The past year hasn’t exactly been kind to the unemployed, but towards the end of 2011 the situation looked a little more promising. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the U.S. job market added 200,000 new jobs in December, resulting in a further drop in the unemployment rate from 8.7 percent to 8.5 percent. Compared with the 9 percent employment rate of the summer of 2011, these new figures indicate a very favorable future for the unemployed in 2012. Although the odds may be leaning toward your favor, it’s still important to focus on keeping up with the competition and improving your strategy for your 2012 job search by adopting the following new tactics.

Objectively evaluate your resume

You should never underestimate the power of a good resume when it comes to your job search. Your resume should not simply be scribbled out, copied several times, and submitted to every employer within reach. Instead, take time to evaluate and customize each resume according to the position for which you are applying. Always write a personalized cover letter for each position as well. Both your cover letter and your resume should directly indicate why you are the best fit for the job for which you are applying.

Further your education

The job market is filled with stiff competition in the form of graduates fresh out of college, holders of advanced degrees and well-experienced workers with a wide range of skills. To keep up with these highly valuable candidates, it might be in your best interest to further your education by going back to college or considering an online mba program. An online program would give you the unique opportunity to extend your degree without sacrificing valuable time for job searching.

Improve your online image

According to CareerRealism.com, 88 percent of employers will search for your name online to find out more about you. If your online presence is shabby or non-existent, it could cost you a job. Take advantage of the opportunity to show off your skills and credentials to potential employers by enhancing your professional appeal on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, LinkedIn,and other online platforms. Look at these accounts through the eyes of an employer to determine what is appropriate and what isn’t.

Go where the competition isn’t

Sometimes your problem with finding a job is that you are looking in the same place as hundreds of other people, which dramatically reduces your odds. Instead of browsing the listings on Monster.com (where thousands of other people will be looking), take a more creative approach to determine who’s hiring. Watch the news often to see which companies recently received stimulus funds, signed a huge contract or had an otherwise highly successful year. These factors usually indicate that the company will create new jobs and be looking for new employees as a result.

Stay organized

Searching for a job can be a busy and stressful endeavor in general, but a failure to organize and plan appropriately can often exacerbate the situation. To avoid adding more stress than necessary, create schedules and track your daily activities to ensure better follow-up on the jobs you have applied for. Doing so not only reduces your stress levels throughout the process, but helps you more effectively balance several applications and interviews at once.

Staying effective in a job search can be tough.  Remaining focused and single-minded in a tough job market during a down economy requires commitment and intestinal fortitude.  But it also requires getting serious about improving your job search strategy.  That means you need to get out of your comfort zone and try some new tactics.  And whether you’re a college student or jumping back into the job market to try out a second career, joining a professional or industry association can be a really effective way to improve your chances.

Why It Matters

For students, whether you’re a year away from graduating from college, or an adult attending an online university to improve career options, you may never even have considered joining an association.  That’s pretty common because it’s not usually a high priority for college students.  And out of work baby boomers likely haven’t looked at industry associations as being relevant to job search activities.  But all job searchers have probably been trying to find ways to increase networking effectiveness.  Think of industry associations as a way to give your networking a shot of serious steroids.  Think about it.  Joining an association puts you in a position to mix with industry heavyweights and thought leaders in your industry.  It’s a networker’s perfect dream scenario.

What Advantage Does An Industry Association Offer?

The first—and most obvious—advantage that joining an industry association offers is the ability to extend the networking you’re already doing into a target rich environment.  It’s entirely possible that you have really good networking skills but don’t have a lot of individuals within your network who are in a position to really help turn your job search into a job offer.  But an industry association puts you directly into a ready-made network of exactly the kind of people who may be able to leverage their insider status and familiarity within the industry to make your job search successful.

