WHAT"S IN IT FOR YOU
The keys to landing your dream job, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0, shows you how to take full advantage of strategies and job-hunting techniques that shows you how to take full advantage of strategies and job-hunting techniques that are not are not available as free information on the Internet and were previously only known by a handful of insiders. available as free information on the Internet and were previously only known by a handful of insiders.
You will discover how to: * Leverage ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, Mys.p.a.ce, Facebook, and other social networking sites to take advantage of "the secret lives of top recruiters."* Build a specialized resume that is fun to read, speaks the language of employers, and proves every claim.* Target a job that plays to your strengths and abilities-a job you would do for free, if you weren"t getting paid!* Design, launch, and execute a multimodal job-hunting campaign based on the same success principles used by General Norman Schwarzkopf in Operation Desert Storm.* Understand how to articulate your unique strengths in resumes, letters, e-mail, and interviews (while avoiding the typical "resume speak" or "interview babble" that causes hiring managers to guffaw).* Learn how to present your skills in creative new ways that stand out in today"s hyper-compet.i.tive job market.* Employ little-known search engine optimization tricks used by top headhunters (who have to make placements or starve).* Zero in on the best jobs, at the highest salary-fast-because you"ll know exactly what hiring managers really want (this transforms you from "pest" to "guest" in the minds of employers).
Employers will literally be begging to hire you because the book will: * Guide you through a simple method to pick your most marketable skills in 30 seconds or less (as a result, every resume, cover letter, and conversation you send will cut through the noise in any job market like a hot knife through b.u.t.ter).* Lead you through the process of crafting a resume that connects directly to your ideal employer (based on 100 years of principles used in advertising copywriting).* Build a LinkedIn, Mys.p.a.ce, Facebook, and/or ZoomInfo profile that gets found and read, and makes the phone ring with interview offers.* Demonstrate how to use innovations like Google-Local to identify employers.* Detail 21 alternate ways to land an interview, with action steps that you won"t find anywhere online.* Include a pre-interview worksheet to structure your research, a daily plan, and a scorecard that enables you to track your progress.* Show you how to start work before you"re hired and prove your ability by demonstrating your skills right there in your next interview.
WELCOME TO YOUR FUTURE
Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0 is about managing your career as a professional services provider: how to brand yourself, increase your value, and build a rewarding career. We detail how you can mount a multip.r.o.nged plan of attack that outflanks the compet.i.tion-that will separate you from the pack quickly and put you on top always-but you have to get on the field. about managing your career as a professional services provider: how to brand yourself, increase your value, and build a rewarding career. We detail how you can mount a multip.r.o.nged plan of attack that outflanks the compet.i.tion-that will separate you from the pack quickly and put you on top always-but you have to get on the field.
Guerrilla, this is your Super Bowl, and you know there can be only one winner. Play with your head and your heart. Give this everything you"ve got and let us know about your successes.
GUERRILLA INTELLIGENCE.
Hiding in Plain Sight John Sumser
Things have really changed. Knowing exactly what you want is more important than ever. In the last generation, you could "parachute" into your new job. Today, it"s a guerrilla war . . . clear, focused, targeted, and opportunistic.
While you weren"t looking, job hunting became a direct marketing exercise. "Who you know" matters less than "who knows you." The transition between one job and the next is a matter of how quickly you can acquire and harness attention. You are now required to know what you want and where to get it. You are in charge of manufacturing your own luck.
Employers are buried in a sea of resumes they don"t want or like. If they acquire yours from a job board, they may consider you an "active job hunter." That"s a bad thing. Huge volumes of unwanted and indistinct resumes mean that you have to simultaneously stand out and look like you"re not trying to be seen.
That is the essence of a guerrilla job-hunting campaign.
Have you noticed that it gets harder to make sense out of the world every day? The Internet created explosive growth in information sources. Each offers an opinion screaming for your attention. Survival depends on choosing among the sources.
Information overload affects everyone. Our organizations know more and more about themselves. They are less and less able to utilize that knowledge.
The workplace contains members of 4 four generations. Differing preferences for differing communications technologies drive the vast gulf between them. Collaboration and file sharing, the favorite tools of the young, look like cheating and stealing to their elders. The ever-present texting and social networking seem rude and unproductive to the technologically illiterate.
Several things make the workforce older with each pa.s.sing day. The United States (and the entire industrialized world) produces fewer offspring than it takes to keep the population constant. As a result, the average age of workers in the economy rises continuously. More elders stay at work. Changes in finance, housing, and pensions raise the real retirement age. The differing generational perspectives cloud the certainty needed to make productive decisions.
New technology flows relentlessly into our lives. Cell phones became ubiquitous in under a decade. Universal Wi-Fi dominates public s.p.a.ces, including your car. Computers merge with phones to create an omnipresent connectedness. Old media dies; new media replaces it. Disruption and change define the era.
Amid all of this, we find our work. The orderly processes of the last generation are evaporating as quickly as newspapers. Old industries disappear while new ones explode on the scene. Looking for work means finding people we want to work with. It means helping them find us. Guerrilla job hunters stand out from the crowd with purpose.
The goal is disarmingly simple: identify and build relationships with the kind of people who either do what you want to do or want you to do it. Let them know you are available, better than competent, creative, and persistent. Demonstrate your value. Demonstrate it again.
