6 Clever Ways to Improve Your Job Search Tactics

Since the job marketer continues to get tougher, jobseekers need to evolve. Unless you really focus your energies in the right direction, you can never expect to achieve success with your career. You need to be smarter than ever, smart enough to beat out the competition. You need to use a well-planned job search strategy so that you can grab a job opportunity before anyone else does. If you think you’re not smart enough, this article is just for you.
Given below are a couple of very valuable tips that you can follow to become a smarter jobseeker than anyone else.

#1. Build Your Brand

The very first thing that you need to focus on is start building your professional brand right away. The world has now become a global village, where it only takes a couple of minutes to connect with employers, hiring managers and recruiting agencies. While spending time online (on popular social networking platforms), you need to project a unique professional image. Unless you build your own unique brand, you won’t be able to stand out.

#2. Don’t Waste Time

If you are unemployed, every single minute is valuable. In desperation to get a new job quickly, you can easily waste your time on things which are not important or won’t bring your any result. If you continue to apply to every job that you come across, you’re wasting your time. If you’re networking blindly, you’re wasting time. Likewise, there are multiple job search time wasters that you need to avoid.

#3. Get Active on LinkedIn

You’re never a smart jobseeker, if employers can’t find you on LinkedIn. Even after you’ve submitted your resume to an employer, they might just go and check out your profile on LinkedIn. Don’t just create your account on this professional network, but be more active to connect with influential people, industry experts and potential employers.

#4. Have a Flawless Resume

Yes, your job resume should be completely free of errors. Don’t hesitate to have someone from outside critique your resume. Usually, people become blind to their own mistakes. If you want to create an eye-catching resume, you should always get it reviewed from multiple people who you trust. If you can’t do it on your own, it’s also advisable to work with a resume writing service.

#5. Be a Good Researcher

Research is not just an extremely essential aspect of business, it plays a vital role even when it comes to searching for jobs. Whether it’s about exploring different career possibilities or knowing the details of potential employers, you need to do a good amount of research to achieve success.

#6. Use Relationships

Using relationships in the right way can instantly boost your job search. If you want to evolve as a jobseeker, you should always remember to expand your relationships or network of contacts. When someone else introduces you to a recruiting company, you’re already one step ahead of the competition.

So, are you ready to be a smart jobseeker? Use the above mentioned tips and see where it takes you. In fact, you’ll be surprised by the results you’ll get. Happy job searching!

Resource: The Undercover Recruiter

4 Traits That Separate a Great Recruiter From a Good One

Recruiting is unfortunately often a way station in a career. It is one stop on the way to becoming an HR executive or to moving on to other things. There are often very limited opportunities for advancement as a recruiter within most organizations, which further limits the number of people who choose to dedicate themselves to doing it well. Success also requires abilities that are not necessarily the strengths of those who choose traditional human resources as a career. I have found that many of the most successful recruiters had no intention of working for or in HR. They were interested in sales, marketing, communications, or similar areas and found themselves accidently being asked to do recruiting.

If you take the time to talk to recruiters who have garnered a reputation for success, you will discover that they share a few traits in common.

Monster launches Recruitment iPad App in Europe

Monster will officially launch their new iPad Recruitment App in most European countries. They promise to “Find great jobs when you’re on the go“:

• Simple: Search and apply for jobs with the touch of a finger.
• Convenient: Access your Monster account anywhere, anytime.
• Innovative: Find jobs in a whole new way with the Monster app designed specifically for iPad.

Starting the app takes a few seconds and in the first screen it will ask you to log in to your Monster account. You can skip this step but the possibilities within the App are very limited. You can only search for jobs, and not apply, without an account. So keep your login information at hand as you need it!

7 Myths of Recruiting with Technology

I had a phone call yesterday with a prospective client who starting our conversation with: “I think recruiters are a dying breed.” He thought the Internet and technology were going to do away with search consultants and third-party recruiters.

I explained to him why this won’t happen. In fact, I believe technology is shining the light brighter for why recruiters are needed now more than ever. Before we finished our phone conversation, he wanted to meet one of my candidates.