Other Benefits To Membership

A better networking platform is just one of the benefits of association membership.  Although most associations have a membership fee, it usually isn’t extremely expensive and students often get discounted or even free memberships.  Many associations offer exclusive job listings unavailable to the general public.  Some associations offer insurance and even free legal advice.  Industry journals are standard in most associations as well as lunches, industry dinners and seminars.

 Improve Your Resume

The most tangible benefit aside from networking though, may be resume-related.  This is even more important if you’re unemployed because the professional development exercises that many associations offer provide skills and abilities that look good on a resume and indicate a real interest and commitment to your industry.  College students can use this as a way to make their resumes more impressive than their peers’ resumes and augment what may essentially be an academic resume.  Older adults that are switching career paths later in life can use this as a way to get industry-specific items on their resume that make them stand out in a sea of competitors.  Joining an industry association while remaining focused on all your other job search strategies may be the edge you need to pull away from the competition.

If you’re looking for a new job but feel you aren’t making much progress, you might need to change things up and try a few new things. As they say, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. So if your job search isn’t going so well, take a step back and try a few new things. In that regard, here’s a post I wrote on Hubpages called 10 tips to improve your job search if you’re looking to pick up the pace of your job search and mix things up a bit.

Ah, technology...

Basically we’re talking pre-Internet versus post-Internet here.

For those of you too young to remember life before the Internet, let me tell you that things are very different in a career and job searching context.

We’re talking colored resume paper and dot matrix printers and stuff like that.

I can think of quite a few differences just off the top of my head, Here are some of the more noticeable ones:

Pre-Internet: When you printed your resume in hard copy to send to a potential employer, you’d ask your friends and family for a second opinion as to which colour and stock of paper you should use. You didn’t want to pick the wrong colour or pattern nor did you want to pick a cheap looking one.

Post-Internet: They used to print resumes on paper?

Pre-Internet: When applying to jobs you either had to mail individual cover letters and resumes to every single company you wanted to apply to or as that wonderful invention (sarcasm) known as a fax machine became popular, you’d fax them to the employer all at your own expense of course. Stamps and fax fees added up back then!

Post-Internet: With the Internet you can easily fire off dozens or hundreds of resumes to many employers anywhere in the world and it costs you virtually nothing except the time that you waste by applying to jobs that you don’t actually qualify for but figure you might as well apply for “just in case.”

Pre-Internet: When you got a rejected by a company you had applied to, you actually got a written letter in the mail politely telling you they weren’t interested in you. In business school, we affectionately referred to it as a FOAD letter. FOAD stood for F#$% Off and Die since that was basically what the company was telling you. Clever, eh?

Post-Internet: These days you might get an auto response email the moment you hit “send” to deliver an email application or you might get nothing at all. I think I’d prefer a FOAD letter as at least it meant you got some closure.

Pre-Internet: When you were lucky enough to get a job interview, the first thing you thought about doing was going to your public library to see if you could get a copy of a recent annual report for the company you were interviewing with so you could memorize a few key figures about the company just in case they asked what you knew about them. Popular stats to memorize included annual sales and annual profits. Sometimes you’d try to impress the interviewer by pulling a quote out of the annual report and telling them you were aware of their recent acquisition of a company and how it fit into their long terms plans, or something like that.

Post-Internet: With the Internet, you can find out virtually anything about a company without having to leave the comfort of your home. You can learn about probably every senior manager there too since they probably all have a Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn account too.

Pre-Internet: Before the Internet, it was difficult to imagine that you could realistically do anything in public that would ruin your reputation for life.

Post-Internet: Post Internet it’s difficult to image there was a time where it was virtually impossible to do anything that would ruin your reputation for life. Think drunken Facebook photos and cellphone cameras.

Yippee! A job offer...but should you take it?

Before you accept a job offer though, there are a few things you should do to ensure you’re making the right decision especially if taking the job means you’ll have to resign and quit the current job you’re with.

