The focus of this month's newsletter is to show you what extra steps you should take to land a job in this tough economy.

Contents

• Companies are still hiring but...here is what you need to know
• The 1 thing to get right on your resume
• Preparation gets the job offer - here is what you need to know
• Positioning yourself
• Career Coaching will help you land a better job now
• Check out our 1.5 Million open jobs

Are You Having a Hard Time Getting Interviews and Job Offers?

The Good News: Companies still hire during tough economic times like these!!!

The Bad News: With more competition and fewer jobs, you have to be much better prepared.

Yes, companies still hire, even while they are laying off and even when they have an official "Hiring Freeze."

The reason is simple. Smart companies know they will always need the best people.

Really smart managers are always on the look-out for the best people i.e. "The Right Person" who can join their team and have an instant impact on the bottom line. When I worked as a CEO of a small start up, we could immediately sense the impact of a great hire.

Notice that we are saying "Smart Companies" and "Smart Managers." There are a lot of mismanaged companies out there. They won't be hiring right now. They are too busy going out of business. So you would not want to join them anyway. I'm thinking General Motors.

Position Yourself As "The Right Person"

We have found through our Career Coaching practice at CareerPlanner.com that most job seekers seem to have similar challenges:

• Their career direction is not focused or crystal clear
• Their resume is not in alignment with what hiring managers are looking for
• They are not well prepared to answer the tough interview questions

I'll explain more about these challenges later, but most likely, if you are having trouble getting interviews and job offers, you may want to use a Career Coach to help you prepare and position yourself before you send out more resumes.

Develop Crystal Clear Career Direction and Focus

What message does your resume send the hiring manager?

Does it say something simple and clear like "I have worked in the software engineering field for 10 years and now I want a management position in software development?"

Or does it say something less clear, less focused, and possibly confusing like "I have worked in construction, real estate development, sales, and now I want a job in your company."

See the difference? Have a stranger read your resume and ask him/her what type of work it says you do. This is where a Career Coach comes in handy. A Career Coach will give you objective advice.

Picture this: If I am the hiring manager and I'm reading 25 resumes at the end of a long, hard day, what does your resume tell me? Keep in mind I will only read the top half of the first page (above the fold). If that gets my attention I might read the rest of the first page. Then I might invite you for an interview.

If the content above the fold does not get my attention, your resume will wind-up in the recycle bin.

Achieve Perfect Alignment With Your Target Hiring Manager

Perfect alignment is when the first half page of your resume lines up with what the hiring manager is looking for.

If you achieve perfect alignment, you will get a phone call for an interview.

Let's say the hiring manager is looking for a "Marketing Manager."

If the top line in your resume says "Marketing Manager" or "Product Marketing Manager" or even "Vice President of Marketing," you are in alignment.

However, if the first half page starts off saying "Looking for a position in a fast growing company where I can fully utilize all of my amazing skills...", then your resume will land in the recycle bin.

Actually, to achieve perfect alignment, the first 15 words of your resume must include the job title the hiring manager has in mind.

For a critique of your resume see our premium Career Coaching package at CareerPlanner. Even professional resume writers DO NOT write their own resumes. Why do you think that is?

Be Better Prepared Than The Other Candidate

There are a few questions you must be well prepared to answer. For these questions you should have a well rehearsed "elevator pitch" or "positioning statement."

When asked these questions during an interview, if you show hesitation, or if you show an emotional reaction, or you end up blabbering for five minutes, you will not get the job offer.

We don't have time to cover each deadly question here, but I will give you a real life example of someone who was not well prepared.

When I was a CEO of a start-up, I was recruiting for a senior, high level, technical manager position that would report directly to me. This was to be a high visibility, leadership position. Everyone from employees to investors and customers would look to this person for leadership.

The candidate showed up wearing a black T shirt, black jeans and tennis shoes. Even though this interview was in laid-back Silicon Valley. When you are interviewing a senior executive it can't hurt to dress appropriately.

So this candidate's alignment with the hiring manager was already a little off. He didn't take time to think what the hiring manager might be looking for.

Part way through the interview I asked one of the deadly questions: "Why would you leave your present job?"

The candidate told me that he felt his coworkers didn't like him. They were jealous that he was spending most of his time writing his next technical book, instead of doing the work they were all supposed to be doing for the company.

By this point I was thinking, "How fast can I politely get this joker out of my office?"

He could have said any number of things, but instead he told me he could not get along with others and that he was working on personal pet projects instead of doing the work the company wanted done.

A little preparation and thinking ahead would have gone a long way for this person. A few months later I heard he had been fired. Wonder why?

To learn more about how to prepare for the deadly questions, check out "The Ultimate Career Guide" - our self study course described below. Not only will learn how to prepare for interviews, but you will learn job hunting tricks that only the pro's know.

