Good News for Executive Job Seekers

ManageSmarter reports that ExecuNet released their quarterly Executive Employee Report yesterday profiling trends in the executive employment/recruiting arenas. The good news is that they found 81% of recruiters surveyed expect an increase in job orders over the next three months. More than 50% of these firms noted they intend to hire additional recruiting staff to help with the increased workload.

What does this mean to you? If you haven't already done so, now is definitely the time to begin "recruiting" recruiters to work with. In spite of economic worries such as an impending recession, now is a superlative time to launching a job search or kicking a current search into high gear.

The report doesn't say is what is driving this increase in job orders, but the upcoming holiday season and the hiring boom that usually occurs in January-February each year are probable contributing factors.

One final note: the report also mentions that life sciences, healthcare, and high tech industries may be the hottest labor markets in the new year. Read the full article for yourself.

Search & Shop For Your Favorite Charity

Here's a lovely idea: Go about your usual online searching and/or shopping, but direct a percentage of revenues produced from both to your favorite charity. How? Via GoodSearch.com.

When you use GoodSearch as your preferred search engine - say when you're doing employer research - you can direct them to deposit a percentage of their advertising revenues from that search to your favorite not-for-profit. If your favorite charity isn't already listed, you can nominate or alert them to this chance to earn donations without doing a single blessed thing. There's no cost to you and no costs to involved not-for-profits.

You can benefit your chosen charity even more by using the GoodShop at GoodSearch. They've teamed up with major retailers (eBay, Barnes & Noble, Target, Old Navy, Sears, and Wal-Mart, to mention but a few) to generate additional donations. Go to the GoodShop at GoodSearch and click on the retailer you want to shop. Shop as you normally would online and a percentage of your purchases will be donated to your selected not-for-profit, again with no fees to you or to them.

Is this the ultimate socially-conscious win/win or what?

ERR's September Deals of the Month

Looking for a bargain? Here are two:

For New Clients:

• Order a new resume and cover letter package by September 30, 2007 and receive a 25% discount on your order.
  To get started, request your free Executive Resume & Cover Letter Review.
  

For Current or Past Clients:

• September is National Update Your Resume Month and to celebrate, ERR is offering a 30% discount on resume update services for all current and past clients [requires the previous purchase of a resume from ERR or our subsidiaries] through September 30, 2007.
  Email us to see if you qualify.

WorkTree Members-Only Resources

WorkTree is a members-only search engine offering a wide range of helpful resources in exchange for their $47 fee for 3 months of service. Membership includes access to:

• 7,000+ recruiter database
• The ability to search 3 million jobs in seconds
• 100+ industry sites and 100+ national job sites
• A wealth of regional and government job sites
• International job sites for 30+ countries
• Access to 30,000+ employer websites/job boards as well as links to Fortune 1,000 company sites/job boards

Best of all, WorkTree will extend your membership for free for an additional 3 months if you haven't found a job by the time your membership expires.

Manage Your Online Image Wisely

I reported a few weeks ago that hiring managers are increasingly using Google to check out candidates online before inviting them in for interviews or offering them jobs. In case you thought that was nothing to be concerned about, here's more news on the same subject.

NDTV.com reports on a recent study by CareerBuilder which found that 26% of managers acknowledge using Google to explore the online presence of job candidates and 12% of supervisors also tapped social networking sites like Facebook as part of their hiring process. Of the latter, a surprising 63% opted not to hire a candidate based on what they learned about that person online.

The most common reason managers elect not to hire those they've checked out online? Lying about qualifications and criminal offenses. (When will job seekers learn that it never pays to lie?)

The CareerBuilder study also found that 64% of hiring managers utilized online background info as a way to confirm their hiring decisions. Some - about 40% - like to see evidence that candidates are "well-rounded" and have a "wide range of interests".

If you fear that you may have detrimental information about you available online, you might want to check into services like ReputationDefender or DefendMyName. For a fee either services will evaluate your online reputation and strategize ways to clean up or hide negative findings.

