ResumeSpider offers Career Seekers an alternative approach to getting noticed which leads to more activity; like phone calls, emails and interviews.

We are not claiming this is the silver bullet or some great new idea. However, ResumeSpider is a common-sense approach to networking and targeted list building. Both activities are crucial to a well rounded job search and should be incorporated as soon as possible. For example, all you need to do is call into a company, find out if they hire your profile, get a contact name, phone number and email address. Now duplicate that task 250 or 500 or 1000 times.  Unfortunately this effort can take weeks or months with our own time and resources. ResumeSpider offers a proven time saving approach to this strategy. It is important to remember that your time is worth something!

Our matching technology closely resembles relationship matching websites; like Match.com and eHarmony.  You are matched to companies in our network based on your job function, industry experience and desired locations.  Then we email your profile to those select Member Companies. We have 1000s of companies in our network and add 400-500 new companies, on average, every month.  The Member Company network consists of employers and recruiting firms that have joined ResumeSpider to receive resumes.

To get more information on Resume Spider, read How it Works, Why Join, and some Resume Spider reviews and testimonials.

http://www.resumespider.com/

Now for a healthy outlook on your career path, I recommend you…

1. Accept Change. To open a door to a new career jobseekers must focus on accepting change as reality. So look at the ways you have learned and enjoy learning. Express this in achievements and keywords in your resume and career marketing materials. Be ready to respond swiftly to the needs of corporations by offering different aspects of your background. No longer are resume just dry ways to demonstrate your employment during high school, college, through internships, military or other experiences. You must give line and verse about what you have done and how it applies to the position you are going for next. That means get ready to edit your resume for each position you apply for online or offline. Change happens abruptly in business. It happens abruptly throughout many a career path. What’s in our control? You control your actions and your attitudes; that may be about all you can control. Control the content within your resume. Develop your volunteer experiences, key class projects, athletic or other achievements. Everything must be looked at, developed and considered. Some new graduates think they have nothing to offer. You do if you market it properly. 

2. Look Beyond the Surface. According to career authors and other representatives from the major search engines, something less than 5% of leads are advertised on the big job boards. So where does the typical jobseeker or the typical new graduate spend their time looking for jobs? I would argue they spend 95% of their energy focused on Internet job boards. This is a good starting point. In fact, sites like Craig’s List offer opportunities and danger too. As a new graduate you need to search and find your target audience. Recruiters don’t just look on the major sites for resumes. They are working the social networking sites like Facebook and the more professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Those are not the only ones either! So if you information isn’t loaded there and you don’t know why you need to campaign in that way then you are out of date. You are not savvy or sophisticated. Weddle’s Guides and Peter Weddle himself an Internet guru stated personally to me that there are dozens of sites for niche industries being developed weekly. In fact, he suggested that recruiters are more interested in finding you doing something they might want to hire you for than downloading your CV from the big sites. So where could you go and what could you do to be seen as someone serious? Remember you must think this way even if you are in a path toward law school, med school or are not sure what you want to be when you grow up. 

3. Go for Your Mission not Just a Job. Take an entrepreneurial approach to your future. How do I want my life to be in 10 years and what career path may be the best vehicle to that path? What do I want my reputation to be in five years? What is my Worklife Mission? Everything you do should be geared toward these goals and aspirations. If you are looking for a job and not a career a lot of this advice might not matter. If you are just trying to pay bills then who cares what you do or who you do it for. But if you can compose more than your 30–second commercial - develop a Worklife Mission statement. Pick career opportunities that may advance you toward who and what you want to be in five or more years. Current Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers suggest that 65% of people don’t like their jobs. But what do they do about this dissatisfaction? Where do they go to take proactive, positive action on finding their professional calling, their next steps? To properly research new ideas you can use the big job boards like Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com. Other sources of information may come as easy as finding articles and information from a variety of sources: industry journals, company websites, blogs, volunteer organization sites, DOT, OOH, ONET and other resources. In a competitive job market, it’s hard enough for job seekers on a steady career path to get their resumes noticed. If you are pursuing a new direction, it’s all that much more difficult to convince hiring managers to take a chance on you. Study and read. Utilize insiders to help you network. Pick jobs that will give you part of what you want to be in 10 years. Move toward something specific. Also, please stop looking for a job and start looking for opportunities. Employers want people who want opportunities. If you want to stand out then take the attitude that you want an opportunity. 

4. Lastly, start dealing with the gaps and mistakes you made during college. So you didn’t get that internship that you wanted? You didn’t really have that great of summer jobs? You didn’t do all those volunteer things you thought you would do? Well then start doing them now. Start volunteering. Ask for the experiences you need and give away your time and expertise for free. No, don’t wait. Do it right now. In the meantime you may have to get two jobs, three jobs or even put up with being underemployed until you make up this lost ground. Mistakes that new graduates make usually means that they want to utilize the same poor decisions they made during school as they attempt to compete in the marketplace. That just simply won’t work. As professionals, many of my clients need a makeover and to understand they must self-study in order to research, define and emphasize key qualifications for these new goals and objectives. If you have not earned them start earning them now. With that attitude you will probably be hired into a position you want. 

