Job Search Secrets

Long-Distance Job Searching

Jeff Bosco — Sun, 06 May 2007 20:53:00 +0000

Q: I’ve decided to move closer to my family and prefer to find a job before I do. Any tips on how to conduct a long-distance job search?
- Submitted by Faye Peppier, Beaumont, TX

A: Dear Faye,

Today’s technology helps make remote job hunting easier than ever before, and so will these handy tips. Even though changing towns, homes and jobs at the same time can really tilt the stress scale, millions of people do it every year-and you can, too!

Do your homework. Do as much research about your target market as you can, including identifying major area employers, traffic and commuting patterns, mass transit options and any dominant industries in the area.

Leverage your contacts. Do you know anyone who already lives and works in your new location? If so, ask them about potential job opportunities, best places to network, top employers in the area and any useful local knowledge they may have.

Subscribe to the paper. Call the newspaper in your target market to obtain a short-term or Sunday-only subscription so that you can read the local classified ads-or try to access them online through the paper’s Web site. You may even find job fairs that you might be able to attend.

Contact a staffing company. Submitting your resume and application to a recruiting and staffing company in the area can get fast results. They may offer temporary positions at some of the area’s top employers, temp-to-hire positions that can lead to full-time work, or even place you in a permanent position immediately. Spherion®, for example, has more than 650 locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. For an office in your target market, visit our Web site at www.spherion.com/corporate/offices.jsp or call us toll free at 866-456-4357.

Plan a premove visit. If you can, visit your new location before you move-to conduct informational or initial interviews with potential employers or attend a significant job fair. Mention the dates of your planned trip in your letters or e-mails so that, if the employer is interested, they can arrange an interview during your visit. Make sure you pack as many interviews as possible into your trip.

Most importantly, if things don’t fall into place before you move-don’t worry. Finding a job is usually easier once you actually live in a place. And, of course, you’ll have the added advantage of having done your homework already!

Good luck to you!
Seymour

Originally
from Spherion Career Blog - The Big Time

by Seymour Jobs

The Power of Curiosity

Jeff Bosco — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:22:00 +0000

If you aren’t subscribed to my twice-monthly Wild About Work ™ e-mail newsletter, here’s a taste of an audiosnack from the issue I sent out last week (if you’d like to receive the newsletter, you can subscribe here).Title: The Power of Curiosity

Length: 2 minutes 24 seconds
File size: 2.2 MBJust in case the speed of your connection leaves something to be desired, here’s the written transcript…

–
Were you ever a kid? If you were, then you have probably experienced one of the key ingredients in living a stimulating, interesting, fascinating life. What’s that, you ask? Curiosity!

Next time you’re around small children, watch how they engage the world around them. It’s inspiring. It really is. There’s a new discovery around every corner, and everything is wondrous and new.

Here’s a question for you. On a scale of one to ten, how curious are you? How often do you take a look around you and say, “Hmmm. I wonder…?” I wonder how. I wonder why. I wonder when. If you’re like many adults, you’ve probably lost a lot of that sense of curiosity and wonder along the way.

And that’s a shame, because curiosity keeps life fresh. And not only does it keep life fresh, it keeps it rich with potential and possibility.

I think there are a couple things that get in the way of the reinvigorating potential of curiosity. The first is the dreaded rut. We drive the same road to the same job and work on the same things with the same people. We watch the same TV, and have the same conversations. One day of life blends into another, and it all starts to look a bit monochromatic. It dulls the senses and we forget that the world offers a rainbow of colors to experience.

Another obstacle to tapping into the richness of curiosity is the fact that, as we grow older, we start to build more rigid perceptions of “the way things are.” We’ve been there done that, and we start to believe that we know what’s what. With a perspective like that, what’s the point of curiosity? We already know it!

That’s dangerous territory, because it inherently closes doors. There’s a Zen Buddhist concept called Beginner’s Mind. One of the quotes in today’s newsletter sums it up beautifully. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Take a look around you. Where is there potential for curiosity? What do you want to know more about? What assumptions are you making that you can explore with fresh eyes? How might someone else see your world?

The more curiosity you can bring to your life, the more energy you’ll feel, and the more possibilities you’ll discover.

–

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst (sm)

Time for a career change? Launch it with…
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

Originally
from The Occupational Adventure (sm)

by Curt Rosengren

on Mar 22, 2007, 1:10AM

Book Review: Office Superman

Jeff Bosco — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:56:00 +0000

You’ll have to bear with me here for a few weeks. Not only is college basketball in full swing but I have been going through each of the eight books I have on my bedside as partially read and finally finishing them. Some of them are not related to business but I will try to write reviews for each one that makes sense for this blog.

So this book I read recently is called Office Superman: Make Yourself Indispensable in the Workplace.

So this book definitely has some good points to it. In fact, all of the points he makes throughout are really good in and of themselves. Especially for all of those people who are looking at moving up or being superstars in their industry.

The only problem is that this book is so full of Superman analogies, it drove me insane. Maybe if I were more into comic books, I would be a little more entertained by the whole premise of comparing Superman to being a great worker over and over again. I think this book goes overboard on the whole thing to the point of distraction.

Which I think is unfortunate since, as I said, it has a lot of great points buried beneath Superman analogies.

Recruiting is marketing. Try jobcasting.

Originally
from YourHRGuy.com

by Your HR Guy

on Mar 12, 2007, 12:56PM

How Would You Move Mount Fuji?

Jeff Bosco — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:56:00 +0000

I read the book How Would You Move Mount Fuji? and I thought it was pretty interesting. It mainly focuses on how Microsoft interviews and why they ask the questions they do. It also gives you reasoning and logic behind some of the questions with right answers (or more correct answers).

I am always a fan of books about interviewing because they are usually so wrong. As I have never been interviewed (or interviewed for) Microsoft, I can’t tell you whether this book is good preparation for a Microsoft interview, I can tell you that it attempts to make a case for puzzle based questions.

Obviously puzzle based questions don’t work for everyone. Some positions do not require out of the box thinking. But for those in the company that do require that out of the box thinking, I could see it being useful (at least at a company the size of Microsoft). As the book points out though, this interview technique can leave people on the outside who can perform the job up to standards or even better than the person hired. And while leaving people on the table that could be hired might work for some positions at Microsoft, it might not work everywhere. As labor shortages increase, I wonder if this will change that technique some?

Bill Gates is going to be testifying in front of a Congressional committee this week on the need for more visas for highly skilled workers. One might wonder if the labor shortage could be averted by a simple change in interviewing technique?

Originally
from YourHRGuy.com

by Your HR Guy

on Mar 6, 2007, 11:28AM