7 Ways to Speed Up Your Job Search

I’ve been in recruitment now for more years than I care to remember and try not to admit to, and I never cease to be surprised by how many times my colleagues and I are still asked many of the same questions that we were asked fifteen or more years ago. Sure, technology has moved many of the processes on and has eased the application process but there are still many of the same issues that candidates face.

So, not only is the job search often frustrating, but it also becomes intensely time consuming. Many candidates who are out of work end up looking for several months before an interview opportunity finally materialises.

How can you speed up the process and land your ideal job in less time? Here are a few ways that my colleagues and I believe that candidates can speed up their job search:
• Use trusted job search engines and networking sites. Looking for opportunities via job aggregators can lead you to postings by the actual company and not a third party. You can also sign up for alerts so you don’t miss any important opportunities. Many networking sites work the same way—someone who works for the company (or knows someone who does) often posts the job opportunity in a group or on a message board.
• Start blogging regularly. Creating and maintaining a blog helps to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. It’s also a great way to increase your visibility and broaden your network.
• Increase your visibility online and offline. There are many things you can be doing to increase your visibility. Blogging, mentioned above, is a prime example. You should also consider attending networking events, conferences, association meetings, Twitter chats, workshops, and webinars. All of these can help you gain more skills and knowledge about your field while meeting people who may be able to help boost your job search.
• Talk with a career coach. A lot of people are unsure of how to properly go about job searching—and it’s no surprise, as many of us were never formally taught how to job search. A career coach can help you navigate the world of the job hunt and give you tips and advice on how to market yourself properly. If you’re unsure of what makes you unique among the other candidates, they can help you identify that as well. We have many close links with coaches who have helped candidates reappraise themselves and move from a trough of inactivity to a successful interview. Talking of which….
• Be well prepared for your interview. In this tough job market, one of the worst things you can do to yourself is get an interview and show up unprepared. You need to know how you’ll answer the traditional interview questions and what experiences you want to highlight for the hiring manager in your answers. You also need to know as much as possible about the company, its culture, and how you’ll fit into it all.
• Volunteer your time at a local non-profit organisation. Volunteering is a great way to fill gaps in your resume, gain valuable skills, and meet new people. It’s also fulfilling to be using your skills to help a local community group and a great way to keep busy while job hunting.
• Optimise your CV and online profiles. Keywords are an essential part of the job search today. Recruiters like us and hiring managers are looking for a specific candidate and often find that person through searching several keywords or key phrases. These are often shared in the job description—so make sure that your online profiles and resume align with the job you’re applying for.

Keep your CV short, that’s ideally three pages or less, and pertinent. Despite the many articles out there on how to write a CV we still receive many that are well over ten pages and I’m afraid that most are dropped straight into the on-line re-cycle bin because we receive over 250 CV’s a week and simply don’t have time to read that much information and do the rest of our assignment tasks!

If you apply these basic principles when you are looking for a new job, then you will significantly improve your prospects. We can offer further tips and guidance to candidates on their job search so please feel free to call me or my colleagues for an informal discussion.

The Easiest Way to Get a Raise and Promotion

If, for some reason, you need any urging to become more aggressive about your career and financial future, a recent study from Accenture should provide it. The study was designed to figure out how satisfied men and women are at their jobs, and what they plan to do about it. But buried within the results are some eye-opening statistics about who gets a pay rise or promotion–and why.

Accenture surveyed 3,400 professionals at medium and large-sized companies in 29 countries. Some 500 of those people were in the U.S. Respondents were split evenly between men and women and between three age groups: Generation Y, Generation X, and Baby Boomers.

According to the survey, only 43% of people are satisfied with their jobs. Why are the rest so glum? The leading reason, cited by 45 percent of people overall but by 52 percent of those in Generation Y, is that they’re underpaid. That’s not completely shocking, given that the survey also found that in the U.S., only 44% of women and 48% of men say they have ever asked for or negotiated a pay increase.

What happens when people do ask for a rise? In the overwhelming majority of cases, people who ask for a rise are at least thrown a bone. And in a significant number of cases, employees who do ask for a pay rise actually get more money than they were expecting.

Here’s how it breaks down:
• Some 25% of people said they got more money than they were expecting
• An additional 38% said they got the rise that they were expecting
• 17% got more money, but not as much as they were hoping for
• 5% did not get a rise, but they did get some other type of incentive
• Only 15% got nothing

To summarise that: Of those who asked for a raise, 85% at least got something. Some 63% got at least as much as they asked for.

So why don’t more people ask?

Another big reason people said they were dissatisfied with their jobs was lack of opportunity for growth, mentioned by 34% of people. (Another 25% said they were tired or burned out, which should be its own wake-up call to employers.)

Yet only 28% of U.S. women say they have ever asked for a promotion and only 39% of men have asked either. Of course, there are cases where employees badger for a well-deserved promotion for years and never get anything. But perhaps more often, people who believe they are underappreciated or stuck in their jobs should just ask for the job they want.