Does the new job solve your problem? Presumably you started looking for a new job for a reason. Perhaps you weren’t making enough money at your current job. Maybe you were tired of your boss/company/industry/commute or something else that needed to be changed. Whatever the problem or issue, does your new job actually resolve this issue without creating a new one(s)? In other words does the new job actually make sense for you?

Is the job right for your future or right for now? Is your new job and company one you could see yourself having for a few years or is it simply one that seems better than the one you have now? Having a long term perspective is ideal but of course since you’re working for someone else (your employer) you’re kind of reliant upon them to deliver on certain things that you can’t always control. In that regard, does your new job/company offer you a better long term plan than your current one? The last thing you want to do is leave one situation for one that isn’t much better than what you have now.

Are you jumping for the money? In recruitment we were always told that we don’t want to be dealing with job searchers who were money-motivated and were only looking for a new job because they wanted more money. The thought was that if you really just wanted more money why not just ask your current employer for a raise and save everyone the headache of a job search? Easier said than done of course but in my experience there are always people who will change jobs for an extra dollar (or two) and the fear is that if they find yet another job for a few more dollars than that, they’ll jump for that too. No one is a charity and we all have a job in part because we need the money but as mentioned above a long-term perspective is best here because sometimes the job that pays more money but not really end up delivering more money if another job has a better bonus plan, better upward mobility, a shorter commute (can you really put a value on that?), less stress, more vacation or a combination of the above?

Sometimes you have to read beyond the headlines especially when it comes to a job offer.

Here are some good qualities to look for.

How can you ensure you’re only working with the good ones?

I won’t bother mentioning the really obvious ones except in passing but for completeness you clearly want honest recruiters who you can trust and who aren’t going to fire your resume all over the place without your permission. That should be a given.

Here are the qualities of a good recruiter who in my experience are are most likely best-suited to help you find a new job.

1. They have a good relationship with the employers they deal with: Good recruiters deal with employers who they’ve placed people with before. When you have a recruiter who has placed multiple people in a company you’re interested in, chances are this means the company is happy with the recruiter and probably has staff who you might be able to speak with to learn more about the company before you commit to working for them. You obviously want recruiters who have a good relationship with the employers they deal with but I mention this with one proviso…in recruitment it is common for recruiters to deal both with employers and candidates and for recruiters to work on each other’s jobs so you might find that in some cases the recruiter you deal with isn’t actually the account manager for the hiring company but one of their colleagues is. The recruiter you’re dealing with should be able to answer questions you have regarding the job and employer but if they can’t they should get the answer from the account manager or put you in touch with that person directly. That way you’ll ensure this recruiter has the proper information to help you decide if the job is really of interest to you, which leads to quality #2…

2. They give you the proper information to help you do your best during job interviews: This means they give you more than just a job description too. Recruiters should be be able to tell you a number of things about the job and company you’re applying to that you wouldn’t necessarily know had you applied directly for the job yourself otherwise why would you bother working with a recruiter in the first place? Among other things they should be able to tell you why the job is open, what it pays, who the job reports to, the culture of the company you’re interviewing with and anything special skills or experience that the job requires (i.e. hot buttons) that the hiring manager is looking for. A lack of this information might suggest that the recruiter doesn’t have a very good relationship with the company.

3. They make you aware of jobs you didn’t otherwise know about: Many recruiters work on the same jobs other ones are but in some cases, you might be working with a recruiter who is a preferred vendor to an employer and in some rare cases might be the only recruiter working on the job. The last thing you want to do is waste time having 2 or more recruiters telling you about a job you already knew about which can increase the chance your resume gets sent for the same job and company more than once. You want to be dealing with recruiters who tell you about jobs that you didn’t otherwise know exist.

