Get Hired Now!


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Marketing yourself as a job seeker means locating the people who can offer or lead you to opportunities and telling them what you are capable of, over and over. You do have to seek them out — you can’t wait for them to find you. There are many ways of telling them what you can do — in person, in writing, by phone — but you must tell them. And you have to tell them over and over. No one will remember you if they hear from you only once.

Just as any company selling a product or service works from a strategic marketing plan with proper tactics to put the plan into action, so should you. In this case, you are the product. Finding job opportunities takes a disciplined approach using strategies that are proven to work.

Approach Networking and Referral-Building
Networking is the process of developing relationships with people who can help lead you to job opportunities. When you attend an event of any kind, you may meet hiring managers, job-lead sources, and other valuable contacts. When you follow up with the people you meet, you begin building relationships. Your network is a community from which you find out about open positions, companies needing your expertise, and influential people who can facilitate your job search.
Referrals from people who have insight into job opportunities can flow directly from your network. You are creating a word-of-mouth system that will constantly feed information to you.

Sample activities for networking and referral-building:

  • Attend networking events, classes, or workshops
  • Schedule lunch or coffee meetings
  • Make personal calls and write letters
  • Work as a volunteer or serving on committees
  • Participate in an online community
  • Attend sporting or cultural events
  • Participate in job clubs
  • Contact alumni of your school
  • Contact professional associations
  • Read the trade press
  • Write articles in your field
  • Do public speaking in your industry or community
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From Get Hired Now! by C.J. Hayden and Frank Traditi (Bay Tree Publishing). © 2005. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Approach Employing Recruiters & Agencies
The key fact about working with recruiters and agencies is to remember that they work for the hiring company, not you. They make their money by filling positions at the organizations that hire them, not by placing you somewhere.
Recruiters for executive, professional, and technical positions tend to work with the upper end of job responsibilities and salaries and can be quite selective of whom they present to their client companies. There are typically one to three other candidates the recruiter recommends who are interviewing for the same job.
Employment agencies work with a wider range of positions and salary levels. They are not as selective about whom they present to their clients because they spend less time on any one search. But they still insist that candidates possess the specific skills the employer specifies for the position. Many agencies use a temporary-to-permanent model wherein an employee is first placed with a client company as a


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