The Internet has changed recruiting forever. It is a virtual, global, 24-hour job fair. It gives recruiters – and employers – the unprecedented ability to research and reach candidates anywhere. And now with social media, recruiters can find and engage prospective companies and candidates online fast.

The key to this treasure trove is knowing what online tools to use and how to use them. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social media each have their unique purpose. Today, recruiters can create their own media network to market, brand and broadcast their messages. The real value begins when recruiters connect their online networks and leverage across platforms.

Recruitment's Best Kept Secret

Despite the huge amount of effort organisations make to attract and hire the right people there are a surprising number who are ‘square pegs’ in ’round holes’.

How many times have you been into a store and been served by someone who is just not that interested? Contrast that experience with being served by someone who is hugely engaged and clearly loves what they do. It makes a huge difference doesn’t it? Being in the wrong job can be soul destroying for the individual. For the company they are working for it means reduced productivity, lower engagement and a potentially negative effect on customer service.

Top 6 Books on Recruitment. To benefit – read it.

For those of you willing to make an investment in yourselves, I have compiled my personal list of books that I would recommend you to read. To benefit – read it. I wish someone did it for me several years ago =)

“Breakthrough! Exploding the Production of Experienced Recruiters” ,
Steven M. Finkel

If you ever wished you could earn a Ph-D in recruiting, this is the book to read.

The author reminds us all of not just the basics in business sales for search/recruiting (which are covered in the excellent book he wrote with Larry Nobles), but the specifics of genuinely sophisticated and dramatic improvement in the recruiting business past that point. Like all of us with decades of experience, we tend to start with fundamentals which were the foundation of our success, but rarely go too much beyond that (though we usually claim otherwise). In a good market, maybe we don't have to; in today's market, we certainly do. This book is a great read for any of us in sales. If you're new to the industry, you'll learn much more than you will expect. If you're an experienced professional, you'll be surprised at not just how much you have forgotten, but how much more there is left to learn.

Outsourcing Staff Recruitment Can Help Organizations Attract Better Talents

Understanding the recruitment process is one of the main objectives of any management. The success of an organization or business is driven to a considerable extent by the quality of its staff. Recruiting staff with the right skills can add value to a business. At the same time the organization must also be prepared to pay the right price to recruit outstanding talent. Careful selection will mean addition of useful resources to the company. Staff recruitment involves three main stages.

The first step is to identify and define the requirements. This task involves job specifications, job descriptions and specification of the qualities that the potential candidate should possess, attracting the potential employees and selecting the best employee from the applicants.

The Best Jobs In America

The recession brought a tremendous rise in the unemployment rate in America and many people are having trouble finding employment. However, there are many jobs to be had -- and not just any jobs, some of the best companies in America are hiring. Depending on your skillset, degree and what you want from a job, some of the best jobs in the country may be on your career path.

Click to Enlarge

How Social Media Has Changed Recruitment

Social Media and Social Networking has changed the way that we as users look at employment but also the way that recruitment agencies and companies look at recruiting new talent. These days if a company is contemplating taking you or anyone else on, they look at different factors of social networking.

Previously you would hear about jobs through word of mouth, through job centers and through a couple of other channels but these days, so much is done through the Internet it has truly changed the way that recruitment agencies find roles and positions. The Internet has made companies find it easier to find that missing link, the missing piece to the puzzle.

Google Is On A Recruitment Drive

Google is on a recruitment drive. The company has plans to boost its smartphone and other mobile devices development division by hiring dozens of software engineers, product managers and other mobile experts.

Mobile apps is huge business and it is forecast this year the app revenue will hit $15.1 billion. There is money to be made here and Google know that. They have done really well with Android to date but to stay at the top of the mobile tree they need to keep inovating and developing.

Monster Debuts First iPad Recruitment App

The mega-job site is building on the success of its iPhone app to give iPad owners a new way to search for jobs.

