As you market yourself to potential employers, always be looking for ways to standout and differentiate yourself from other applicants. For some ideas about how to do that, see “Do Your Due Diligence” (Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2012 – non-subscribers may need to click here).
What are some other non-traditional job search tips you can share?
Fortune magazine just published its list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” (January 20, 2012). The usual players — Google, Boston Consulting Group, SAS Institute, and Wegmans Food Markets — top the list again. What I really like about this year’s list is a slide show feature titled “They’re Hiring.” This feature lists 25 companies that have at least 700 job openings. Even better, each featured company includes a section where one of the company’s recruiters offers “Secrets to impressing their recruiters.” This is good stuff to know as you prepare your personal marketing plan.
Scroll through all 25 companies in the “They’re Hiring” slide show and read the advice offered by each company’s recruiter. How will this help you in your job search?
Fast Company magazine often takes an idea and pushes the boundaries — but I find their observations are usually prescient. They point out that the business world is becoming increasingly chaotic — making career planning darn near impossible, at least in the long-term. This brave new world rewards the agile and opportunistic. This article, “This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business” (January 12, 2012) introduces you to seven people — representing a broad demographic cross-section — who are thriving in this macroenvironment. The article suggests the skills that may be needed as well. A companion article, “The Four-Year Career” describes a 28-year old woman’s early career path (Fast Company, January 12, 2012). The idea here is that our students should probably be career planning for relatively short time horizons — four years as opposed to twenty.
For another perspective on career planning, read “To Find Happiness, Forget About Passion” (HBR Blog Network, January 13, 2012) the author suggests that young people should be focused on problems they can contribute to solving. Reading the comments (189 and counting as of today) — will give you a much richer perspective.
As you develop your personal marketing plan, make sure you understand the crazy macroenvironment you are heading into. Make sure you have the attitude, expectations, and skills needed in this new world.
Human beings are actually not very rational decision makers — there is a great deal of evidence to that effect. We are subject to predictable biases. Increased computing power and better databases are allowing companies to use analytics and make better (unbiased) decisions. This is sparking the rise of new companies that can analyze data and some new applications. You can read more in “So, What’s Your Algorithm?” (Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2011 – non-subscribers may need to click here).
Read this article and think about how other firms (beyond the Schwan’s example in the article) could use “big data” to make better marketing decisions? Also, how do you think trends like this will impact your future career — answer by referencing your career?
The Wall Street Journal asked some advertising execs what they see coming in 2012 — and you can read about it in “*&%@#! and Other Ads Trends for 2012” (January 4, 2012 – non-subscribers may need to click here) — or by watching the video below.
Choose one of the trends and evaluate its impact on your career planning. What can you do differently to better position yourself for the future — assuming the trend you pick is right? Part of the idea of this exercise is to encourage you to be forward-looking in your career planning. The world is changing rapidly, so you want to be anticipating and preparing for the future.
There are more and more examples of creative resumes? Mashable has posted a couple of sets of examples with “10 Creative Social Media Resumes To Learn From” (May 20, 2011) and “7 Ingenious Resumes That Will Make Your Rethink Your CV,” (June 16, 2011). A couple of specific examples from these articles include Graeme Anthony’s CVIV below and Nadia Kouri’s resume which appears to utilize a service called Beyond Credentials.
Here is my take. I think that this type of resume might be a nice addition to a traditional resume and cover letter — especially for marketing majors and possibly CIS majors who do the programming themselves. You could provide a link to one of these in your paper resume and cover letter. Let’s think about the ties to marketing strategy planning and the personal marketing plan. First, we need to understand how your customers (potential employers) conduct the hiring process and what they are looking for. Many accounting firms probably are not looking for creativity — at least not this type. You also want to think about how you are positioning yourself to potential employers — are you trying to demonstrate creativity, artistic or design skills, or an in-depth understanding of social media? These types of resumes might offer a perfect forum. The cover letter and paper resume may still be the way to attract attention, but these additional tools might both differentiate you from the pack while also obtaining future employers’ interest, desire, and action. Also, if you are going to do this — take your time and make it high quality. Mistakes in spelling or grammar, a cheap looking website, or other issues might send the wrong message and do you more harm than good.
What do you think of these approaches? Should students use them? How? Have you seen any other good examples?
Brothers Dan and Chip Heath have just published their third book, The Myth of the Garage (link through for a free copy of the e-book). I have not read this book yet, but I really enjoyed the first two — Switch and Made to Stick. In this short article at Slate “Four Excellent Habits,” (September 12, 2011) the Heaths offer our principles that you might use to guide your career choice. Many of you are thinking about your future career, perhaps writing your personal marketing plan. I think you will find this article contains some good insights on that process.
Good question — especially if you think this might be a possible future career. In this article, “How researchers explain their profession at a cocktail party,” (Quirks, November 2011), you can read a wide range of answers from those in the research profession. Some of these are serious and some are funny (at least to researchers). Either way, they give some insight into this profession and you might find it insightful if you are considering pursuing a career in market research.
Many readers of this blog are current or recent college students, who are constantly looking for keys to career success. While it is never to late to learn how, youth is a great time to learn about and develop habits that lead to success.
A recent episode of the Harvard Business Review Ideacast (one of my favorite podcasts) included an 18 minute interview with motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. Halvorson talked about decades of research that lead to an HBR blog post, “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently” (February 25, 2011), that eventually became one of the most popular ever at the site. Halvorson’s list includes:
Halvorson subsequently expands on each of these findings in her short (but inexpensive at just $3.19) e-book, Nine Things Successful People Do Differently. While the book is short — each of the nine “things” is expanded in just 2-3 pages in the short book — I think the subject matter is useful. So if the blog post piques your interest, the book might be worth the investment.
What do you think of the “Nine Things”? Do some of them surprise you? How can you use some of them to become more successful?
Many readers of L4Ps are looking for jobs — or perhaps soon will be. Social media is becoming increasingly influential in the job search process. Most of you already know about LinkedIn — but you might want to think about Facebook and Twitter as well. While these tools are especially important for marketing jobs, other job-seekers might want to consider the impact of social media on the job search. I know the big public accounting firms have set up Facebook pages to interact with job candidates.
These days you have to assume that prospective employers will look at your Facebook profile. So you might want to clean it up. You might also want to “like” and follow companies you are interested in working for — and for many potential employers, Facebook is an easy way to do that. Being informed about the company will help you decide if this is a good company for you — and will make you more knowledgeable in a job interview. This short article at Social Media Today, “How Social Media Will Help Your Job Search” (September 18, 2011) is a good start and includes links to other articles for more insight.
For an extreme example of how social media, check out what Michael Epstein did. Michael wanted a job at Google — badly. So he developed a website to promote directly to Google — googlepleasehire.me. Fun and funny — Michael didn’t get hired by Google but he received his “dream job.” What more can you ask for? Read more at his website. Thanks to my student Mike Selander for passing Michael Epstein’s story along.
What do you think of these approaches? Do you have any other tips for how you can use social media in the job search?
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