According to the report, here’s what happened to those who did ask for a promotion:
• 17% got a new role, and it was a better one than they’d hoped to land
• 42% got the role they asked for.
In other words, 59% of people who asked for a promotion got one. Things didn’t go badly for the other 41%, either:
• 10% got a new role, but not the one they asked for, and not one that was a clear promotion
• 10% of the time, nothing happened.
• 5% of those who asked for a promotion got new responsibilities instead. Even that’s not so bad. While it may sound like these people just got more work dumped on them, among U.S. survey respondents, 47% of people said that taking on new responsibilities had helped move their career forward.

I think that it would be an interesting comparison if Accenture carried out the same survey in the UK and whether the percentages would be similar.

When we interview candidates one of the things that we are always looking for is whether their motive is simply to get a job offer and then go back to their own company and to use it as a bargaining tool, so if you look at it from our perspective it would make our life easier if candidates took the initiative and asked for a promotion or a pay rise.

Fortunately we have very rarely been through the offer as a bargaining tool scenario, but if you’ve never asked for a promotion or a rise, why not?

What to do if you are fired.

At some point in there lives, almost everyone faces career reversals, and some of the most famous and successful business leaders have been fired. I’m sure that there were good reasons why it happened from the company’s perspective, and whether you thought that it was the right decision wasn’t going to change their decision; life is not always fair. Your success after a career reversal depends on your resilience and what you do after losing your job. It’s happened to me and I was devastated when it did, but I learnt a few things from it.

Forget about Shame
It’s natural to feel embarrassed when you get fired, and to withdraw and not tell people what happened. Bad move. First of all, if you don’t tell your version of what happened, others probably will – and seldom to your benefit. Second, if you feel ashamed, you are unlikely to present yourself to others with much confidence, and this absence of confidence will make landing your next position more difficult. And third, it will affect your “social influence.” People look to others to figure out how to interpret and react to ambiguous social situations. If you’re embarrassed, that feeling will emanate from you either in your voice, your language or your behaviour. People will suspect that if you’re ashamed, maybe you have something to be ashamed about, in which case they might not offer you the support that you need.

Tell Your Story
On the other hand, openly telling others what happened conveys that it is not such a big deal and that rather than being ashamed, it is the boss and organisation that fired you that maybe ought to feel badly. By admitting what happened, you can ask for help and convey that you’re going to be successful again. Others will rally to your side because people love to associate with success and they particularly enjoy associating with successful people who have surmounted adversity.

Not everyone who is fired will land a good job instantaneously. But your chances of bouncing back quickly are greatly enhanced by conveying to others that the loss of your position was the company’s mistake, not yours, and emotionally relieving yourself of guilt and shame so you can strategically and confidently go about continuing to build your career.

I was given this advice when it happened to me many many years ago and it is difficult advice to follow, but in many instances, will lead to a much better result and more importantly a boost to your own self confidence.

Multitasking

It’s a never ending paper trail, when a report or study comes out, somebody at a reputable publication picks it up, and the next thing you know, generalisations that were never intended by the researchers are plastered all over the internet.

That’s exactly what’s happened recently with multitasking.

Just check out some of these headlines: How and Why to Stop Multitasking, The Myth of Multitasking, The Backlash Against Multitasking, How to Kick the Multitasking Addiction, Multitasking Produces an Illusion of Competence … these are real and are everywhere!

The problem is that most of that “multitasking is evil” stuff is more or less irrelevant. Yes, you’ll perform better giving one thing your undivided attention. Sure, if you text or email during a meeting, you’ll miss some things.

The truth is that, when you define multitasking in the way virtually all professionals, managers, business leaders, and executives do it, and look at its overall effectiveness for a management system or organization as a whole - instead of at the task level - you find that it’s indeed critical to management effectiveness. It’s a no-brainer.

So, to unravel the quagmire of misconceptions, misinformation, and confusion and set the record straight, here are a few alternative thoughts:

• Yes, single task performance deteriorates when you’re distracted. People perform better doing one task at a time. Anybody who thinks that’s an epiphany shouldn’t be responsible for anything let alone managing others.

• Interrupting what you’re doing to constantly check email isn’t multitasking, it’s distraction, plain and simple. Employees or managers who call that multitasking are just trying to make themselves look better in spite of their complete lack of discipline and inability to focus.

• There is no such thing as doing more than one thing simultaneously. It can’t happen in the physical world. Nobody can do it. Not even computers. There are laws of physics that frown upon that sort of thing.

• In the real management world, the only definition of multitasking that matters is the concept of switching between tasks or interrupting one task in favour of another. It’s how we prioritise functions and tasks in real-time. It’s necessary and critical to the performance of any management or organisational system.

• Indeed, on a task by task basis, multitasking is not a benefit. And yes, it is more stressful than not multitasking. That said, it’s a daily part of business life. Things happen. Priorities change. Something crops up that is more important than what you’re working on. The task at hand will suffer, but your overall management effectiveness will benefit. Real-time flexibility - interruption and prioritisation - is critical in management systems.

• Information or communication overload and multitasking are two completely different things. McKinsey wrote a report about information overload that says, “Always-on, multitasking work environments are killing productivity, dampening creativity, and making us unhappy.” The problem is that, by lumping communication overload - a bad thing - in with management multitasking - a good thing - McKinsey is confusing people.

