subject: Why You Must Distinguish Yourself In Your Job Hunt [print this page] The mortgage and car payment are coming due, and you just got laid off. Businesses are hoarding cash and reluctant to hire. Banks cut credit lines, throwing sand into the gears of the economy. It's the toughest job hunting market in years.
Tom Addison here: I help run the website JobHuntingAdvice.com. The report below reveals my best strategies for your job search. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and let's get to it.
My first tip is to counsel you to avoid a victim mentality. Never let yourself become accustomed to just getting an unemployment check for sitting at home. The dole will run out eventually, and you don't want to get used to being a passive part of the economy.
The second key tip is to make yourself stand out. Avoid meaningless corporate language in your resume, but rather think like a marketer and tell employers how they will benefit from hiring you. Demonstrate, with numbers, what kind of bottom-line value you could bring to their organization in the first six months.
The third tip is to diversify your advertising strategy. Realize that mass resume blasts rarely result in jobs, and your best bets are to target key employers where you already know someone. If it's obvious you're putting effort into getting this particular company to hire you, and you have credibility from an inside contact, you're infinitely more likely to get the job than someone mass-emailing resumes.
Finally, consider that the economy is probably going to take a while to recover. You may need to adjust your lifestyles and expectations of income and settle, for a time, in a lower-paying job. If you absolutely can't pay your bills, it's not morally wrong to use the bankruptcy laws; after all, the banks got a bailout, why not you? Getting back on your feet with a budget that matches your income is more important than paying off every penny of debt.