Career Coaching Will Help You Land A Better Job - Faster

If you are serious about putting your career on track and about finding a new and better job, we suggest you use a professional Career Coach. Especially in today's job market, you need all the competitive advantage you can get. In the days of a booming economy, getting jobs was easy. In this economy, you have to be better prepared and better positioned than the next guy. Career Coaching helps you accomplish this.

We recommend two different Career Coaching services:

At CareerPlanner.com we offer Career Coaching in 30 minute phone sessions where we will:

• Help you work out what your career direction is
• Help you decide on the next few steps you need to take
• Put your current position and your new direction in perspective
• Answer your toughest career questions

We do all that in 30 minutes. We also offer a resume critique session where we show you how to perfect your resume.

However, if you need more than a 30 minute session, we recommend nationally-recognized Career Coach, Ford R. Myers, of CareerPotential.com. He is the best.

Ford offers three different Career Coaching programs for you to choose from:

• 1 Month Quick Start Program
• 3 Month Career Mentor Program
• 6 Month Career Partner Program

Ford's programs will take you from building a crystal clear career direction for yourself to preparing all your career documents, to polishing your interview skills, to negotiating your salary. Actually, his program takes you even further than that. It will help you manage and grow your career, starting with your first day on the new job.

Ford R. Myers is also the author of "The Ultimate Career Guide," which includes just about everything he learned from over 15 years of Career Coaching.

"The Ultimate Career Guide" will prepare you to go out and land the best job of your life, even in this tough economy.

What you get is over 220 pages of career coaching, tools, strategies, and resources in downloadable PDF format and over 10 audio files (which you can play from your iPod) that will talk you through each step of the job search process.

The audio files are simply amazing. They feature Ford R. Myers talking you through each step of the Career Change / Job Search process. Ford knows his stuff. Even expert career counselors will learn something new from this guide.

The "Ultimate Career Guide" includes everything you need to know to land a better job and to build a better career:

• Crystal Clear Career Direction - Building a vision of your ideal job
• Interview Preparation - Developing your accomplishments stories
• Interview Preparation - Perfecting your story of why you left your last job
• Interview Preparation - Crafting your positioning statement
• Building a target employer list
• Writing your resume and cover letter
• Networking made easy
• How to search for a job
• Interview guidelines
• How to correctly follow-up after an interview
• Negotiation
• Ongoing career management

The list goes on.

One of my favorite sections is Networking, something that sends shivers down the spine of any introvert.

Ford Myers shows you a logical, systematic approach to networking that anybody can follow. He makes it easy and even fun.

With "The Ultimate Career Guide", you’re getting thousands and thousands of dollars worth of career consulting, tools, strategies, and resources — all for a tiny fraction of what top Career Coaches charge.

Your career is one of the most important aspects of your life — and how you manage it today will determine the quality of your life, and your family’s standard of living, for years to come.

Act now, and take this important step toward a much more successful future!

Hate taking tests?  So do we.  However, this one is different.

This one will help you change your life and help you build the career you love.

After taking the CareerPlanner Career Test, you will:

• Know which careers are a good match for you and which careers you should avoid i.e. where can you be most successful
• You will know what types of work will be satisfying to you and why
• You will be able to look at any job and know whether that type of work is a good match for you
• You will understand why you dislike certain types of work and why
• You will be able to establish better career direction for yourself
• You will be better prepared to avoid taking the wrong job

Bottom line, this career tool will show you the type work where you can be the most successful and where you can achieve job satisfaction.  It really works.  We've been doing this for over 10 years.

Take the CareerPlanner Career Test Now and put direction and focus back into your career.

More New Job Openings at CareerBuilder

Yes, that's right.

We've got about 1.5 Million Jobs that you can search through.

The Big Picture

As we write this newsletter, we can not avoid reflecting on the economy.

These are indeed difficult times we are experiencing. It's not just in America. All industrialized countries are seeing an economic slowdown and a large scale reduction of jobs. Our friends and clients in Taiwan, China, Japan, and India all report the same thing.

The good news is that these things are temporary. The economy will get better.

The bad news is that things will get worse before they get better and that it may be a long time before we experience wide spread prosperity.

Once the world economy hits bottom, the recovery will be slow and gradual. It will take time to re-absorb the huge volume of laid off people back into the work force. It won't snap back.

If we can offer any words of advice, it would be to prepare for a long drawn out economic slow down. This means reducing your spending to well below the amount you earn. But that is always a good thing to do.

If you find yourself recently unemployed we offer this advice:

1. Get vigorous exercise every day. This means jogging 3 to 5 miles or walking 10 miles at a time. It will help burn up stress and the fresh air will help you think more clearly.
   
   
2. Second, make sure you have people you can talk to. It gets lonely being unemployed. You need people to talk to.

We hope that this newsletter has helped you with your Career Direction. If there is anything we can do, just email me at Michael@CareerPlanner.com.

Best Regards,

Michael T. Robinson