• If you email or text while you’re in a meeting, you can’t possibly be paying attention. Things have to be repeated and that wastes everybody’s time.

• Likewise, when you’re meeting one-on-one or in a small group, you should give them your undivided attention. Not only is that more efficient for everyone, it’s called treating people with respect.

The truth of the matter is that Doctors, chefs, engineers, project managers, marketers, salespeople, line managers, executives, small business owners - anyone with decision-making, managing, or leadership in their job description needs to multitask. It comes with the territory. It’s part of business and management life. Don’t confuse it with single-task performance, communication overload, or distraction and lack of concentration.

Why the Boss can steal paper clips, but you shouldn’t!

It always seems as though your boss spends a lot of time on email, and you know it’s not all work-related. Instead, they’re planning the kids’ birthday parties or booking the next holiday. Maybe you should try to get more of that sort of stuff done during the day, too. After all, we’re all working longer hours, and we all need a break now and then. Right?

Well, whether or not you should book that flight from your desk depends upon how high up you are within your company, according to new research from Instead. They created a variety of hypothetical situations in which someone had behaved badly, and then asked people how strongly the wrongdoers should be punished.

The results? Unless you’re pretty high up the food chain at your company, wait until you get home to book your holiday. There is a little justice in the world, though: If your boss really screws up, there’s a good chance he or she will be judged a lot more harshly than someone at a lower level would be.

Dave versus DaveThe researchers presented the test subjects with two hypothetical people. One was David Rogers, “a well-regarded senior executive with a long track record of good performance.” He was “the head of the sales department and in charge of over 100 employees,” with “great authority to make independent decisions.”

The other hypothetical person, also named David Rogers, was more of a worker bee: “a not well-known staff assistant with little track record,” who “work[ed] in the sales department [and had] no formal authority over other employees.” He was described as having “very little authority to make independent decisions.”

The test subjects were then presented with a list of possible infractions, ranging in severity from using company stamps for personal mail to verbally abusing a co-worker, and then asked how strongly each “Dave” should be sanctioned. These are the highlights of the findings:

The lower-level employee is punished much more severely for minor infractions; such as a using company stamps to mail personal letters, making personal calls and doing personal email on company time, and accepting small gifts.

The big-shot was punished more severely for more serious infractions, such as withholding important work-related information from colleagues, verbally abusing a co-worker, or taking large kickbacks.

There is more likely to be a disparity in the punishment if the offence is against the corporation versus against an individual employee. The study found people were more likely to get similar punishments, regardless of status, if the offence primarily affected an individual, such as telling a racist joke or sexually harassing a co-worker. The bigger differences in punishment were seen when the offence was something more corporate in nature, such as repeatedly being late to meetings or taking large kickbacks.

Is it fair that execs get to take liberties while everyone else has to toe the line? Or that they get punished more severely when they make big mistakes?

It’s one of those us & them arguments that will be debated endlessly over the years and I’d hazard a guess that your, and my, perception might well change as we rise up (or possibly down!) the corporate ladder.

The things that make you go aaarrggghh!!

There are a thousand and one hurdles in business, most of which at one time or another make you want to retreat to a quiet (sound proofed) corner and scream in frustration!

I was approached earlier in the year by a client to recruit an important role for one of their global business streams which needed some specific difficult to find skills, without which the candidate would be out of their depth. The global Head Office in the States had been looking internally for a year for this person and given up, finally tasking EMEA to find this mystical candidate.

Which is where I come in!

Three weeks after being briefed I had a shortlist of five candidates from three countries, all of whom had proven track records and reputations in their field. My client and his boss started to put some diary dates together for the five candidates to be either interviewed in person or by video conference: at which point the States announced that they had transferred one of their spare Project Mangers across on a contract so that he could learn on the job!

Yup, it’s the things that make you go aaarrggghh!!

What’s in a name?

The eagle eyed amongst you who have struggled into work after the Christmas and New Year holiday period will have noticed that whilst this blog retains some of the traits that we’ve all come to know and love, there has been one significant change.

Yup, we’ve changed the company name. Which begs the question, why?

After eleven years as the UK partner of InterSearch we made the decision in December that it was time for a change. The boss and I have spent several weeks’ soul searching and scratching our heads whilst debating the pro’s and con’s of the change before setting up the new name, which we believe has a certain ring to it and reflects our beliefs in the way search should be delivered.

We’re not alone in leaving InterSearch, as a number of other countries have also terminated their membership and gone their separate ways. The team here remains unchanged and has proved over the last twelve months that it has the capability to successfully deliver global searches based purely on its own abilities.

Far from looking back with any form of regret, we are looking forward to a New Year with considerable hope and expectation. The vagaries of the global economy in 2011 will ensure that the year will be a challenging one, but one that with the right people in place yours and our businesses will be well positioned to take advantage of the market as it recovers.

If you’d like to discuss the name change or how we can work with you in 2011 then don’t hesitate to contact us at www.chestertongray.com