Landing a Job in the Recession

April 2, 2009 10 Comments

Several of my friends have e-mailed me asking for my advice on how to get a job in this recession. I hope these answers help you get the job you want, not just a job you need.

1) Ask yourself the big, tough question: What is your purpose on this planet? Now that you have a little (maybe a lot) of time to reflect, take the time to dig deep into your soul and find your deepest purpose and what you are most passionate about. This is especially important now as you may be asked to change careers. Hopefully you didn’t let yourself be identified by your position in the past. If you did, now is the time to let go and move forward.

2) What are the skills you have that you can apply to that purpose? No doubt you’ve learned a LOT over the last 5/10/20 years. Take a skills inventory of all the things you’ve learned. Include as many specific examples as you can. Folks will want specific proof that you’ve mastered these skills.

3) Do these skills readily translate to a new position? Look at the positions you’ve been applying to. Do your skills fit, or are they lacking? Perhaps you need to broaden your search, or perhaps you need to change the language you’re using.

Start to think like a human search engine: Use the words for the position you are applying for. If they say client service, and you would normally say customer service, change to client service. 

3a) If not…do you need to take some time to learn new skills (and possible take an intermediate position)? Maybe now is the time to go back to school and learn some new skills? Or maybe now is the time to take a part-time position to fill the skill and income gap between what you had and unemployment? Maybe you could even do some freelance work, or find someone to study under for an unpaid internship? Be creative and think hard about what you need and what you already know.

4) Identify which companies you want to work for. Don’t worry as much about position, think about the companies that have the values you value, or the next jump may also be short term. 

4a) Who in your network knows someone in the companies you want to work in? Use LinkedIn or Plaxo to search for folks who are directly connected to these folks. If you’re not using LinkedIn or Plaxo, I be writing more on how to use these tools soon.

4b) Ask for specific help on your search.

Example: “Phil, I see you know Yolanda at XYZ Company. Can you introduce her to me and let her know I am interested in ABC position?” if a position exists.

Or, ask for an introduction and explain WHY you are interested in the company (not just position, but think values and culture). 

Other things to do as you are looking for work, to get you back on folks radar:

  • Write endorsements for folks you’ve enjoyed working with, via LinkedIn or otherwise.
  • Use LinkedIn to ask for endorsements from folks you know you’ve helped with. 
  • Create your own blog (http://wordpress.com is free and easy) and start writing about your values, purpose, mission. Make sure to put a link to your LinkedIn account in the sidebar. Create a nice about page with an informal picture of you, and make sure you have a nice professional email address (gmail.com is free and not full up yet) to send stuff out on behalf of. 

Write…write…write… 
Read…read…read… 

Repeat above steps until you land the job. 

What are YOUR best tips for landing a job in the recession?

Grow Your Online Community (5 Ways)

March 13, 2009 8 Comments

A friend of mine recently asked this question:

“On a whim, I started a college alumni group on LinkedIn (because there wasn’t one).  With no effort on my part, it has grown to 513 members which I think is pretty solid (I also co-founded another group with 240 members, and founded 2 other groups that have less than 50 members each).  The question I have is “now what”?  What can I do with this group to grow it, create value for members, and become more than an icon in a LinkedIn profile.  I’m trying to think of ideas that won’t become a full time job for, so perhaps soliciting for a “alumni of the month” story or creating a news letter from Alunmi supplied stories (I would just be an editor, not too hard).”

Great question, and some good suggestions to start with!

It got me thinking, what ELSE would I do to grow my LinkedIn community? After thinking a bit about it, I came up with 5 more ideas.

5 Ways to Grow Your Online Community

  • Create a Ning.com community for each group, and invite all the folks there to start there own conversation. Seed it with a few topics/posts, then invite folks to discuss things and create their own things. Then, set a few folks up as admins and let it do it’s own thing (with some moderation and commenting from you). While this used to be free, it now costs $20 or more a month. Still an excellent option if you’re not a programmer.
  • Create (and seed with ideas) a few topics on a LinkedIn group and get folks helping each other. The more people you can connect together virtually, the more you can help each other.
  • Create a live meet-up where everyone can get together and share things. There’s little better than getting together in person to make your online community sing.
  • Create special business cards just for the group, so when you meet up with someone who would “fit in” you could give them that card and invite them in.
  • Set up a free poll (one option is at http://surveymonkey.com and ask some questions of your existing group.

    And one more way to grow your online community:

  • Create a free ebook that only members of your community get access to, or only members can contribute to. Great examples of this can be found in David Zinger’s Employee Engagement Network (which I am a member of).

    What would YOU do to  grow your online community?