From the Blog: New Year, New Job
by Jessie Richardson, Contributing Writer
Article Sponsored by: Colorado Springs Utilities
Like it or not, 2010 is here. Whether you’ve been pounding the job search pavement for months or your military retirement looms on the distant horizon, there is no better time to rethink, or start thinking about, your job search strategy and military resume. Make it your New Year’s resolution to establish an up-to-date job search strategy (or refresh an existing one) to better reflect current trends in the job market and the latest career industry advice. Here are some thoughts to get you started:
Get with the times. Know where the jobs are. Network. It’s time to face the facts. Nearly everyone is using social networking web sites these days. I recently read an article that stated at last count, LinkedIn had over 60 million users. LinkedIn and similar sites, which are all about networking and socializing in an unfamiliar environment, can be intimidating. Make it your New Year’s resolution to get with the times and push yourself outside of your comfort zone. And don’t overlook companies like Bradley-Morris, Inc. and CivilianJobs.com. These leaders in placing military-experienced job seekers into the Fortune 1000 and emerging company sectors have done and will continue to do a substantial amount of corporate networking on behalf of military talent.
Understand your audience. Develop your brand. Gone are the days of the monotonous objective statement – they are out; personal branding is in. Looking for a job is a sales situation. You are your product. To effectively brand your product, you must know your audience. Got your eye on that dream job with a stable company? Resolve to do some research. What are their two biggest needs right now that you could potentially fill? At Military Resumes, a professional military resume writer can align the “who you are” with the “what they need” in your most important marketing tool – your military resume. Let’s say that you are a career military recruiter looking to join an exciting start-up company. Your brand might be: “Seasoned Recruiter and Marketing Guru… Offering to drive growth by generating qualified leads, penetrating territories, and closing the toughest sales, consistently!”. Now carry your brand forward in your social networking profiles.
Treat your job search like a game. Treat your job search like a game and plan to win. Set a goal for 2010. Maybe your goal is to get a job before you retire in March. Set up a strategy where you must do X number of things per day. Keep running totals, complete with which actions scored better results than others. For example, if setting up a meeting over coffee with just one individual lands more contacts and job referrals than sending out 30 e-mails, adjust your strategy accordingly. Everyone has a game-playing style that works for them. Find out which job search actions work best for you and focus on using them to get you to the winner’s circle.
Jessie Richardson, CPRW, is director of resume services at MilitaryResumes.com, the military-to-civilian transition experts. She is a Naval Academy graduate and a regular commentator on job search best practices for military-experienced job seekers. Read more transition advice online at the MilitarytoCivilian.com blog.
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