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Your #Career : How To Wow A Job Interviewer When Changing Careers…The Trick is to Convince an Employer that your “Old” Skills/Experiences Can be Just as or even More Valuable in a New Industry or Role.

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According to a new AARP survey, four out of 10 experienced workers will be looking for a job this year, and of those, a quarter are considering a complete career change. If you’re one of those eager to change careers in 2016, what can you do to improve your odds of success?

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The trick is to convince an employer that your “old” skills and experiences can be just as — or even more — valuable in a new industry or role. Or, as my colleague Kathryn Sollmann, founder of the career advisory firm 9 Lives for Women (and an expert on women’s career change issues), puts it: “You can change industries when you connect the dots.”

The Connect the Dots Approach
I find Sollmann’s “connect the dots” approach spot-on (pardon the pun).

Once you thoroughly research your desired field, learn its lingo and identify commonalities between your previous experiences and your target employer’s needs, you’ll know which accomplishments and experiences to highlight during the interview process and on your resumé. In turn, you’ll be more likely to convince prospective hiring managers that your skills really do transfer well.

“The fact is that it’s easier for employers to settle into default mode and hire cookie-cutter candidates who all have the same background and experience. The trick is to remind employers that quick studies can learn the language of a new industry. Then through research and networking, prove you know the very specific ways your skills can be transferred to get the job done.”

In her instructive blog post detailing this “connect the dots” method, Sollmann shared the steps she took early in her career to progress from being a newly minted college grad with an English degree (aka Unemployment 101) to a job editing and writing training programs for a Big 8 accounting firm to tripling her salary in a job as a conference organizer for an investment publication.

 

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To summarize, Sollmann successfully made the leap between industries by doing two key things:

She thoroughly researched the specific needs of employers in her target industry.

She carefully reframed her experience in a way that proved to employers that her skills and experiences were relevant to their industry.

In other words, she made it really easy for employers to understand why they needed her.Continued from page 1

“I didn’t just say that I had the research, writing and event planning skills to do the job. I connected the dots, showing that the way I applied skills to responsibilities X, Y and Z for the training job would be applied the same way to do A, B and C in the conference-planning job,” writes Sollmann.

How to Research and Network Well

Research and networking are especially critical before you enter a job interview to change careers; they’ll help you know what to say to convince the interviewer that your seemingly inappropriate background is actually a great fit.

So I asked Sollmann how to dig up what you need to persuade an employer in another field to hire you. Here’s her advice:

Identify through LinkedIn, school alumni networks, and elsewhere a few people who work in the field you want to switch into. Then, ask for a 15-minute phone appointment with each to help you understand how you can prove that your skills are transferable.

 Before you meet for this informational interview, distill your expertise into three or four major skill areas. Then, during your talk, bring up a major project or initiative you worked on that exemplified these skills and ask about parallels to the initiatives where these contacts work.

Some questions you might want to ask during your phone calls:

  • How is your type of expertise used where they work?
  • Did most of the employees “grow up” at this employer?
  • Does the firm or nonprofit value having employees with varying professional backgrounds and perspectives?
  • Can you connect me with someone who was hired from an entirely different industry so I can find out how they adapted?

Cutting Through the Cookie Cutter Mentality

If this sounds like a lot of work, well, it is. But this informational-interview research will increase your likelihood of finding appropriate job opportunities and help you make your strongest case to hiring managers.

As Sollmann concludes in her post: “The fact is that it’s easier for employers to settle into default mode and hire cookie-cutter candidates who all have the same background and experience. The trick is to remind employers that quick studies can learn the language of a new industry. Then through research and networking, prove you know the very specific ways your skills can be transferred to get the job done.”

Good luck with your career switch in 2016!

 

Forbes.com |  January 25, 2016 | Nancy Collamer, CONTRIBUTOR

 

You #Career : Four Job Search Mistakes College Students Should Stop Making Immediately…The Pressure to Nail Down a Summer Gig starts Early in the Spring Semester. The Best Opportunities often Appear during the Doldrums of Winter & Vanish Quickly.

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If you’re a college student,  For seniors, this final semester brings a blend of relief, nostalgia and, I can imagine, creeping anxiety about how to pay back those tens of thousands in student loans. As someone still young enough to remember my college days and the anxiety-filled post-graduation job hunt, but advanced enough that I’m now reviewing resumes from eager young students and about-to-be-graduates,

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I’ve been taking careful note of the common mistakes I’m seeing from entry-level job seekers and would-be interns. Here are four of the top blunders to avoid:

Guessing vs. playing it safe.

