GILBERT GAZETTE
800.967.3846
resumepro">http://resumepro
http://executiveresumewriter.com

A monthly publication of Gilbert Resumes, featuring timely career
articles, career websites, and suggestions for today’s job seekers.
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Contents
 
1. The Informational Interview
2. Proactive Recession-Proof Your Job Tips
3. Perfecting Career Sales Pitch
4. Now Hiring: Contract Workers?
5. No Response After an Interview? What to Do.
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Career Advice – 5 Tips to Using the Informational Interview to Find Your Dream Job
Employmentdigest.net

Informational Interviewing is not job-interviewing. It’s a process for you to learn about an
industry or a specific job title. It can also be a way for you to identify unmet needs and
opportunities in fields that you love. Here’s how to get the most out of an informational
interview.

One – Find the People to Interview

I realize that seems obvious. But how? First, decide who, by job type, you want to
speak to. So, for example, you are interested in medicine and you want to speak to a
nurse. Contact everyone you know who is a nurse, and contact the rest of your
friends and ask them if they know any nurses. Explain that you are interested in
finding out more about this as a profession and that you are asking for fifteen to
twenty minutes of their time to answer some questions. If you don’t know anyone
and no one you know can point you to someone, try the yellow pages, or human
resource departments of local businesses in that field.

Maybe you just know you love photography. Same thing. If you don’t know any
photographers, ask your friends if they do. Then, seek out businesses or companies
in that field to find people. For that matter, go to a social media site like Twitter or
Facebook and ask for photographers who would be willing to do an informational
interview. You’ll be amazed.

Two – Make an Appointment

Set up a specific time, date, and place to conduct the interview. If it’s at their place of
business, be sure to ask what hours are the easiest for them to break away for fifteen
minutes. If you are meeting outside work, make sure you buy the coffee or lunch.
Reassure the person that you are just trying to learn a few things about the field and
that you have (give them a number – 7 or 8 at most) questions to ask. Make certain
you have their contact number to reach them that day should a problem arise.

Three – Be on Time and Stay on Time

Be there when you said you would, and wrap it up in the time frame you originally
asked them to give you. If they are willing to continue, then by all means continue to
pick their brains as long as possible.

Four – Get Their Contact Information First

As soon as you introduce yourself and before you begin the questioning, get their
contact information. Ideally a business card, but if not, write it down at the top of
your notes. Name (correctly spelled) phone, email, address. Do this first in case the
person is called away or agrees to go over the time limit and then you get interrupted.
At the end of the interview, be sure to ask if you may follow up with them as you
continue to learn.

Five – Send a Hand-Written Thank You Note

Since this was not a job interview, you should not send a formal typed follow up letter.
This should be a courteous, personal “thank you” from you to them for their time and
information.
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Proactive Recession-Proof Your Job Tips
Susan Guarneri

Being proactive about keeping your job, even when your company shows signs that it
is losing money and struggling, can be difficult. The May 2009 issue of Consumer
Reports’ Rebuild Your Finances (Special Edition) featured a real person (Shirley) who
found herself looking possible unemployment in the eye, and who took some proactive
job-insurance measures despite her uncertainty and fear.

Let’s face it: the stress alone of contemplating being let go can make logical thinking
go out the window. That’s why getting started with some proven steps can be invaluable.
Here are the 12 rules as outlined in the Consumer Reports article Recession-Proof Your
Job:

1. Add Value
2. Volunteer for special projects and committees
3. Market your personal brand
4. Take credit for your accomplishments
5. Make an emotional connection with key decision-makers
6. Behave more like an owner than an employee
7. Wear the cloak of confidence
8. Network your network
9. Keep your skills fresh
10. Stay visible
11. Rack up the IOUs
12. De-stress

Try to incorporate one or more of these action items into your work day, even if you think
your job is rock-solid. It can only make you a more valuable asset to the company, your
team, and your boss and enhance your career karma.
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Perfecting Career Sales Pitch
Brett Pyrtle is principal of Turning Point Communications LLC, a marketing communications
firm based in St. Paul.Making the sale for a new job doesn’t start with the interview or the
cover letter. It begins with a smart approach to online positioning. Star Tribune Sales and
Marketing May 25th.

In the not-so-distant past, the most common way people could distinguish themselves
during a job search was to write a compelling cover letter or use persistent follow-up
approaches.

Today, the sales pitch begins well before any first contact with a prospective employer.
And if you’re in a job search – you’re in sales.

“More and more hiring managers are using online search techniques to mine for
candidates,” says Jennifer Brigham, president of Brigham Group Staffing, a contract and
career placement firm based in Apple Valley. “That’s why it’s smart for job candidates to
consider how these technologies can help sell their skills more effectively.”

While a national unemployment rate over 8 percent makes the job market especially
competitive, there are simple steps to help cut through the clutter. These include:

Establish And Manage An Online Presence

Regardless of a candidate’s experience or career field, Brigham says they should
establish an “online billboard,” such as a LinkedIn page. Once that is in place, job
seekers should carefully add details about their experience, seek and highlight
references, and publish contact information. In addition, they should conduct regular
online searches on their own name, so they stay abreast of flattering – or potentially
unflattering – items that turn up.

Selling Key Skills

Name searches often work well to source candidates with highly visible professional or
volunteer experience. On the other hand, many well-qualified job seekers will not turn
up on a Google search, and have little interest in adding an online profile. In that case,
Brigham suggests that candidates design and post an online résumé that calls out
key skill areas.