It is shockingly easy to discover all kinds of private things out about dates, friends, and yes, even job seekers. What does your online presence communicate about you?

Internet-Only Job Searches Take 3 Times Longer

Most job seekers I speak with are astounded to learn that only 4% of job seekers who use the Net actually find jobs that way. They'd be even more astounded, then to read the results of a recent job search study by MilitaryJobHunts.

MJH analyzed the results of 600 job searches and found:

In a group of about 400 military job hunters who solely used the Internet as their job search method, the average job hunt was 7.5 months. In a group of about 200 job hunters who used the Internet along with job networking, personal referrals, and job fairs, the average time in a career transition was 2.5 months.

Interesting, right? Now if you're thinking that these results apply to veterans only, think again - all evidence points to agreement with MJH's findings. Those job seekers most likely to find a job online are those seeking technical occupations (computer programmers, LAN/WAN networkers and the like). If you are not seeking such a job, you are better off using the Internet to:

• Source new employers to contact
• Research companies
• Get bio information on key contacts in targeted companies
• Expand your network in new directions
• Do your own salary research
• Pinpoint new key words to use in your self-marketing materials
• Update your career brand

Internet job searching is seductive, no doubt about it. Use it strategically, but be careful to avoid allowing the Net to sabotage your search.

Prevent Social Networking Sites From Ruining Your Job Search

This post may seem more like advice for Gen Xers, but I urge any job seeker who uses social networking sites such as LinkedIn or blogginf services to take note: Your online identity can destroy your candidacy for some jobs.

Why? Simple, according to a recent press release from Adecco - recruiters and hiring managers are routinely "googling" candidates before calling them to conduct informal background research. What happens if, while doing so, the recruiter or hiring manager happens upon a blog rage you thought was private? Or a non-PG rated background at My Space? Or a sarcastic comment you made in a bulletin board?

Adecco points out that while these kinds of background material can be harmful, the opposite is also true - positive blog posts, forum comments, articles, and the like can help shape an employer's persepctive of you and potentially lead to an interview you might not have otherwise achieved.

What is critical to remember these days is that career branding doesn't simply encompass resumes, cover letters, and interviews. It also includes your Internet presence - for better or for worse. Be creative in sharing your expertise across the web and that creativity can help extend your reach into the Hidden Job Market. As Adecco points out, it may be wise to "google" yourself to see what kind of identity trail you've left online. Not a bad idea, is it?

News Tidbits

• Indeed.com has launched a new job search portal in the UK, its third national site release.
• CNNMoney cited a Challenger, Gray, & Christmas report that job seekers found jobs 17% faster this Spring than in the previous quarter. The overall median time to re-employment in the US is down to 3 months from a high of 4.2 months in late 2006. There's even better news, though, for 50+ aged job seekers - their job search time reduced 32% over the previous quarter. Sometimes it pays to be middle aged!
• Hound.com is a new entry to the constantly-expanding range of job search portals, and one most job seekers should take a serious look at. This job search engine only searches employer websites for open positions. The portal permits no advertising on its site and intends to transform Internet job search practices by becoming the "purest" job board in the world. It is a relief to the eye to sift through long lists of job openings without having to close pop-up windows and avoid context-driven ads. While registration isn't required to use Hound.com, it is necessary if you want to set up automated search agents.

A New Approach to Online Job Searching

Itzbig.com claims that 85% of job seekers are unhappy with the current job engines. They don't list a source for that statistic, but I wouldn't be surprised if 85% was an underestimate. Never heard of itzbig? That's because they're in beta and have only launched in Texas as yet ... but keep an eye on them, because they could be the next big thing in online job engines.

Itzbig is a job engine with a twist. Instead of sourcing job leads in new ways, they have designed a candidate matching system to help job seekers and hiring managers connect. This job engine targets currently employed professionals who aren't in active job search mode, but want to keep their finger on the pulse of the labor market. Candidates fill out an online survey upon registration and are matched with hiring employers based on that data. Thus, itzbig allows employers to search for candidates based on one or more specific skill sets. And, they also offer candidates the chance to chat with hiring managers in real-time.