When you’re taking a multiple choice final and come across a question you don’t know the answer to, conventional wisdom says you should guess. By leaving it blank, you’re guaranteed zero points, but with a shot-in-the-dark guess amongst A,B,C and D, you have a 25% chance of being correct. This logic shouldn’t apply to your job hunt. If the posting asks you to email your resume and cover letter toasmith@company.com, incorrectly guessing that the A stands for Alan and not Abby and addressing your letter to ‘Dear Mr. Smith’ (I’ve seen it done) is an easy way to look like you don’t care about details. Comb LinkedIn for all the A. Smiths who work at the company to find the right one. If that doesn’t yield results, “Dear Hiring Manager” is still preferably to being presumptuous.

 

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Focusing on the wrong achievements.

The types of accomplishments that got you into a good college are not necessarily the ones that will land you a good job. Putting your four years of varsity cheerleading ahead of your internships is not the path to success. Include only those extracurriculars that you can reasonably tie to the skills and experience the job posting is asking for or that are extraordinarily impressive. Admissions officers care if you’re well-rounded, employers much less so.

 Assuming a B effort will yield A results.

Being the best of a subpar bunch is not a bad place to be if your biochemistry professor grades on a curve. Unfortunately, for you, most employers don’t. You’re not just competing with other applicants, you’re competing against all the other choices the hiring manager has for getting the chunk of work done that the job description represents. There are few fields with such a labor shortage that companies will willingly hire a mediocre candidate because he or she is less mediocre than the other applicants. Instead, I’ve seen company leave a job posting up for months, outsource to freelancers, reassign job duties to cover the required tasks or simply do without. If a company wants to hire an A employees, they’re unlikely to settle for a B among a sea of Cs.

Saying too much

To the surprise of no one, young people who grew up in the TMI era often lack an intellectual filter when it comes to parsing which of their personal stories are fit for public consumption. See this Frank Bruni piece from 2014 on oversharing in college admissions essays for some choice examples. Youthful TMI or braggadocio isn’t just for admissions essays, as my piece on the world’s worst cover letter (penned by a would-be Wall Street intern) shows. Heed its lessons.

Employers don’t expect you to have a wealth of experience at your age. Instead, they’re looking for growth potential and good judgment. Demonstrate both by keeping your application materials succinct (you don’t need a three-page resume and a 1000-word cover letter),  professional in tone and devoid of all references to your squat weight. Put another way, if there’s significant overlap between your Tinder bio, your resume and your new therapist’s intake form, re-think your choices.

Learn more about my work and connect with me on Twitter.

 

Forbes.com | January 25, 2016 | J. Maureen Henderson

Your #Career : New Year, New Strategy, New Job…So the Good News for Job Seekers is that Many People are Looking & Planning to Leave their Current Positions, which in Turn Creates Turnover

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Whether you are thinking about finding a new job or contemplating a career shift to another field, the start of a new year is actually a good time to embark upon your search. Making a career change ranks high on many people’s list of New Year’s resolutions. A large spike in people searching on-line job boards, reaching out to contacts on various social platforms, and applying for new positions has marked the first week in January during the last three years.

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So the good news for job seekers is that many people are looking and planning to leave their current positions, which in turn creates turnover and an enormous number of openings. The number of people leaving their jobs voluntarily in the U.S. has been increasing steadily. Once the impact of these resignations is felt, many companies will be searching for new talent to fill these vacant slots and it is expected to create a very robust job market in a wide range of industries.

There is also a sense that this year, more young and mid-level professionals will be looking for the “next” job or making a change, faster than previous generations. As Millennials are now the largest generation represented in the work-place, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Gen Y professionals get “job restless” quickly, especially if they feel under-valued, perceive that they don’t have enough visibility, and don’t feel that they are challenged and are learning enough from their current employer. Quite frankly, even if they are happy and like the people they work with, Millennials are often seeking to make a change because they have FOMO (fear of missing out) more than any other generation in history.