4. They don’t waste your time with positions that don’t match you: Sometimes in recruitment it can be difficult to determine 100% of the time whether a job will be of interest to a candidate and in some cases you might get presented with jobs that don’t interest you or fit you and you have to say no. If I wasn’t sure, I’d tell a candidate I wasn’t entirely sure but wanted to float a job past them just to be safe. But if you’re regularly getting jobs put in front of you that don’t match your skillset, experience, monetary requirements, etc it might be a sign that the recruiter you’re working with is no good. I recall working with some recruiters who would show me the resume of a job candidate for a job I was working on and in some cases it was unbelievable because the person in no way, shape or form fit the job and yet they were trying to tell me the person was a perfect fit. This stuff does happen. Not all recruiters know what they are doing.

How did you find my name?

One of the things that people often want to ask a recruiter is “how did you find out about me?” In other words, where did they find your name? In the old days before the Internet and social media it was harder to find people but these days most of us have some track record online so it’s a lot easier to find people than previously so perhaps this isn’t such an important question afterall. When I first got into recruitment in 2000 I recall many people asking how I’d found their name and mostly I think it was because they wanted to ensure their current employer didn’t know they were looking for a new job. As time went on fewer and fewer people seemed to ask this question because many already had their resume posted online, used LinkedIn, Facebook, etc and were already easy to find.

The highway of life.

A few weeks ago I posted about a friend of mine who was up for a job that he was interested in and was well-into the interview process with and with the holidays approaching at that time, he was hoping to get the job and hear the good news before the end of the year so he could start 2011 fresh and with a new job to boot.

Unfortunately he didn’t get the job and found out that he was actually the back up candidate i.e. he finished second to the person who got the job. If the person who took the job had have turned the offer down, my friend most likely would have been offered the job.

In the job search business finishing second is pretty much the same as finishing last since like the last place finisher, you didn’t get the job either but I guess there is a small victory in that you did come close so it probably means you’re doing many things right in terms of how you interview.

It might also mean that should the person who got the job not work out I guess there is always a chance they could approach you again to reconsider you or alternatively if they ever have the need to hire another person for the same job perhaps you’ll have a leg up on that opportunity.

I’ve seen this happen before.

So for my friend – and for anyone who has ever been disappointed by not getting a job that they wanted – life goes on and so does your job search until you’re deemed to be the right person and until the right job comes along for you. Plus with the time of year that just passed, the holiday season during December can slow your job search down to a crawl for at least a few weeks. The loss of this job opportunity plus the fact that November and December were truly slow for my friend as far as his job search is concerned has seen him become a bit restless and upset over his lack of success.

Having said that, life goes on for all of us and so does your job search if you’re looking for a new job. Although it’s easy to say that you will stay motivated and effectively searching for a new job, the truth is that we all have our ups and downs that we have to deal with.

Over the holidays I continued to read online newspapers and keep abreast of things and as you’d expect the holiday season didn’t prevent people from getting into accidents, losing jobs, etc so as many of us were having a good time relaxing during the holiday season, many people were experiencing life-changing events and not necessarily for good reasons, events that some might have to deal with for the rest of their lives.

About Billy Idol

Here’s a 20-year old story and perhaps an obscure one if you don’t happen to be a fan of English rocker Billy Idol that might illustrate how life goes on. For some reason I remember this story well so perhaps it might serve to illustrate the point.

In 1990 around the time he had just finished recording a new album Billy Idol was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident and almost lost a leg. As it turned out, he kept all his appendages but was injured seriously enough that he lost a movie role that had been made for him in the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Further, the first video off his new album had to be shot from the waist up because he still couldn’t walk at the time.

In fact, when he starred in a subsequent video for his remake of the Doors classic song LA Woman later in 1990, he can be seen limping throughout the video and walking with a cane. So if you’ve ever seen the video and wonder why he was limping around with a cane, now you know!

So instead of taking 6 months or a year off and then doing his videos when he was 100% healthy, he kept working away – perhaps due to the disappointment of losing out on the movie role – but either way he certainly did something that you don’t normally see from a musician dealing with a temporary injury and that’s show the public the effects of that injury and in fact make a public record of it with his videos.

