What’s the Most Worthwhile Short-Term Job?… A Job-Hunting Expert

Getting the job you really want requires a lot of planning, research and preparation — every day, for at least a few hours per day. Maybe you’ve heard it said before, because it’s true: Getting a job, especially a job you want, is a full-time job in itself.

Every customer of ours should learn this crucial lesson. Seriously pursuing a job you want means covering every possible detail — starting with how you define yourself and your skills, to how you react and conduct yourself during and after interviews. I’m increasingly meeting with individuals confronting a fact that’s all too common in the current job market: Losing the long-held job where you’ve built and refined much of your work skills and then having to face sudden uncertainty about your employment future.

This is when finding a new job often becomes a matter of rebranding the skills you have to attract and win over employers unfamiliar with you or what you did at your previous job.

What’s Rebranding? New Emphasis for a New Start

Rebranding is a marketing-oriented process by which a product or service developed with one brand or company is marketed and distributed with a different identity. The same concept applies to a working professional developed his or her talents at one job and must rebrand them to secure another job. When looking for work, rebranding your skills requires you to know exactly what you want. Put together a checklist of what you are pursuing in the job market.

Networking: Know Who Knows Those You Need to Know

Respected researchers have found that more than 80 percent of today’s jobs are not advertised. This is what’s known as the hidden job market. And networking is the key to finding this hidden job market.

Networking is not really about who you know, but making sure you know “who knows who” — such as who’s looking to hire someone, or who works in the industry or at the company where you’d like to work. A career transition study found that 64 percent of the 7,500 people surveyed said they found their new jobs through networking. And, of course, there’s a new, dynamic and rapidly growing expansion to the timeless art of networking.

New and Improved Networking

Yes, social networking works and makes a valuable tool in the science of online job hunting. Do some online homework on career-based social networks. You’ll soon find that the key to attracting and holding employers’ interest is to post a generous helping of professional information rather than your casual, spare time details. Make it brief, simple and direct.

For example, Twitter limits you to 140 characters per “tweet.” With Twitter, and several other social networking sites, you’ll learn to adapt to the informal customs commonly used by social networks. But once you understand the basic social networking customs, make your social networking as unique as possible. Your ultimate goal as a social networker is to have employers already knowing you by name before you physically meet them in that first interview.

For more detailed information on turning a job hunt into a successful job, visit our Website for more Job Search Tips or view our upcoming Job Search Seminars schedule at wrksolutions.com/jobs/jobfairs.asp