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Whether you are part of this demographic or not, all of this means an extremely positive outlook for would-be job seekers. So now that the conditions are positive for your job search, how do you make it happen? What will it really take? Here are some tips that should help you land a great new job in the New Year: 

  1. First, even though there are positive conditions for job seekers, don’t be over confident and make the mistake of under preparing or under estimating the amount of time and energy a true job search takes.
  2. Do your research when you are applying for jobs and demonstrate a real interest and knowledge of the employer. Elevate this to an even higher level of preparation for an interview. Recruiters are completely turned off when you don’t even know what the company does.
  3. Make sure that you have “good job search habits”. What I mean by this is that you should view your search as a job that you literally get up for each day of the week, get dressed and get to work. You set goals for the day of applying for positions that aren’t random, but you are truly interested in and qualified for and you keep a record of these and dates to follow up. You reach out to a number of contacts in your network and set up as many calls and “coffees” as possible.
  4. If you haven’t already, establish an email account that is professional and can handle large files. If you have been using your nickname @ AOL AOL +%, it’s time to set up a Gmail or similar large email account with your real name.
  5. Make sure you name your resume with your actual name, not “my resume”. You would be shocked at how many job seekers don’t do this and then wonder why they never hear back on a job they seem qualified for. It’s often because recruiters can’t find them.
  6. Master social. Utilize social media in strategic ways. Find companies and organizations that you are interested in and follow them on Twitter TWTR +0.00% andLinkedIn LNKD +0.00% and comment appropriately. Look out for tweets or job announcements and follow up.
  7. Utilize your college/university connections. The career center, alumni relations, and LinkedIn university pages are fantastic ways to find alumni from your Alma Mater who may be working in companies or industries that you are interested in. They can often offer advice and support as well as help connect you to additional opportunities.
  8. Speaking of networking, do it in person as well as online. Getting in front of people and being able to articulate what you are interested in, and a little about your background in a short amount of time (60-90 seconds), is an important “pitch” strategy to develop.
  9. Always be ready. Whether it’s a phone call, text, or other communication. In other words don’t pick up the phone if you are half asleep or at some loud social gathering. Rather, let the call go to your professional voice mailbox and then call the recruiter back when you have had a cup a coffee and are in a quiet area with strong cell phone reception.
  10. Keep up your energy, determination, and positive attitude. Job searching can be a very humbling experience, but no one wants to hire someone who appears frustrated and desperate.  Demonstrating your genuine interest and enthusiasm are key. Exercise, get plenty of sleep and talk to friends and job search professionals to get encouragement, vent and keep up your spirits.Depending on what positions and organizations you are applying for, your geographic location, and your flexibility, job searches can take a while. The good news is that there is a great deal of movement and opportunity on the horizon, and if you follow these tips, you can land that great new job in 2016.

    Forbes.com | January 13, 2016 | Trudy Steinfeld @nyuwasserboss

Your #Career : 7 Things You Must Do To Maximize The Value Of Your LinkedIn Profile…Your LinkedIn Profile is One of the Most Important Career Marketing Tools you Have.

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You’ve done all the hard work to create a stellar LinkedIn profile. You have a professional headshot, a compelling headline and a complete, authentic summary (if you are still working on this, read this post for guidance). When LinkedIn says your profile is “all-star,” it’s time to turn your hard work into a tool that will advance your career.

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Here are seven actions to take (in four categories) to maximize the value of your perfect profile:

1. Make it visible. You don’t want to be the world’s best-kept secret, wasting all that effort you spent building the online representation of the real you. I recommend making every element of your profile visible to everyone. Through the Privacy and Settings option, you can choose to share your entire profile or just a few elements with public viewers. Allow anyone to see your public profile. What’s the value of creating your profile if you don’t showcase it?

 

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2. Keep it current. The more interaction you have with your profile, the more likely it will be seen by others. In fact, according to LinkedIn, you should “update your status at least 20 times per month in order to maximize your reach to approximately 60% of your unique audience.”

Stay connected with your contacts by updating your status regularly – letting others know what you are working on and the events you are attending, along with sharing links to the content you find interesting. 

Direct People to it

Sure, people can find your profile through LinkedIn searches – publishing all the right keywords is essential for attracting people you didn’t even know were looking for you. I call it planned serendipity. But you need to go beyond the random and unplanned connections. You need to send people to your profile so they can learn more about you.

There are two easy ways to get people to check out your profile:

3. Use a QR Code. You want people to learn more about you after meeting you at a networking function. Make it easy for them to get to your profile by creating a QR (quick response) code that links directly to your profile. Add your QR code to business cards, your resume, and your pitch letters. You can also create stickers with your QR code and add them to your name badge at networking functions.

4. Create LinkedIn buttons. Use the LinkedIn buttons to direct people to your profile. Under “Privacy and Settings” you can access your public profile settings (on the right side of the screen). At the bottom of the box, there’s an option to create what LinkedIn calls “your public profile badge.” This lets you choose from a series of button options that you can add to your email signature, Blog, Website, etc.

