The New Job Security

Ask yourself what you can do for the company
Candidates should stop chasing job ads and start marketing themselves to employers: author
By Kim Covert, Postmedia News October 16, 2010

People don't create job openings, problems do. And if you can market yourself as the solution to a problem, chances are you'll be able to create a job where there wasn't one before.

Welcome to the new job security: creating your own job opportunities. And that means, however counterintuitive it might sound, that your job search isn't about you.

That's a major message in the revised edition of The New Job Security: The 5 best strategies for taking control of your career.

Author Pam Lassiter says the art of the job search has changed dramatically since she originally published the book in 2002.

"Technology is the obvious answer, but it's not just technology, it's how our communication patterns change, too. So we're shifting as people -how we talk, how much time we want to spend thinking about something, how much bandwidth people get from us when we want to talk to them. It's affecting career change as well."

That's why No. 3 on her list of five strategies for taking control of your career is to stop looking for a job.

"We could lower the unemployment rate if people didn't chase job openings as actively," says Lassiter during a phone interview from Massachusetts. The unemployment rate is higher in the U.S. than in Canada and the economic situation there more dire, but the principle holds north of the border as well -applying to advertised job openings is a sort of masochism.

"People are desperate for work, they sit in front of their computers during the day, they will fire off 100 responses to job openings, feel like they have worked really hard, but in reality they're not going to get responses to hardly any of them," says Lassiter.

"That's the sad part. There's a three per cent interview rate for responses to help-wanted ads. Three."

(That statistic also holds true for those in the dating world, Lassiter says with a laugh -- and some authority.)

If you're one of those poor shmoes still looking at the job boards and help-wanted listings, don't kick yourself too hard -professionals above your pay scale are doing that, too.

"We think that because it is posted that it's a real ad and people are paying attention to us on the other side.

"And on the other side, if a person is getting 1,000 responses to an ad, which isn't unusual, the odds of your being found are slim-to-none."

The majority of jobs these days are found through networking, says Lassiter, but not all networking strategies are created equal.

"People are typically running after their friends and sometimes the best connections they have saying, 'I need a job, I just got laid off -it's all about me'," says Lassiter. "There are two fallacies there, basically. Chasing specific job openings and playing on the sympathy or 'it's all about me.'"

The secret to finding the job you want is to identify the company you want to work for, identify a problem within that company that you can help fix, and then use your network to get your foot in the door. Don't use up your best connections too early and, just like in dating, try not to appear too desperate.

"I try to get people to think about what business challenge might they have some ideas about and following the problems to be solved and not the job openings," says Lassiter, who advises not ignoring job ads altogether, but greatly reducing the time spent chasing them down.

Lassiter's advice is based on marketing strategy. People looking for a job should consider themselves as the product, and potential employers as the consumers. And just like any successful product, you have to be able to sell yourself as something the consumer needs --and recognizes. You need to be able to talk your target industry's talk and walk its walk.

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BEST STRATEGIES

According to Pam Lassiter, who has just published a revised edition of her book The New Job Security: The 5 best strategies for taking control of your career, the way we search for jobs has changed radically.

Lassiter says the five keys to a successful job search are:

1. Send clear signals -- Develop a plan for your job search and then follow it.

2. Market for mutual benefit -- Telling a company you have an idea for increasing profitability makes you a more attractive interview than the person petitioning for a job.

3. Stop looking for jobs -- Chasing down and answering job ads is a sad and unfruitful exercise, says Lassiter. "The number of approved openings is finite. The number of problems to be solved is infinite."

4. Build sustainable networks -- Build a network that can and will help you over the long term.

5. Negotiate in round rooms -- Don't get backed into a corner. "Negotiating strategies are simple and often require only that you use the right vocabulary at the right time," writes Lassiter.


Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/yourself+what+company/3682513/story.html#ixzz12rcBCHHH

MY THOUGHTS

that's a staggering, depressing figure - 3% chance of getting an interview!!!i do agree that having the right connect is key. if you are marketable. even if you're a friend of the country's president, you won't get referred if you have nothing going for you. the best thing todo when out of ajob is to keep active. get as much and learn as much as you can from all the free time you have.