Itzbig plans to expand rapidly and expects to be available in many major cities throughout the U.S. in coming months. Registration is free to job seekers.

New Survey: What Job Seekers Really Want

Croner Consulting, a UK-based consulting firm, today released the results of a survey comparing what hiring employers think job seekers want and what job seekers actually want. Their most nteresting results:

What Surveyed Employers Think You Want:

• Strong company reputation [65.1%]
• Workplace culture/environment [54.5%]
• Staff development initiatives [52%]

What Surveyed Job Seekers Want:

• Preferred location of work [47%]
• Holiday/vacation time [43%]
• Flexible work hours [39%]
• Bonuses [39%]
• Workplace culture [38%]
• Staff development [28%]

What's missing from the top 6 list of job seeker desires? Salary and benefits.

What's interesting about the top 3 list of job seeker desires? They all relate to life/work balance.

The obvious mismatch between what job seekers are looking for and what employers think they want may help explain why so many companies still struggle with their recruiting efforts. Also interesting, though, is that employers value staff development (and perhaps find it necessary?), yet it rates lower for job seekers.

Two conclusions about this research seem plausible:

1. If you want to get an employer's attention in the hiring process, make sure you comment on their reputation and ask questions about their workplace culture and staff development focus.
2. If your desires mirror those of the job seekers surveyed by Croner, make sure you inquire about and strategically negotiate telecommuting options, holiday/vacation days, flexible work hours, and company bonus structure.

Two Job Boards Relaunched

Two established job engines have relaunched their portals with an eye to drawing in new business:

• If you have a graduate degree and some real-world work experience, then make sure you check out Second Post. This job search engine specializes in serving professionals with strong educational backgrounds and more-than-entry-level work experience. Second Post features hand-selected job postings and reveals the hiring employer in each and every listing.
• Nelson Jobs is a regional job board serving Northern California. One of their unique features is that they pledge to contact job seekers who use their board within 48 hours for placement assistance. They also feature a tracking system to help smooth candidate job searches and use a shopping cart system to track candidate job interests.

Let me know what you think of one or both of these resources. Are they worth checking out?

Two New Resources for Mid-Career Job Seekers

It doesn't take much career experience before you figure out that the quality of the match between you and a prospective employer is one of - if not the - most important factors in creating career success. But how do you do that?



Until now, matching yourself to an employer has been a tedious process often speeded up with the aid and guidance of a Career Coach. But there's a new resource online that may help some of you - Climber.com. Climber touts itself as a "dating service for jobs". You open a free profile with them, complete a values assessment, then they use that to match you with prospective employers who have what you want. Great idea, yes?



I haven't yet had a chance to preview Climber's assessment process, but I will, and soon. Most of the time standardized values assessments are limiting in their ability to help job seekers pinpoint what they want most in their life, but who knows ... perhaps Climber is different. In the meantime, check it out for yourself, and let me know what you think by posting a comment here.



Another new website, Layoffspace.com, targets the recently riffed by serving as a kind of MySpace for mid-career professionals. This social networking site helps the unemployed to network via blogs, chats, job fair/event listings, and articles. Visiting Layoffspace would also be a great way to sample the expertise of Career Coaches who hang out there to assist job seekers. Check it out!

Monster Seeks to Expand Its Reach

Monster.com is growing by leaps and bounds. Like CareerBuilder.com, Monster is seeking to localize its job search offerings by establishing co-branded sites in large urban locations.

Monster has recently signed co-branding deals with Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, Community Newspaper Holdings, owner of 93 daily U.S. newspapers, and Internet Broadcasting, owner of local news stations websites. Altogether, Monster will be launching more than 200 local or regional sites throughout the United States.

What does this mean for you? That Monster, like CareerBuilder, will draw its job postings from many more local sites and will, in turn, make its job listings available to more job seekers on a localized basis. That may mean more sites to search, but it may also mean that local searches on Monster may produce better results.