Repurpose it

LinkedIn provides a valuable, one-stop-shopping resource for people who want to know more about your expertise. But the act of putting your profile together is also a valuable, one-stop-shopping exercise in getting clear about your personal brand message and defining and documenting your career success. Now that you have all that content in one place, leverage that work for other applications. In personal branding, we have a technique we call “being lazy,” which means repurpose and reuse content. This helps ensure consistency and saves time and effort. Here are three ways to maximize the effort you put into build your amazing LinkedIn profile: 

5. Get a copy of it. You can export your profile to Word or PDF document to use in your career marketing activities. Here’s how.

6. Turn it into a resume. LinkedIn Labsprovides an option to turn your LinkedIn profile into your resume. First, you select your resume template, and then you can customize the content that you pull directly from your profile. This helps save time and ensures consistency between your on- and offline career materials.

7. Create your own website. There are a number of services that will let you import your LinkedIn content into their platform so you can create your own custom website. My favorite is branded.me (disclosure: branded.me is a partner of my company, Reach Personal Branding). They allow you to import your profile content into one of a variety of templates. Then you can customize your site with images, colors, fonts, etc.

Your LinkedIn profile is one of the most important career marketing tools you have. Its value is amplified when you get more people to see it, and when you repurpose it to support your personal branding efforts.

Remember, before you maximize your profile, you need to make sure it is compelling and reflects who you are in the real world. Learn how to build a stellar LinkedIn summary in this recorded webinar which you can download here.

 

Forbes.com | January 4, 2015 | William Arruda

 

Your #Career : Do You Need A New Job in 2016? This One Question Will Tell You…So here is the Question. Where is your Career on the Curve?

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Should you stay in your current job, or is it time to move? You will have various ways of dealing with this question, but let me suggest one concept that you may have missed. Or if you are thinking of it, you may not have realised its full ramifications. I’m going to ask you a very pointed question here. The answers might transform your plans for the coming year.

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The concept is  the simple S-curve. If you have studied marketing, you will recognise it immediately as the product lifecycle, but it applies to everything – businesses, careers, musical genres, empires…

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For a product the stages are introduction-growth-maturity-decline. For a career the stages can be characterised as:

    1. Learning the job – excitement, disorientation, growth;
    2. Proving yourself – producing results, acquiring mastery;
    3. Mastery – quite effortless competence;
    4. Decline – boredom, staleness, beyond your sell-by date.

So here is the question. Where is your career on the curve? How much have you learned in the past year, compared to how much you learned in the first year? What is your level of excitement, relative to past years? If you are still growing, that’s good. It’s probably worth staying, unless there’s something wrong with the organisation. It’s the mastery phase that is dangerous.

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The feeling that you have mastered your job is, for most of us, very pleasant. We feel comfortable, competent, in control (but see my previous post!). Life is good. But here’s the bad news. If you have reached this point, the rot is already setting in. Peak mastery is in fact the beginning of decline. And from this follows something very important; just when you feel on top of things is the moment you need to be looking for the next step. This seems counterintuitive, but think for a moment and you will see why it makes sense.

When is the best time to be looking for a new job? Is it when you are at the top of your powers? Still energised about the job you are doing, still performing strongly, still confident? Or is it better to be looking when you are starting to fade, getting a little bored, maybe not giving of your best, starting to worry? Put that way, it’s obvious, but it is so easy to miss. So often, we don’t start to plan the next move until we start to feel bored or uncomfortable where we are. Then, given the inevitable delays in getting our ideas together and the time waiting for the right thing to come up, we are into the period of decline. Trust me on this – it’s a mistake I’ve made. Probably one of my biggest mistakes.

If this little piece of productive paranoia seems an unwelcome intrusion in the season of peace and goodwill, please believe it’s well intentioned. If it does make you feel uncomfortable, that probably means there’s something you need to attend to as soon as you are back at work.

Forbes.com | December 31, 2015 | Alastair Dryburgh 

#Leadership : 5 Surefire Signs That You’re #Promotable … When it Comes to Getting #Promoted, you Want to Present yourself in a Way that Feeds into the Biases that #Bosses ’ have about What Makes someone Promotable.

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It’s the end of the year already, and it isn’t too late to show your boss that you’re worthy of a promotion. Maybe you’ve been holding down the same position for a few years and are ready to move up. Maybe your company is going through some internal shuffling and you’re expecting your dream job to open up. Or, maybe you’ve been disappointed a few too many times by other people getting promoted ahead of you.

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Whatever the reason, you want to make certain now that you’re ready to move up. In other words, you need to make certain that your boss sees it that way.

