The number of unemployed people in July 2006 reached 7.2 million, and blacks made up 26% of that number or $1.9 million, according to the United States Department of Labor. The unemployment rate of blacks is more than double that of white Americans. Many unemployed professionals are not seeking just any nine-to-five. They’re in search of an opportunity that will enhance and boost their careers. Looking for a job in your industry that suits your goals can be tougher than nails. According to authors C.J. Hayden and Frank Traditi, the average working adult will change jobs 10 times over his or her lifetime.
In their book Get Hired Now! Hayden and Traditi present readers with a system for finding a job in any field. The book contains a 28-day program for coaching yourself to job search success. Not many people can say that they enjoy job hunting. It’s easy to get discouraged and lose motivation. The following excerpt from Get Hired Now! will give you the strategies (including six of the most effective approaches) you’ll need to make the best use of your time and land the job you want. On the following pages, we offer strategies to help you achieve your goal.
How People Find Jobs
Finding a job is all about people. It’s the people you know, people you meet, and people you locate who have information, who will inevitably help you get a job. Sending out your resumé to hundreds of companies won’t work; neither will sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring. You have to find and connect with the people who will ultimately pave your way to getting hired.
There are literally millions of resumés sitting on managers’ desks right now that are headed for the reject pile or the wastebasket. Many companies receive from 200 to as many as 10,000 resumés a month. How will you and what you have to offer stand out in that sea of paper and e-mail?
Surveys estimate that 74% to 85% of available jobs are never even advertised. If you limit your job search activities to finding and applying for advertised positions, you’re missing many more possibilities than you are finding. How can you find these unadvertised jobs?
Internet job boards are rarely much help. Whether you use them to seek out job postings or to post your resumé, only 2% to 4% of job seekers find a job using one of these services.
Finding the right opportunities, getting a company to invite you in for an interview, and then having to compete with so many other candidates for the same job appears to be a daunting task. So how do job seekers find open positions and eventually get hired? Ask any successful job seeker that question and here is what you’ll hear: “my network,” “referrals,” “a lead from someone inside the company,” “word of mouth,” and “contacting people.”
Perhaps you already knew those answers. So why don’t you have a job yet? If you’re like most first-time users of the Get Hired