Let's wait and see!

Organize Your Job Search

Many job seekers are unaware of the emerging wealth of software tools designed to organize and structure job searches. One of the newest entries is CVitae, freeware designed to help you design your resumes/cover letters, capture job posting data, and streamline the process of applying for jobs online.

Job search software aims to put the power of automation at the job seeker's fingertips. Some gather and organize your networking contacts while others source job leads for you while you sleep. Still others partially automate the process of uploading your resume to job boards/employer websites or completing online applications for you.

CVitae is free, but looks a bit limited to me. But for the job seeker just getting started with organizational software, this may be just the ticket. After all, who has time to learn a whole new software system in addition to managing an effective job search?

If you like your software a bit more robust, consider some of the other options on the market:

• YourJobSearcher.com costs $39.95 and features an automated search agent that combs the web for you (employer sites, job boards, newsgroups, and more) to produce thousands of targeted leads and deliver them to you by email. It searches 30+ sources and finds leads from 300+ job lead sites.
• UltimateJobSpider costs $19.95 and operates in a similar fashion as YourJobSearcher. A downloadable trial version is available for free.
• JobFish comes in at $54.99 and also offers a 20-day trial version. This package includes the ability to parse job ad details for use in resumes/cover letters, attach different resumes to varying jobs, keep job records and interaction history on each job applied for, track follow-up contacts, and blast resumes to recruiters. JobFish also allows you to import your existing Outlook contacts and organize your job leads by the referring recruiter.
• PongoSoftware offers a suite of job search-related software tools - resume/letter builders, a resume publisher, ad-tracker, and task manager - but lists no pricing on their website.
• JobTabs.com offers many of the same features as JobFish at a price of only $39.95. You can also try it for free for 14 days.

Try one or more of these packages before you buy to make sure it has all of the features you need most in your job search. Make automation work for you for a change!

The Time is Ripe for Federal Jobs

Did you know that 60% of federal workers and 90% of federal senior executives will be retiring over the next decade? That fact, courtesy of CareerBuilder's WorkForAmerica.com, makes it clear that a world of opportunity awaits federal job seekers with a bit of patience.

Work For America is a new job board which specializes in matching federal job seekers to emerging opportunities. Its offerings include job search agents, a government resume builder, and the ability to search for jobs based on governmental agency, i.e., civil service, Homeland Security, or the US Postal Service.

You'll also find:

• Profiles on government agencies and positions
• Guides to federal federal benefits and investment plans
• Reports on the best government places to work
• Special interest jobs
• The federal hiring process
• Profiles on independent agencies and government corporations that hire civil service workers

If you hope for a federal job, make sure you check out this new job board.

New Job Board Hits the Web

Yet another new job board is available to job seekers: Free Agents Jobs at TheFreeJobs.com.

Free Agents Jobs is a generic job board that doesn't specialize in any one industry or level of position. It allows you to search based on the usual factors, as well as who posted the position - a company, a recruiter, or an individual.

Unlike most job boards, Free Agents Jobs highlights their automated job agent function and makes it obvious how to launch one. Another unique quality of this job board is the way it organizes returned searches by utilizing a tabbed format to display key aspects of the jobs in a visually pleasing way.

For example, jobs are coded in the returned search list based on industry, date of posting, full/part-time status, salary (if included by the poster), and distance from your location.

The downside to this board, as with most new boards, is that initially it contains fewer jobs, so early searches can be unproductive. This board does appear to be attracting some mid-career positions but won't be likely to be very helpful for executives in job search mode.

New Form of Salary Data Available

It used to be that to prepare fully for salary negotiations, every professional had to conduct their own salary survey. But since the launch of sites like Salary.com, more and more salary information is becoming available to job seekers. Well, move over Salary.com, there are new players on the field: PayScale.com and PayScroll.com.