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” –Steve Martin

Anthony Greenwald at the University of Washington has studied bias more than just about anyone, and his research findings have major implications for your ability to get promoted. His recent studies showed that unconscious workplace biases tend to stay constant, and bosses follow these biases, whether they are aware of them or not.

“People are claiming that they can train away biases,” Greenwald says, “[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][They’re] making those claims without evidence.”

When it comes to getting promoted, you want to present yourself in a way that feeds into the biases that bosses’ have about what makes someone promotable. You’re already doing the hard work, so why not frame your effort in such a way that it increases your chances of obtaining the position you want?

While this probably sounds a bit manipulative, there are several straightforward things that you can do to showcase your work and make certain that you’re promotable. The following five actions will appeal to your boss’s inherent biases about promotability, without you being disingenuous.

1. You stretch your boundaries

Anybody (well, almost anybody) can do what they’re told. To get promoted, you have to go above and beyond. Taking on additional responsibilities without being asked is not only a great way to demonstrate your work ethic, energy, and skills, but it also lets your boss know that you’re ready (and able) to expand your scope. When you take on more than the norm, your boss can’t help but think that you’re capable of a bigger role. This includes showing that you’re willing to take risks by making innovative suggestions.

 

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2. You aren’t too irreplaceable

Most people fail at this. Of course, performing at your highest level regardless of the position you’re in is always the best idea. The key here is not to be seen as the onlyperson capable of performing the necessary duties in the position that you want to move on from. If you do, your boss will conclude that promoting you isn’t worth the trouble (and risk) of finding someone to replace you.

The best way to find a balance between doing your best and showing that you’re ready for more is by developing other people. As tempting as it is to hoard knowledge, don’t. Instead, make certain that there are others who know how to do important aspects of your job. Plus, teaching is a critical leadership skill. So, in addition to alleviating concerns about finding your replacement, you’ll demonstrate that you can handle the responsibility that comes with a more advanced position.

3. You demonstrate emotional intelligence (EQ)

You might be able to get away with being a temperamental genius in entry-level positions, but you’ll never move past that without emotional intelligence. If you’re the type who’s prone to temper tantrums when things don’t go your way; losing your cool when people cross you; storming out of rooms, yelling; or going silent during conflict, you’re signaling to your boss that you don’t want a promotion.

No boss wants to be known as the guy or gal who promoted a short-fused person. Once you’re promoted, your behavior is a reflection of the judgment of the person who promoted you. Show your boss that you have enough self-awareness to acknowledge your weaknesses and to work to improve them. This will prove you’re capable. Emotional self-control is the result of hard work, not an inherent skill.

4. You speak the company’s language

Bosses appreciate vision more than anything. They love it when you see what could be useful to the company over the long term and tell them about it in language they understand. As you move up in any company, your choice of language becomes increasingly important. It’s no longer enough to simply be an expert at what you do; you have to demonstrate that you understand how the work you do serves the business.

That means learning the vocabulary of the executive team and your boss. Whether that’s KPIs, EBITA, profit margin, market share, failure rate, or what have you, know what the terms mean and why they’re important so that you can use them correctly when speaking with upper management. Speaking the right language will not only show that you’re interested in more than your current role, but it will also demonstrate your intelligence and fit within the company.

5. You aren’t afraid to ask for it

Not everybody wants to be promoted; some people are perfectly happy doing the same job for years on end. If you don’t tell your boss otherwise, he or she may assume that you’re one of them. When the time comes to show up in your boss’s office and say, “I’m interested in a promotion,” it’s important that you have something specific in mind—if not a specific job title, then at least a clear idea of what the responsibilities might include and how this ties in to your career goals. And, if the job requires skills you don’t have yet, outline your plan for acquiring them.

Bringing It All Together

You may not get the promotion you’re aiming for. If that happens, ask for feedback, but stay away from sour-grapes questions like “Why did you pick him and not me?” In fact, don’t speak about the person who got the promotion at all. Instead, ask which of the critical skills you lack and what you need to do to be ready for the next opportunity. Don’t argue; just listen, and ask thoughtful follow-up questions. Just make certain you follow through on the suggestions you’re given. If your boss suggests some things you can do to become more promotable and you don’t follow through, don’t expect to be considered the next time around.

Promotions don’t just happen, and they’re not a guaranteed result of high performance. That’s because you don’t get promoted as a reward for what you’ve already done. You get promoted because your boss thinks you have the potential to add more value in a larger role.

 

Forbes.com | December 28, 2015 | Travis Bradberry 

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Your #Career : Beyond #LinkedIn — Using Social Media For Your Job Search…It’s no Secret that LinkedIn is a Powerful Job Search Tool. It Can Help you Expand your #Network, gain Job Prospects, Grab the Attention of #Recruiters & More.