So if you find yourself depressed or upset about your current job situation or lack of a job, remember that it is a new year and while the reports I’m reading are suggesting that 2011 could be a mixed bag economy-wise, there is always the hope that a brand new year brings along with the expectation that at some point in time things are bound to get better for all of us.

And remember Billy Idol, too.

In the meantime, here’s the video for Billy Idol’s version of LA Woman with him limping around with a cane to help with your motivation in 2011. Personally I prefer the Doors version but that’s just me…

We’ve still got one week left in 2010 but with the holidays coming up and people’s focus probably going elsewhere for a few days or more, here are some things to think about that you can do for the upcoming year that can help to benefit your job searches, your career and by extension your life:

Turn over a new leaf in the new year

1. Stop tweaking: I’m a tweaker so I know this is an area I need to improve upon. By tweaking, I mean tweaking your resume, tweaking your cover letter, tweaking anything over and over again when you could be otherwise spending your time doing something more productive like meeting people who could positively influence your career. I constantly tweak my websites and posts but I’ve been trying to focus more on adding posts and good content and worrying about the really important things and less on making little changes here and there. Sure, making improvements is great and often necessary but so is looking at the bigger picture and actually getting stuff accomplished that will lead to a bigger payoff than simply tweaking what you’ve already done.

2. Get out and meet new people: Using the online social networks is great and it can pay off especially if you’re in a profession that values this sort of networking but actually meeting new people face-to-face is a tried and true method that works too. Social media is evolving and over the past few days, we’ve learned that Yahoo is shutting down Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, and AltaVista with several other services potentially getting shut down too. It seems that the social networks are consolidating as consumers have generally decided that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn tend to be the ones that they use for work purposes. These also tend to among the higher profile networks for those of us who really couldn’t be bothered signing up for every new one that pops up. While spending time on some of the more popular career-oriented networks can help your career, the last thing you want to do is focus the majority of your job search using these services. And at the end of the day, job interviews tend to be held face-to-face, not through an Internet connection.

3. Ask for help: Another area I have personal experience with…I tend to be someone who tries to do things myself because I like not to have to rely on other people plus I like the feeling of accomplishing things on my own. Having said that, no one wants to be a jack of all trades and master of none and the fact is that we will never know everything. There is always someone else who knows more about a topic than we do and we shouldn’t feel like we shouldn’t ask for help when the time comes. By asking for help, it could be asking someone specific – like a peer, colleague, manager, friend or mentor – or it could be consulting the web. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been trying to figure something out and simply typed what I’m looking for into Google (my favorite search engine truth be told) and find that I can quickly find the answer rather than having to search for it myself. Just yesterday I was trying to figure out how to do some programming work on another website and not being a programmer by trade but someone who likes to dabble, I spent some time trying to figure it out and then simply typed my problem into Google…and had the answer about 1 minute later. You won’t always get your problems solved through a search engine but if you’re unsure about something related to your career, don’t be afraid to ask for assistance from someone who can help.

Last year I wrote a post that gave a few examples of how to stand out from the crowd when applying for jobs. I gave a specific example that I thought was pretty clever that I’d once read about and also gave an example of something I did when working overseas when I was beginning my career that helped me get the foot in the door when I was searching for my first job.

These days, being a bit clever and doing something a bit different that makes you stand out for a good reason can often help separate you from the other hundreds of people possibly applying for the same jobs you are.

Here are a few things I’ve seen while working as a recruiter than made me take a second look at a person’s resume:

1. Value Offered statement: This is used in place of a Career Objective. On my other career website, I get dozens of submissions weekly from people who submit their career objective and get a free critique from me and I can honestly say that most of them that are submitted are not that good. If you hate writing a career objective and can’t write anything interesting, try switching to a Value Offered statement instead since it forces you (as the name would suggest) to focus on what you offer the employer which is the purpose of the Career Objective. Here is an example of a Value Offered statement that someone in sales might use when applying for an IT sales job by way of example:

“I will increase your revenues and profitability by using consultative selling techniques to establish relationships with key decision-makers in your target market. I have a solid understanding of Internet technologies and concepts including SEO having built and operated several of my own websites as well as previously operating an Internet-based company that built software and subscription-based websites.”