The problem is always the opportunity. Today, so much has changed, from demographics to technology, that getting simple things done can be confusing. An environment like that rewards people who are clear about what they want. It pays big benefits to people who persist. Environments with great potential are confused and noisy.
You are on your own. Exhilaration, autonomy, and self-direction are now the necessities, not the consequences. You find your next engagement by being distinct from the noise.
John Sumser is the CEO of Two Color Hat, a company devoted to the development of Recruiting Strategies. Visit him at www.johnsumser.com. See him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/johnsumser.
Chapter 1.
Why You Need to Become a Guerrilla Job Hunter
The New Global America
It"s not the strongest of the species, nor the most intelligent, that survive; it"s the one most responsive to change.
-CHARLES DARWIN
Under siege from layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, rightsizing, downsizing, and bankruptcies, America is in the midst of a profound business transformation. It is the result of developments in information and communications technologies, changing human values, and the rise of the global knowledge-based economy. The sheer complexity and technical sophistication of business has transformed the job market. Business is becoming knowledge based and technology intensive.
Knowledge workers are the backbone of the United States. They are employed in all sectors of the economy, most prominently in the information technology and communications sectors, but also to a growing extent in health care, manufacturing, education, finance, natural resources, defense, and government-in any field that requires innovation to sustain compet.i.tiveness. Compet.i.tive advantage is rooted in the new ideas of these skilled workers.
Twenty to forty million Americans change jobs every year. Already reeling from the struggling economy, compet.i.tion for the remaining jobs is tougher than ever, the rules for getting jobs have changed, and global compet.i.tion ensures that the rules will change again tomorrow. Many people needlessly drift in and out of dead-end jobs because they don"t know which industries have a future or how to present their value in the right terms to the people who have the authority to hire them.
To succeed in this new job market, you must have a plan. Your plan must be clear and detailed in every way. It must also be: * Clever* Results driven* Marketing oriented* Inexpensive to execute* Realistic* Achievable
No government agency, educational inst.i.tution, or think tank has a genuine crystal ball to make a call on the future; there are simply too many unknown factors when it comes to industry and job creation. One thing is certain, whether you are employed but unhappy, or unemployed and in need of a new opportunity, as a job hunter you are at a strategic fork in the road.
THE NEW GLOBAL THEATER
The United States is again at a major crossroads in history. The current "jobless" recovery is a consequence of the economy"s rapid evolution from a natural resources- and manufacturing-based economy to a knowledge-based one. We are witnessing the first economic recovery in what has become a full information economy.
For most of the twentieth century, a recession was a cyclical decline in demand-the result of excess inventory that needed to be sold off. People were temporarily laid off, inventory backlogs were reduced, and demand would snap back quickly. As product demand increased, workers returned to their preexisting positions in factories, or they found an equivalent job with another company.
Over the past few years, dramatic advances in information technology have allowed companies to establish tightly integrated demand and supply chains, and to outsource manufacturing and low-end service jobs to save money. Rightly or wrongly, many of the jobs that have entirely disappeared from North America have reappeared in India, China, and Latin America. Rather than furloughs, many people were let go, forcing them to switch industries, sectors, locations, or re-skill to find a new job.
If job growth now depends on the creation of new positions, you should expect a long lag before employment rebounds. Employers incur risks in creating new jobs and require additional time to establish and fill positions. Investment in new capital equipment is no longer a pendulum swinging from recession to recovery and back again.
Instead of resources or land, today capital means human capital. It doesn"t take a shoe factory to go into the shoe business these days. Nor do you need raw materials or fleets of trucks. Nike became a shoe industry leader by concentrating on the value-producing capacity of its employees for design, marketing, and distribution know-how. The real capital is intangible: a person"s knowledge level, combined with an apt.i.tude for application.
WHY YOU NEED TO BE A GUERRILLA
With a radically smaller pool of skilled workers and the increased demand for profits, the original War for Talent of the late 1990s has morphed from a quant.i.tative to a qualitative one, best described as the War for the Best Talent by author Peter Weddle in Generalship: HR Leadership in a Time of War Generalship: HR Leadership in a Time of War (Stamford, CT: Weddle"s, 2004). The old "b.u.ms-on-seats" mentality of many employers is quickly being replaced by "brains-on-seats." (Stamford, CT: Weddle"s, 2004). The old "b.u.ms-on-seats" mentality of many employers is quickly being replaced by "brains-on-seats."
Faced with stiffer compet.i.tion and tougher hiring requirements, companies of every sort are becoming single-minded about productivity and bottom-line performance. Consequently, compet.i.tion for jobs is increasing as management seeks and hires only those persons who appear to have the most potential for helping to boost the company"s profits. For many companies, employees are now viewed as a variable cost-hence the term human capital human capital-to remain "on the books" only as long as they continue to produce. Looking for an old-fashioned job like the one Dad used to have is a waste of your time-jobs are temporary in the new economy-henceforth you always need to be looking for the next opportunity.
The people who market their talent the best will win!
OFFSHORING AND AMERICA"S FUTURE AS A GLOBAL INNOVATOR
During the 2008 presidential election, both President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama had a lot to say about the future of offshoring and what the practice of shipping jobs overseas means for the U.S. economy. Even after the election, Republicans and Democrats disagreed on this subject.