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It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a powerful job search tool. It can help you expand your network, gain job prospects, grab the attention of recruiters and more. There are many other ways to leverage social media to give your job hunt a boost, though. Try these tips during your job search in 2016, to get a leg up on the competition.

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Scope out Instagram. If a potential employer has a company Instagram account, the photos can offer some serious intel into the day-to-day happenings of its office. The No. 1 question an Instagram account will answer: What is the dress code really like? This helps get rid of any confusion or anxiety over an appropriate interview outfit. Additionally, you might also find that the company is hosting an event, supporting a charity or partaking in fun team-building exercises. These are all great for giving you a better understanding of the culture and helping you make genuine conversation during an interview.

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Read the blog of an insider. Find a list of employees who work within your desired department via LinkedIn to see if any promote themselves as bloggers or keynote speakers. If yes, reading an employee’s industry blog can provide insight into how the people at a potential employer think and work. And if your hiring manager is the one with a blog, it will offer a wealth of information and ideas to discuss during your interview, making you look incredibly smart and tuned in to the company.

Follow on Twitter. A Twitter account can provide an up-to-date feed of important news, trends and even job opportunities. Plus, if the company is small, interacting on Twitter could help provide you with name recognition for when you submit a resume. However, make sure that your Twitter page is squeaky clean and reflects your professional goals before connecting.

Take LinkedIn even further. Many people use LinkedIn as only a digital version of their resume, but there are so many other ways to showcase your skills and experience on the social platform. For example: Ensure you’re getting the most out your LinkedIn recommendations. Upload portfolio examples. Join industry groups. Follow prospective employers and influential people in your industry.

And my final piece of advice: Social media is a quick and easy way to gain information and make connections, but don’t take it too far. You shouldn’t be hounding a hiring manager via Twitter after an interview, sending messages on LinkedIn when it’s not appropriate or stalking employees through Instagram.

Lisa Quast, author of the book, Secrets of a Hiring Manager Turned Career Coach: A Foolproof Guide to Getting the Job You Want. Every Time. Join me on Twitter @careerwomaninc

Forbes.com | December 27, 2015 | Lisa Quast

Your #Career : This One Skill Can Get Your #Résumé to the Top of the Pile… #Networking is One of the Most Valuable Skills that an Individual can Have these Days, in Terms of Getting Where you Want to Go, Be it a Selective School, or Landing a Competitive Job.

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If you’re looking for a job, or simply re-evaluating your current career trajectory, having a coherent and clear strategy is essential. That can include a number of things — getting the perfect résumé put together, knowing the right people, and even having at least some grasp as to what industries are growing or shrinking, or what cities and states are seeing the most economic growth.

Free- Door to Building

But more than anything, you’ll want to have a solid set of skills and competencies that will win over hiring managers, and show businesses that you can and will be an asset to their growth and long-term strategy. 

Your résumé should include all of the traditional core competencies that businesses are looking for, including punctuality, solid industry experience, and maybe even a college degree. It’s all going to depend on what you’re looking for, of course, but there’s some new insight that is giving job-seekers — that may mean you — a bit of insider information that may put you in the upper echelon of applicants.

Businesses want employees with social skills.

This is the conclusion of a slew of new research into labor economics. The New York Times’ Upshot recently did a story covering the phenomenon, which included diving into a new study from David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard University. Deming’s paper, The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market, says that social skills and an ability to bring a “human touch” to the workplace is becoming more important as automation and technology render many positions obsolete.

 

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“While computers perform cognitive tasks of rapidly increasing complexity, simple human interaction has proven difficult to automate,” his paper reads. “Since 1980, jobs with high social skill requirements have experienced greater relative growth throughout the wage distribution. Moreover, employment and wage growth has been strongest in jobs that require high levels of both cognitive skill and social skill.”

Networking is one of the most valuable skills that an individual can have these days, in terms of getting where you want to go, be it a selective school, or landing a competitive job.

It’s an interesting development and hypothesis, and the data seems to support Deming’s findings.

As we know, automation is rapidly encroaching on many industries. Over the next few decades, the economy is going to be going through some drastic changes as a good deal of the labor needed across many industries is taken out of human hands, and put into the hands of robots and artificial intelligences. It’s happening at fast food restaurants, and it’s happening in the finance industry. There’s really no stopping it.

