Search
Related Links




    

Informative Articles

Your Website on My Forehead
People are so focused on promoting their websites on the web these days that many are overlooking the original marketing medium -- the offline world! Many tried and true methods of advertising exist for brick and mortar businesses that could just...

Branding for profits
Branding for Profits copyright 2002 Pavel Lenshin General meaning of the Brand is quite abstract. In short, brand is the image of your product, if we speak about product branding and/or the image of your company if we deal with corporate branding...

Website Design Tips by San Diego Internet Marketing Professionals
Approaching the year 2006, many San Diego Business's have recognized the importance of bringing there business to the millions of people that utilize the Internet on the daily basis. If you are one of those businesses in this decision...

Brand Your Consulting Brilliance
Today's competitive marketplace for consulting services is no longer responsive to the marketing strategies that worked in the past. The services you provide should speak volumes about your consulting business. Think about what happens when you...

Debunking the myth that search engines bring in the most traffic.
Publishing Guideline: You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated. Debunking the myth that search engines...

 
Road-Kill Mentality: Why Employers Aren’t Calling You

Know the three reasons why you’re not generating quality interviews? You’re invisible, voiceless, or comatose. Pick one.

The longer you hibernate in the darkness of traditional job searching know-how, where no one can find you, the more likely your dormancy will negatively affect your career transition. When you decide it’s time to make a career change, you have a choice: be the hunter or the prey. Choose the latter and you’ll quickly become road-kill. Just ask the possum.

Playing possum neutralizes your marketability. Opossums are easy targets for vehicular traffic because they are slow-moving creatures. They quickly frighten and when they can’t escape, they roll over, become limp, close their eyes, and hang their tongue out (which slows their heartbeat). To would-be predators, the animal looks dead, so interest is lost.

Sound like your job search? Are you as dead to prospective hiring managers or those in the position of assisting you through informal informational meetings? If there’s no interest in what you have to offer, consider your branding — the perception others have about you and your ability to contribute. Do you:

• Complain you don’t have time to conduct a job search?
• Suffer from paralysis of analysis in determining career options?
• Think “networking” is not for you because your contacts are limited?
• Project open reluctance to search in new fields for fear of rejection?
• Believe finding a job is most easily discovered using job search engines?
• Obscure your visibility to power executives due to confidentiality issues?
• Require a set-in-stone level of compensation or geographic preference regardless of market conditions?

If you answer yes to any of these, your career change is in dire need of resuscitation, and every second counts.

Velocity uncovers signals of hiring patterns. Most animals travel in packs or herds. Possums don’t. They’re hidden night creatures that often become road kill because they’re secretive, go about their foraging in solitary, and are slow-moving. You’ll bring speed and verve to your campaign and improve your odds of employers calling if you are:

• Mentally adaptable
• Emotionally flexible
• Geographically-mobile
• Financially-unshackled
• Professionally-scalable

Vitality gets you hired through emotional attachment. Radiate a genuine hearty enjoyment of living. An infectious positive attitude coupled with precision target positioning will land you a prized role; perhaps one custom-created for you where there were no posted openings.

Marketing success is two-fold: market share and mind share. People first buy emotionally, then logically. Hiring managers do the same. Capture both, the territory and their minds. If your career history and extracurricular


activities demonstrate a ‘joie de vivre’ (joy of life), you’ll inspire greater interest and remembrance from decision-makers over those better qualified.

If you’re remote, sullen, or cynical, grow up, get help, get over it. Hiring often times is driven more by perceived cultural fit than professional industry-specific competency.

Visibility generates quality interviews. Secret job searches yield mediocre results. Counter anonymity in a fiercely-competitive employment market by ensuring you don’t:

• Send mass resume mailings to untargeted employers
• Peruse online job boards for your main source to uncover jobs
• Remain a generalist in terms of career focus and position objectives
• Use resume software programs that auto-generate templated resumes
• Forget to follow up on every oral and written job hunt communication

Key rules in product marketing equally apply to your tactical career moves. Remember you’re the product and your customer is the person who has the ultimate power to hire you. Keep in mind:

• Brand awareness and consideration are not one-time events
• Continually communicate the central message you want your audience to perceive about your product
• Branding creates a singular distinction, strategic awareness and differentiates the product in the mind of the target market

Revive a lifeless career campaign by gaining early and steady visibility. The fact is that gaining notoriety through a personal public relations campaign should not start at the point of market entry.

Top-of-mind awareness is an integrated marketing strategy that deploys multiple channels to ensure a product’s branding prevails. It’s done foundationally and consistently. Early, steady visibility preemptively brings you, to them.

Know the causes for employer snub?

• A lifeless or negative persona
• A career path with no pulse or vibrancy
• A rigidness that contradicts changing market conditions

Road-kill or road racer? Which one are you? You have a choice. You better find out what’s needed to resurrect yourself, and soon. Your competition just got off of life-support, while you’re in a daze still trying to figure out what just happened. Get moving.


About the Author: Marta Driesslein, CECC (http://www.interviewing.com) is a management consultant for R.L. Stevens & Associates Inc. For over 24 years R.L. Stevens & Associates has been the Nation’s most successful privately-held firm specializing in executive career searches generating quality interviews through both advertised and unadvertised channels

Source: www.isnare.com