Do you need a new job search strategy for the new year? Companies are hiring, but you need to stand out from the crowd if you want to win an interview, and ultimately, the job. Suggested methods of standing a head above the rest differ depending on whom you ask. Is it time to try some extreme methods?
As with anything related to job search strategies, there are many correct approaches; it is up to each job seeker to identify an authentic, strategic way to job searching. Sometimes, this may require stretching your comfort zone and taking a risk.
Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success, believes getting aggressive can help job seekers. He explains, “Don’t be afraid of being too aggressive…You might be for some, but who cares? You have a thousand times better shot at the others on your list. Get some people to call you, your boss, your association, your congressman, whatever, to complain that you are becoming a nuisance. You will then know you are on the road to victory.”
Here is a brief summary of Hardy’s suggestions for job seekers:
Narrow your list to your highest-priority targets. Then unload every bit of arsenal you have. Call, fax, email, FedEx, telegram, show-up, court the gatekeeper, bring lunch, send gifts (books, magazine articles, swag, etc.), and network with the contacts around them (peers, underlings, superiors, vendors, attorney, CPA’s, etc.).
Get referred in. If you don’t know someone who knows your target contact directly, find someone who knows someone one to two degrees away. Make a new friend and climb the rings on the daisy chain to your target.
Do the unexpected. Research all the people in the organization. Take that list and run it by your entire network to see if they know anyone who might know someone in this organization. Search every name against your LinkedIn database.
If you’re facing 2012 thinking you have done everything you can do to land a job and it has not been successful, you may want to try these techniques to give yourself an emotional jump-start.
Read the complete post on my U.S. News & World Report Column
photo by sakeeb