That’s what makes social skills so important. We’re going to need people — actual flesh, blood, and the ability to empathize and understand — to work in concert with the metal and circuits doing the heavy lifting. So, all that time you spent screwing around with your buddies instead of paying attention during math class? You may have been polishing the skills that will actually find you work in a rapidly changing economy.

Think about it — one of the most foolproof ways to actually get a job is to have a connection through some sort of social networking. In fact, networking is one of the most valuable skills that an individual can have these days, in terms of getting where you want to go, be it a selective school, or landing a competitive job.

And those networking and social skills are the ones we have learned from an early age. As The New York Times puts it, “what you learned at preschool.”

So, if you were more apt to screw around during your formative years, rather than be a serious student, this might be some good news. Albeit it was hard to see this coming, but still, it’s a silver lining. The bad news is that you’ll still have to couple those social skills with some sort of training or education. The jobs that are disappearing are the ones that require little training or skill, or that can be easily automated. You may be a chatterbox at your jobat the local Taco Bell drive-thru, but that doesn’t mean your position isn’t going to be automated in the near future.

For job seekers — which all of us either are, or will be at some point in the future — don’t forget to take stock of your social skills as an asset. What if you’re not a social person? Make it a point to work on those skills, as they may be more valuable in the future than anyone would’ve imagined a decade or two ago.

Follow Sam on Twitter @SliceOfGinger

 

CheatSheet.com | December 22, 2015 | Sam Becker

Your #Career : How to Figure Out Who the #HiringManager is When it’s not Listed in the Job Post … You’ll Always want to Direct your #CoverLetter to a Specific Individual (unless the posting is anonymous). Otherwise, you Might give the Impression that you Didn’t Put any Effort into your Application or you Don’t Pay Attention to Detail.

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Just because a job posting omits the name of the person in charge of the hiring process doesn’t mean you should address your cover letter “To Whom It May Concern.”

Free- Business Desk

According to Amanda Augustine,career advice expert forTopResume, you’ll always want to direct your cover letter to a specific individual (unless the posting is anonymous). Otherwise, you might give the impression that you didn’t put any effort into your application or you don’t pay attention to detail.

So how do you figure out who’s doing the hiring? Augustine shares her top strategies:

1. Reread the job description.

Before you panic and conclude that there’s no name listed, go back and reread the job postingvery carefully. There might be a name and email address lurking at the bottom of the posting that you missed the first time.

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2. Use the email address provided to search for a name.

Sometimes companies will direct candidates to send their applications to a specific email address, without providing a name to go along with it.

That’s a big clue. There’s a good chance the email address is the person’s first initial and last name (for example, mine is slebowitz@businessinsider.com), or maybe just their first name. Once you have that information, you can run a Google search for “S Lebowitz Business Insider” or “Shana Business Insider” and see what you come up with.

3. Look for the person who created the posting.

If you found the job posting on LinkedIn, oftentimes you’ll see it was created by a specific recruiter or hiring manager, depending on the size of the company.

In that case, you should address your cover letter to him or her because that person is obviously directly involved in the hiring process.

4. Look for information about who you’d be reporting to.

Maybe the job posting says you’d be reporting to the director of marketing analytics, but doesn’t give that persons’ name. Run an advanced search on LinkedIn for any current directors of marketing analytics at the company and see who comes up.

linkedin advanced search screenshot

LinkedInRun an advanced search on LinkedIn with the title of the person you’d be reporting to.

If that doesn’t work, you can run a standard Google search for “director of marketing analytics” and the company name. You might even find that person’s spoken at a recent conference, for example, which would give you some insight into what interests her and what kinds of information you should include in your cover letter.

5. Search the recruiting agency’s website.

If the job posting was created by a specific recruiting agency, go to that agency’s website and look at the bios of all the recruiters who work there. See which one works primarily with the company you’re applying to.

6. Google part of the job posting.

It’s possible that the website where you spotted the job opening isn’t where it was originally posted.

To find out, take a portion of the job description that describes the specific role or requirements, put it in quotation marks, and hit search. You might find the original posting, which includes the name and/or email address of the person in charge of the hiring process.

7. Leverage your network.

Here’s where a large professional network comes in handy.

Run an advanced search on LinkedIn to see if you have any connections who currently work at the company you’re applying to. Ask that person if he or she a) knows who you should address your cover letter to and b) would be willing to pass your application onto the appropriate person.

You can use the same strategy if there’s a company employee you met once at a networking event. Simply email that person: “I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but…” Express your interest in the position and ask if he or she can direct you to the appropriate person.

This tactic is especially effective, since studies suggest that applicants with someone to vouch for them are more likely to land the job.

Make sure you submit your application through the standard method as well as through your mutual connection. The company may want to track each application that comes in for their records.

