer but perhaps the reason they were surprised is because they of course didn’t know anything about the two people who were hired so they had no basis for comparison. They simply felt that based on what the hiring manager had told them at the end of the interview process, that they each thought they were getting hired.

I had thought the same thing.

In hindsight, I should have known something was up because a week and a half had passed from the time my candidates had their last interview and the time that the hiring manager called me to let me know they’d hired other people. In hindsight, the delay should have been a warning to me but as I was new to the business, I think it was just wishful thinking on my part that nothing was wrong.

Sometimes, a delay in the job hiring process doesn’t mean anything and a delay occurs but then you get the job. Other times, a delay can mean that other things are going on behind the scenes that you don’t know about.

Either way, until you get something in writing that resembles a job offer, there are no guarantees and it’s best not to put all your eggs in one basket and hope that one particular job ends up coming through because often it doesn’t.

The days after Christmas can often be slow days in the office especially if people have taken the rest of the year off and aren’t getting back until the new year.

If you’re a job searcher or are thinking of looking for a new job, today, tomorrow and the day after can be great days to touch base with hiring managers and short of that with staff who work in companies you’re interested to work for since chances are many of them are working short hours and in many cases are working casually until January 2 hits.

People are on vacation mode even if they’re not on vacation.

It’s a good time to speak with people who work in companies that interest you because chances are many don’t have a lot to do right now and given the happy time of year we’re in, are possibly more likely to speak with you and tell you about their job and the company, information you can use to figure out if you’d really like to work there.

You might be surprised how open people can be when you simply call them up and ask them questions and ask for their advice. In general terms, people like to talk about themselves and when asked politely, most people will at least try to lift a finger and help you out.

I’ve called into companies and spoken to people who wouldn’t know who I was if they ran me over in their car. I’ve told them about a job I had available, and asked them who they knew who might be interested in the job. I’ve left voice messages like this and had people call me back to refer me to someone. People do like to help when asked politely.

Again, this is a good time of year, people in many companies are working short hours, getting ready for New Year’s so it’s a good time to get their attention.

Plus, once January 1 hits and everyone is pretending to fulfill their new year’s resolutions, that’s when everyone else who has decided to look for a new job will start bombarding these same hiring managers with phone calls and emails. Beat them to the punch.

Today is the day after Christmas – in some Commonwealth countries today is referred to as Boxing Day – so for those who celebrated Christmas yesterday and ate too much, today should probably be just a rest day where we take it easy and talk about fun stuff.

Here’s a quick story regarding a placement I made earlier in my career as a recruiter, a case where I helped a person relocate to a new country and get a better job than what they had at the time I first started dealing with them. It might give you an idea of some of the things a good recruiter can do behind the scenes to help you get a job.

I had been working on a particular job that the hiring manager had been having difficulty filling. It was a six-figure job so it was a good paying job and a senior one at that. It required specific skills and the hiring manager hadn’t been able to find someone so she let me work on the job and help her fill it.

I immediately thought of someone who I thought would be the perfect candidate and I was certain that they would be interested in the job. I was also fairly certain that the company would want to interview them, too.

The problem was that this candidate was living outside the country and would need to relocate with their child and was working in a job that was below where they should be as they’d been laid off previously and had taken this job until they could find something better. In fact, they had jumped around a bit since getting laid off so they’d had a few jobs since then and none of them really matched their level of experience or income for that matter.

So I had to convince the hiring manager that they should look at a person who was living outside the country and would need to be relocated, was currently underemployed, had jumped around a bit from job to job and as a result were earning less than what they really should be.

I didn’t have to convince the applicant because as soon as they saw the job, they told me they were interested in it.

Fortunately, the client was open-minded and decided to interview this person. I helped the candidate get ready for the interview as I normally would but found that I really liked dealing with this candidate and really wanted to help them get the job as I knew it would be a nice, fresh start for them and their child. I spent a fair bit of time on the phone helping them learn about the company, the job, and the people they’d be interviewing with.

The employer decided to start with an HR phone interview which went very well. It lasted for about 1.5 hours from memory. I helped my candidate get ready for the phone interview as they’d never done one before and gave them suggestions on how to do well in the interview.

This was followed by a skills test being administered which the candidate passed with no problems. Again, I helped the candidate prepare for this although I had no knowledge of the answers to the questions, rather I just helped them understand what the employer was looking for and how to complete the test on time.

The candidate was then flown in for a face to face interview at the employer’s location for several hours (most of the day actually) to meet with several people including two senior managers and the HR manager. Again, I helped my candidate prepare for the interview and also figure out their actual schedule since they had to not only fly into the the nearest airport, they then had to drive 4 hours to the interview by car.

I then completed four reference checks for my candidate and then made another phone call to reconfirm a few things on one of the reference checks at the request of the hiring manager.

At this point, thy employer told me they wanted to hire this person and after we worked out salary, etc (which was more than what I’d expected they’d offer) and negotiated the fact that the company would pay for moving expenses (which my job candidate was not expecting), they made the job offer and it was accepted by my candidate who was very happy about it.

The candidate was happy to get the job and the client was happy to have finally filled it. My candidate’s child was very happy to be moving to a new life with their parent, too.

What my client didn’t realize was how much other stuff had gone on behind the scenes. My candidate’s ex-spouse had been giving them grief the whole time and for awhile it seemed they might not allow my candidate to leave the country with their child to take the new job! It wasn’t until my candidate called me from the airport when they arrived to start the job that I knew it was actually going to happen.

I must have spent 4-5 hours on the phone with my candidate in the previous weeks just discussing this issue alone, where they had told me numerous times that there was a chance they might have a problem with their ex-spouse but fortunately it never happened.

This was a great experience because I knew that the candidate and client both deserved each other and as they were both really nice people, it was nice to help them. Of course I got paid for it – it was my client and my candidate so it was especially good since I was the only one involved in the deal – but the feeling I got helping to work things out was very nice from a personal perspective.

This client ended up hiring 4 people through me in a short period of time and in all 4 cases, the people who got their job all had to relocate, two of them from outside the country.

In each case, I had to manage the relocation of the candidates and did a lot of behind the scenes work that the client – and in some cases the job candidate themselves – never knew about.

In this case, I think the moral of the story is that a good recruiter can do a lot of little things behind the scenes to help you that you might not be aware of.

Best wishes during this holiday season to all my readers and your families.

Have a good one.