Good News for Candidates - Hope Lives on a Small Diet

Your secret weapon in search is a strong psyche. It’s your resume or contact that gets you in the door; it’s the strong psyche that closes the sale and lands you the role.


The resumes from people in your profession will likely read very similar. Several candidates will be pulled out because they show the ‘promise’ of succeeding within the role. When you speak to the company, it’s your strong psyche that truly brings the differences between you and the other candidates to life.

A strong psyche gives you confidence, poise and the ability to look anyone in the eyes when you answer or ask a question. Sitting across the table as the interviewer or networking contact, a strong psyche is almost tangible, as though that person has a shield in front of themselves and no matter what you toss at them – nothing is going to make them stray.

The strong psyche is driven by the hope that you will see an office, cubicle, nametag, or paycheck with your name on it – or whatever the symbol you think of when being employed. It’s that vision that gives you the hope. Anyone has let their hope dip will tell you it’s like living in slow motion.

Here’s the good thing about hope, it can live on a small diet. Hope is driven by the small events of a day or week, not only major events.

This is good because most of us don’t experience many major events or opportunities that get us ‘discovered’ to be immediately hired. Sure it happens to people, but you cannot count on it – sort of like that winning lottery ticket (I could have sworn the Powerball was going to be ‘10’ this week!)

Keep track of the small positive events in your search, the act of keeping track of these actions helps build your hope as well by reminding you of what is going well.

For example, any action that moves you closer to the hiring manager, information you discover that helps match your resume to a company, holding a great networking meeting, getting useful or positive feedback on your experience, finding someone who will connect you to a highly-desired networking contact, shortening your pitch or resume without losing any potency, etc.

Here’s the other good thing about hope. Whatever hope you give to someone will increase yours by an equal share.

Good luck today.

Mark

www.candidateschair.com – Tools and Advice from a Candidate’s viewpoint to help get past job search roadblocks and keep your spirit strong. Please take a visit.


http://TwitJobs.net The Career Community

A Great Way to Learn – Teach Your Mistakes

One of the unexpected benefits of blogging and creating my CandidatesChair site was how much I learned from sharing my own mistakes.

I made some whopper mistakes and they have proved to be the best lessons for fellow candidates.

In addition to giving us a few good laughs, sharing my mistakes have saved my fellow candidates a boatload of time and potential embarrassment (like the time I forgot the name of the person who made the referral).

The benefits of teaching were greater clarity on how to fix my mistakes and spot other ones.

In teaching, you put things objectively, which is a good start. When you add the dialogue with fellow candidates, it makes for an excellent finish.

You don’t need your own blog to teach your mistakes. You can share at networking meetings with fellow candidates, offer to teach a seminar, answers questions on LinkedIn, submit a post to an existing blog, or participate in a discussion in a LinkedIn group.

I found that giving a seminar and writing blog posts are the best methods to give you clarity - as you are required to clearly layout your information.

Here’s the surprise benefit: When other candidates share their mistakes. Like me it is a mix of bonehead moves and things you wish people would have told you beforehand. Regardless of what it is, it’s all pure gold as it’s what really happens day-to-day when you search. (In fact, if it was not for the sharing of these fellow candidates, there would not be a CandidatesChair!)

A recent mistake: Just because you connect with someone on LinkedIn, does not mean they are on your contact list (e-mail or phone). I’m running late to a meeting, I look in my contacts to call them – rats! I’ll e-mail them – double rats!

Good luck this week.

Mark

www.candidateschair.com – Tools and Advice from a Candidate’s viewpoint to help get past job search roadblocks and keep your spirit strong. Please take a visit.




http://TwitJobs.net The Career Community

Five Ways to help a fellow Candidate

Here are five ways to help a colleague in job search – you can pick as many as you like. Anything you provide will be appreciated as insight from fellow candidates is often the most valuable.
1. Listen to their story - Do their documents match their story? Are they underselling themselves?

2. Listen to their pitch - Is it clear and crisp? Do you know what role they want? What are the 2-3 skills that make them unique? If not, help them rework their pitch.

3. State of networking - Are they effectively using all the tools available to locate opportunities or networking?

4. 2-3 Contacts - Start them off with 2-3 contacts to see how they perform. Call your contacts to see how it went. You can give them valuable feedback.

5. Follow-up - Drop them an e-mail or call every 45 days or so. A friendly call can go a long way (for both of you)!

Many people may not feel comfortable in asking for help – so reach out and offer!

Good luck today!
Mark Richards

www.candidateschair.com
Please feel free to visit my site for 24 tools and tips - from a candidate's perspective on job search





http://TwitJobs.net




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