Businessinsider.com | December 11, 2015 | 

Your #Career : 4 Tricks You Can Use to Get Ahead & Be Successful at #Work … Are you Waiting for the Day when a Stroke of Genius Leads to your Company’s Greatest #Success? Or, at the Very Least, a #Raise or #JobPromotion ?

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In order to get there, you need to work on your brainstorming skills. Whether you’re known as an “ideas man” in the office or not, you have the ability to come up with solutions that will help you and your company succeed.

Free- Focus on Work

“The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work,” Teresa Amabile, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, toldFast Company. 

 In other words, anyone can bring ideas to the table, and you’ll need to in order to so you can advance your career. The number one way to do this? Figure out how to organize your ideas. Otherwise, you risk sitting in a meeting a few years down the road and hearing someone present a solution that you thought of months ago, but never acted upon. Don’t be the guy who claims “I thought of that first!” Instead, be the guy who actually does something about it.

If you have a method in place for brainstorming, it will start to come more naturally, even if it’s not your strength. You won’t have to pull out a Venn diagram or those bubble flow charts from elementary school to do it, either. (Although if words in triangles, circles, and squares are your thing, go for it.) Want to start bringing better ideas to the table, or learning how to turn those ideas into action? Start with these four tips.

1. Know your goals

Whether you’re trying to map out your future career steps or you’re trying to come up with new ideas for a marketing campaign, this first step will always be vital. Before you even think about coming up with solutions, you need to clearly identify the problem or issue at hand and focus on your objectives, says Ralph Keeny, anemeritus professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and a consultant for several entities including the Department of Energy.

“When most people do brainstorming, they run all over the place and think outside the box,” he told Forbes. “I think they should think inside the box— the right-sided box.”

In other words, Keeny suggests that to be effective, you should focus on how to achieve the smaller objectives, instead of trying to throw ideas at broad problems that probably won’t work when they’re implemented.

If you’re typically good at coming up with ideas, it can be hard to know which ones are worth pursuing. In those cases, it’s vital to stay focused on the end goals. Staying objective is critical here, says Anne Raimondi, the senior vice president of operations at Zendesk. Constantly asking “What problem am I trying to solve?” is helpful so that she avoids getting stuck on one idea that won’t actually be all that helpful.

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2. Start from scratch

Though it’s sometimes frowned upon, there are moments when it can actually be a good thing to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, the brainstorming process is one of them. To create something new, or fully improve a process or design, start from square one, not from the current model or product.

“If you improve something, then you only make it better,” says Sooshin Choi, provost at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. “If you want to make something different, you have to behave as if there is no such thing.”

There are some projects where minor tweaks will do the job. But if you’re looking to make a big impact and have the flexibility to think big, start at the beginning of a problem and work up — even if at first you feel like you’re regurgitating old ideas. You might come up with solutions that otherwise would have been too constrained in an old model.

3. Avoid snap decisions

You might not always have the luxury of multiple days to come up with a solution or think up new ideas. But know what your deadlines are, and don’t rush them when you have extra time to use.

Intelligence increases when you think less and focus on key ideas, says Guy Claxton in his book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind. “Whenever there’s a decision that needs to be made, the first thing you ask yourself is, ‘When does this decision need to be made?’” he says. “And you don’t make it until then.”

The reason is because your mind processes new ideas in the margins — what Claxton calls the hazy, poetic, or uncontrolled. When you give your brain as much time as possible to come up with ideas, you might surprise yourself with what you come up with.

In addition to this, be patient with good ideas that will take time to bring to fruition. “When you know you have a big idea worth holding on to, don’t forget to take the time to revisit it every once in awhile,” Fast Company advises. It may take a few years to move on it, and you might need to take mini steps toward those big ideas. But if you keep it in mind, you’ll be prepared for when you are able to act.

4. Have a pen ready

And a notebook, for that matter. Keep a journal or notebook somewhere that’s always accessible — it might require keeping a few in your office and a few more at home for when inspiration strikes. “I have a seven-second rule in my home,” says Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip. “I have to be able to reach a working pen and notepad or I risk being distracted and forgetting.”

Adams prefers notepads and pre-21st century technology to record his ideas — he says digital notepad apps load too slowly, though he does transfer the pen-and-paper ideas to the computer later. If you’re more comfortable using apps or cloud documents, go for it. Either way, have a consistent system so you know how to track your ideas later on.

Follow Nikelle on Twitter @Nikelle_CS

CheatSheet.com | December 11, 2015 | Nikelle Murphy