“If I get a request from a manufacturing facility looking for someone who has run a
specific type of press, I’ll often go to Monster, Career Builder or the state Job Bank and
do a keyword search for that machine or industry until I find people out there with
résumés to match,” she says.

Take A Proactive Approach

In this economic downturn, Brigham has heard many candidates say, “I’ll do anything”
in an attempt to gain interviews. While empathizing with their personal situations, she says
that approach to employment marketing simply won’t work in an overcrowded market.
“Instead, candidates would be better served by seeking out special certifications, technical
training, or anything else that helps them stand out from the crowd.”
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Now Hiring: Contract Workers?

May data show employers are hanging on to contract workers since they remain wary of
bringing on full-timers.
By Prashant Gopal

The good news for unemployed Americans is that companies seem poised to begin hiring.
The bad news is that these are likely to be temporary jobs, often without health care and
other benefits.

In a recession, contract workers are often the first to go. But often, they’re the first to be hired
back, because in an uncertain environment, employers want to be flexible.

“I think it’s coming,” said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University
in Worcester, Mass. “We might be at the trough of the recession, and we might be heading
into a time of large-scale hiring of contract workers.”

Since November, employers—reacting to the economic meltdown—have been shedding
temporary workers at an alarming pace. The number of U.S. temporary help services
workers dropped by 90,000 in November (on a seasonally adjusted basis) and fell by more
than 70,000 every month until March, when the reductions suddenly began to slow,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In April, 55,000 temp workers were cut. But in
May, the number of temp workers fell by only 6,500.

The Cuts Were Too Deep

“In the last few weeks we’re seeing some stabilization,” said Bill DeMario, chief operating
officer for Ajilon Professional Staffing, a recruitment firm in Melville, N.Y. “Companies are
looking to bring in temporary workers for workloads where they had cut too deeply.”

It’s not that employers see a light at the end of the tunnel yet, but “they see that the tunnel
is not pointing downhill into an abyss anymore,” DeMario said. They are hiring back temp
workers, but often at a lower pay, he said.

BusinessWeek, working with Seattle’s PayScale, came up with a ranking of the
highest-paid contract workers. Database administrators—the top-paid category on the list—
earned an annualized salary of $80,300 and were paid 22.6% more than their permanent
colleagues. Of course, permanent employees enjoy benefits and can more easily
advance within the company.

“It’s a way to get in the door,” Chaison said of contract workers. “But it doesn’t have full
benefits, and you could get caught in that second, lower-paid stream of workers that
never has advancement or training.”

Strut Your Stuff

Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, said contract
workers have few protections.

“You and I might have different reasons to claim discrimination,” Horowitz said. “A
contract worker has no rights.”

But for people who have been unemployed for months or years, a temporary job is
better than nothing. Employees who take temp work not only get a salary that is
sometimes higher than what a permanent employee gets (though usually without
comparable benefits), but they can gain valuable experience and set themselves up
for a permanent job when the economy recovers.

“If somebody is out of work, what better way to network, display your skills, work
ethic, and commitment to a position to an audience that maybe in a position to hire
you,” said DeMario.
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No Response After an Interview? What to Do.
NY Times

After my column last month on job seekers sending out résumés and getting absolutely no
response from the employer — not even an automated one — I was surprised to hear from
several people who said they had also run into this problem after a face-to-face interview.

It’s easier to forgive someone for not responding if they are being slammed with hundreds
of applications. But there really is no excuse for a failing to notify an applicant about the
outcome after they are one of the few to be chosen for an interview. Or is there?

As I could not find anyone who would admit to doing this (or rather, not doing) I was left to
speculate on possible reasons for this phenomenon. I was reminded of something that
Barbara Pachter, an author and job search expert, told me about the search process: that
time passes much differently for a job seeker than for a hiring manager.

Say you go on an interview and it’s the only one you’ve had all month. Most of your hopes
may be invested in that single job. You wake up every morning thinking, “Are they going to
call today?” The hiring manager, meanwhile, is at work with all kinds of tasks to perform
and may not be thinking of you at all — or even focusing on the position you applied for. He
or she may be scheduling interviews across an entire month, or even two.

So if you haven’t heard from the employer in, say, two months, you may interpret that as a
nonresponse, whereas it may be taking longer than that to make a decision.

Another possible reason for not receiving a response: hiring for the position may have been
put on hold for economic reasons. Now, it would be polite to let applicants know that, but
that’s not how things always work in the real world.

Other reasons: the hiring manager has left the company; has trouble delivering bad news
(i.e., you didn’t get the job); has no manners or just plain forgot. Whatever the reason, you
have a right to find out what happened.

 When you are at the interview, be sure to ask when a decision is likely to be made. Send a
thank you note so you stay on their radar. If you don’t hear anything by the specified time,
wait a week or so and e-mail or phone the person who interviewed you. Be brief and polite,
of course. Don’t let on that you’ve been on the edge of your seat every day for a month
wondering if you got the job.

I recommend calling once and then letting it go after talking to the person. But after an
interview, I think you have a right to be more persistent (without being a pest), to the extent
of one or two more calls or e-mails. If you still don’t hear anything, then you wouldn’t want to
work there anyway, right?

After an interview, keep networking and applying with the same energy and frequency as
before. This is a lesson to job seekers never to pin their hopes on one position.  

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GILBERT GAZETTE

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