I think something like this reads a lot better than the standard Career Objective that many people (most people?) write i.e. “To work in a dynamic organization with a stimulating work environment where my skills and knowledge can be developed.”

2. Testimonials: I’ve seen more and more people using italicized quotes from former manager or colleagues in their cover letter or resume that helps to show the reader that they are a person that the reader needs to interview and I think this is a great idea. Of course, you want to ensure that the person you’re quoting is actually happy to be quoted just in case the hiring manager wants to follow up with them to confirm what they said about you! When I did references as a recruiter, I typed up the answers in a Word document and used to include direct quotes from the reference that I’d send over to the hiring manager for a particular job candidate so using a testimonial in the right way in your cover letter or resume might just help to separate you from other people applying for the same job.

3. A mission statement or slogan: I have to admit I don’t pay much attention to corporate mission statements because they tend to be the standard “we want to be nice to our customers and the environment and blah blah blah” and don’t say anything particularly interesting or creative. Or they try to be funny or clever and just end up looking silly. Having said that, perhaps you can come up with something interesting and professional that a hiring manager might appreciate and that will capture their attention. You could use a mission statement basically like a title on your resume underneath your name that highlights what you bring to the table i.e. if you’re a sales rep, you might include something like:

“Committed to retaining existing customers with a knack for prospecting and developing new profitable accounts.”

With a slogan, you might find that this could be appealing if you are looking for a job in a creative business (advertising, media, etc) or are just trying to stand out a bit in a clever and professional way and illustrate your imagination and skills i.e. if you’re a department manager, you might say something like:

“Building teams, overachieving sales budgets and controlling expenses” which might help to pique the reader’s interest a bit to keep reading your resume.

One of these methods might just help to get your resume read for a few extra seconds, just like my resume calendar did.

With people often finding job searching difficult these days and interviews hard to come by, the last thing you want to do is ruin your chances at a job by bringing up something that you shouldn’t have mentioned. In that regard, here are some things to avoid bringing up during the job interview:

1. Stuff that you want: Money, benefits, vacation time, expense account, car allowance, overtime, etc. These are all things to avoid asking about during the job interview. Money and other tangible benefits will come up should the company want to make you an offer so it does have its place, but asking about it can often hurt you. I’ve heard of people asking what the job pays within minutes of the interview starting and this typically leads the interviewer to believe that the person is solely money-motivated and often this alone ruins the person’s chances at the job. Not only can asking about money and benefits ruin your chances at a job, stating what you’re looking for can result it you getting less than what the employer would have otherwise given you had you waited for them to bring the subject up first.

2. Personal stuff: While making a connection with the interviewer with small talk can often help your chances at getting a job, saying too much and getting too personal can hurt you. Talking about religion, political leanings and things of that nature serves no purpose other than to possibly rule you out for a job.

3. Gossip or bad comments: Gossiping or making negative comments about a previous employer is a big no-no. The last thing a company wants to do is hire someone they think will say bad things about them behind their back should they hire this person.

4. Spilling company secrets: These days, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble by violating non-disclosure agreements and things of that nature. If you’re in an interview and are asked to divulge things about your current employer that you aren’t supposed to, you don’t want to go down this route. If you find that you’re being pushed for this sort of information by the interviewer(s) you might wonder if this company really wants to hire you or just get information from you and if it’s the latter, you’ve probably discovered that this isn’t really a company you really want to work for after all.

5. Health-related stuff: You’re not required to disclose if you’re pregnant or are planning on becoming pregnant nor are you required to disclose health issues that you might have that have nothing to do with the job requirements. Bringing up things that can be used against you in a negative way can cost you job opportunities and serve no purpose for mentioning in the first place.