In another sign that mobile is becoming an increasingly important, if not primary, platform target for developers, Monster.com has just released a new application specifically for the iPad that it says is the first of its kind for the popular Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) tablet.

The jobs and recruitment site released a similar application for the iPhone last fall, but Vasu Nagalingam, Monster's senior director of product management, said there are distinct advantages to the iPad application.

Recruitment Marketing Articles of the Week 1.22.11 to 1.28.11

Here is our weekly feature in which we share the top articles we enjoyed from the past week about recruitment marketing. This week we’ll be talking about being a rebel or a leader, how to handle rejection, creating your own social recruiting case study, beefing up your job interviews and LinkedIn going public.

Here are the articles our that interested us this week (in no particular order), enjoy!:

Are You a Rebel or a Leader? by Nilofer Merchant (@Nilofer) at Harvard Business Review (@HarvardBiz)

Great blog title and question posed by Nilofer. She presents the truth that Rebels and Leaders are only separated by a thin line.

How to Handle Rejection by Sharlyn Lauby (@Sharlyn_Lauby)

Social Recruitment Compass™ Infographic

How many HR/Recruitment Departments use PR as a way to generate response?

The "Holy Trinity" of Recruitment - HR/Recruitment, PR/Corporate Affairs and Marketing.
So how many HR/Recruitment Departments use PR as a way to generate response?... seems to me, that the focus is on "Social Media" but what about "Media"?

How to Use Foursquare for Recruitment

How to Use Foursquare for Recruitment

Resource: slideshare.net

Online Recruitment Conference 2011: The Year Ahead

The Enhance Media Conference is just a few days away, Thursday 27 January 2011.

This is your chance to hear an excellent line-up of speakers:

• Learn how to save money and hire better candidates from the Head of Recruitment for Olympics 2012 and the Head of Online Recruitment for Boots.
• Learn from Microsoft why targets within recruitment can damage your success and why a website without walls is the future of talent acquisition.
• Hear about the future of job boards - currently the largest online candidate channel - from the Director of TotalJobs, the UK's largest job board.
• In the new innovation platform, hear from four companies who each think they have the recruitment game-changer. Do they have the solutions to your recruitment challenges?
• Plus, results from the world’s largest piece of online recruitment research and three giants of recruitment discussing how to get more value from recruitment suppliers.

Visualize your LinkedIn network with InMaps

If you’re a LinkedIn user, you already know the power of your professional network.

What if you could visualize what your network looks like? Would your connections form clusters or groups? Wouldn’t it be great if you could see the way all your connections are related to each other? Even be able to identify the elusive hubs between your professional worlds?

Now, you can! This week, a new LinkedIn Labs product, called InMaps is introduces. More after the jump.

Top 5 Online Communities for Starting Your Career

It’s helpful to have someone with more experience show you the ropes when you’re beginning a new journey — this is especially true when it comes to entering the job market.

Having a community that shares job openings, tips, resources and words of wisdom is of real value, especially when you can ask the tough questions, such as “Do I really need to write a cover letter?” or “What are the job prospects in my industry?”

There are several career communities that focus on those initial years of your career and offer resources for you to start off strong — here are five.

Ad agency selects interns based on tweets

Minneapolis ad agency Campbell Mithun is to select its next bunch of interns based on their tweets. This is so bound to catch on.

It plans to hire 13 summer interns based on an application of “13 Career-Launching Tweets” sent between the dates of February 13 – 25, 2011.

So that is 13 chances at 140-character ago to show what they have got (that’s 1820 characters if you’re struggling to do that in your head).

According to Debbie Fischer, vice president and human resources manager for the agency: “Submitting an application via Twitter supports the digital and creative nature of our business. We anticipate a lively and interesting social-media exchange.”

Is technology killing the skills behind recruitment?

For those of us who have been in recruitment for a long time, in my case for 25 years, the advent of technology and the internet have brought amazing changes to the way we now work.

Technology has meant databases instead of cardex files, emails instead of letters and jobsites instead of newspaper advertising. All good for the industry and for clients and applicants alike.