5. Your Resume Must Be Outstanding. What do the potential hiring managers want to see in a resume? Here’s a tip - they want to see what you can do for them now and how you will drive revenue and reduce cost for them now. What do they want to see in you if you ran a construction operation but now want to consider selling industrial products? Hire a professional to interview you and market you. Good writing, proper use of keywords and a marketing oriented resume sells in person and online. You need to ask yourself tough questions to come up with original documents. In a behavioral interview for major account management, how will you relate your transferable skills or the experiences you gained to date? What if you were in the military and you want to be in a federal job? That may make sense. But how do you relate your class experiences, jobs, internships, military experiences and whatever you have into a corporate assignment in finance, sales or operations? The list goes and could go on forever. They don’t need to know dry work history or a listless listing of dates, times and responsibilities but they do need to understand the transferable skills, keywords and strategy you intend to take with them in communicating your specific and immediate value. Any savvy jobseeker and especially a career changer may need to clearly write down, analyze and synthesize raw data to feature why they are marketable and why they should be interviewed. A great resume or personal marketing material must brand you across many platforms - online, offline, personal, professional. 

Congratulations on earning your degree. You must look for an opportunity not a handout. You want to earn your future. Now go out and fight with passion for your career life and your all important worklife mission. And get out of the basement room at your parents house!

Read Part One.

Stand out by writing and living your Work Life mission and learn the new rules for careers. It also might help your parents if you moved out of your old room or the basement. 

Start with a new paradigm, a new mindset. Find organizations that support your worklife mission and fight to join them. Generations ago it was your parents and even grandparents that thought they would be in one career path and maybe with one company. That was the dream of dreams. Then you could settle down in life.

Well, forget that mindset. If that’s the lottery you want to hit you will probably have lottery odds to get into one career path, climb the corporate ladder and retire that way. Who checks time with a watch anyway? It’s on your IPhone or PDA or whatever. In many ways, you need grasp the idea that you will have some major career shifts and, most likely, change careers during your career. A career must be viewed as a sequence of jobs and probably a sequence of career paths.

How can I make this claim?

All industries change and as the industry changes then you must change with it. It’s Internet warp speed. No industry remains stagnant and if a business that serves that industry does not change then that business faces changes of its own. Look at the way the construction business or housing industry has changed in the last year. Look at the technology and software industries. Have they changed? How about the music and entertainment industry? Any changes you noticed? They change daily. How about the oil business, the airlines and others? Okay, you have the point. Either the business, technology, people and economies change or something shifts. For those shifts any jobseeker or person who intends to have a long career must embrace change.  

The Jobseeker’s Situation and Dilemma:

Jane Harding, a top medical pharmaceutical sales representative, says that investing more in her personal brand could have gotten her hired faster. Here’s her story…

She interacted daily with regional medical health centers, gave educational presentations and felt strongly that her portfolio of drugs helped patients recover more quickly from surgery. She made $100K+. One drug she represented was recalled and lawsuits piled up. The company she worked for abruptly laid off even top performers like Jane. After a successful career, Jane now found herself unemployed. Weeks turned into months during her job search. It began to take a toll on her financially and emotionally. The job search dragged on. A topsy-turvy pharmaceutical market caused competitor companies to brace for uncertainty in the industry and thus slowed their hiring during this time. The future for Jane looked bleak.Previously, when she was at the height of her career, she found that her passionate involvement in volunteerism waned. She was too busy to support events for organizations that meant a great deal to her like the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Autism Speaks, and the United Way. Her commitment to children and adults through volunteerism, however, never waned in the slightest. “In my mind I was really committed to my company and my passions,” Ms. Harding expressed. “But that’s the problem – it was in my mind. I really feel that had I made more of my natural abilities in reaching out at a time when I was comfortable, I may have had an easier road in my new job search.” 

Although Jane Harding’s career path may differ from yours, her dilemma probably does not. She became so focused on work that she ignored an important part of her life. She neglected the volunteerism that gave her great personal satisfaction. When you have a great job most people focus on that work. Most of your time and creative energy tend to be invested where you will get the most monetary return. Accolades and awards may result –and they did for Jane. But, like Jane, you may have lost the focus of your personal brand.

What is your personal brand and why is it important to your career?

Simply put, personal branding can be defined as the initial and authentic lasting impression you want to give people.

True career entrepreneurs understand that personal brands should be built during times of career comfort. Pushing yourself to build your personal brand when your career is soaring can be inconvenient. But, success is often built on inconvenience. “I recommend inconveniencing yourself,” says Jane Harding. “That would have made my job search much easier. I could have made this voltage happen earlier, though I finally did.”

Whether you are job searching or you are at the, height of your career, it’s now time to develop your personal brand. We will go over the five steps that you may consider in developing your brand. First ask yourself, what matters to you volunteer wise and what do you support that could help you revitalize your career path?

Read the Five Steps.