While Salary.com secures its data via corporate HR offices, PayScale.com is sourcing their data directly from job seekers themselves who are willing to share their salary info. The good news? If you're looking for work in a fairly common and popular occupation, PayScale is likely to be a good source of vital salary info for you. If you're looking for work in a more unusual and rare occupation, it's data probably won't be extensive enough to help you.

PayScroll, on the other hand, is an emerging site (still in Alpha testing) which is testing a new way to source salary information: by scrolling through online job postings. This is a clever idea. I've long encouraged my clients to use job boards to find salary data, but there's no doubt that's a lot of work. If PayScroll is successful in delivering the goods, this idea could offer job seekers additional leverage in the salary negotiations war.

Stay tuned!

New resume design service

In case you hadn't noticed, ExecutiveResumeRescue.com is officially open for business and currently offering a flat 15% discount on all services to celebrate our new launch.

That discount includes not only our resume and cover letter design services, but our virtual job search assistance, as well.

What's that, you ask? In a nutshell, it's your very own Administrative Assistant. Only instead of having to find, interview, hire, and train someone to help you with job search tasks like mail merges, online job applications, resume/letter tailoring, company research, and resume blasting to recruiters, we've already done the ground work for you.

Select the types of services you want help with and your very own Executive Job Search Assistant will get to work virtually to get your resumes out the door. No more worrying about when to apply to those postings you found, or when to finally implement that recruiter mailing - with the help of an EJSA, you can protect your life balance while executing a killer job search, which, byt the way, will get you the outcome you want - a new job - faster and more efficiently.

If you'd like to learn more or would like to secure your complimentary resume and cover letter critique, visit ExecutiveResumeRescue.com today.

New Video Service for Job Seekers

A new type of online job board has debuted at Azooca.com. Yes, Azooca does the usual by offering a platform wherein job seekers and employers can find each other and communicate. But it also offers job seekers the capability of building a resume as well as a bank of cover and thank you letters.

But that's not all. Azooca also offers job postings and a job search agent. Best of all, though, is it's video platform. Azooca gives job seekers the chance to upload their own job search videos as a way of getting the attention of hiring managers. Whether to showcase answers to prospective interview questions or to highlight samples of your work, video offers you a way to go beyond the traditional bounds of resumes and cover letters in the battle to get the attention of hiring managers.

Azooca is a brand-new service which just opened its doors to job seekers, so we have yet to see what response employers and job seekers will have to their innovative take on job boards. But I predict that employers will enjoy the video format if the job seekers who use video take the time to make theirs as professional as possible.

If the idea of video appeals to you, try one or more of these ideas:

• Pull together a list of 5-6 interview questions you are likely to be asked in your field.
• Have a friend interview you on video to give you a chance to interact with someone while you respond to the questions you have selected.
• Make sure you have also prepared stellar responses to your sample questions.
• As you would with a face-to-face interview, make sure you dress well, look the interviewer in the eye, speak clearly, and project your personality in a positive manner.
• Although video offers you the opportunity to edit your performance, be careful with this function - you don't want the resulting video to be visually choppy. If you don't like how it turns out, opt instead to retape.

Once you've recorded a sample interview, there are other ways to utilize a service such as Azooca.com's. Tape yourself sharing:

• A brief professional bio
• Your achievements history
• Samples of your professional work
• Interviews of your professional references
• Your commentary on one or more issues of import in your career field or industry

Get the idea? Video can be a tool to set you apart in a crowded job market, but only if you use it wisely.

AllTheTopBananas.com

A new job board debuted this week: AllTheTopBananas.com. Based in and currently focusing on serving the U.K., this site aims to approach online job searching from a distinct point of view.

Like DirectEmployer.com, AllTheTopBananas.com links to jobs directly on employer websites so you learn about the job and your potential employer at the same time. Initially, AllTheTopBananas.com will give job seekers access to a mere 60,000 jobs, with thousands more to follow in the months to come.

This new job board plans to offer email and RSS feeds of favorite searches, a training search engine, and job seeker networking tools. If you're job searching in the U.K., check it out.