National Job Network

It is no secret that one of the keys to a successful job search is a great resume. However, despite the fact that every job seeker needs one, they remain a tricky document to craft.

Most people don’t know how to present things such as employment gaps, frequent job changes or no related work experience on their resume. Although you may not want to, you should always include these things on your resume. When it comes to job hunting, honesty is always the best policy, and even though it may not seem like it, these liabilities can be included on your resume without hurting your job search.

Here’s how to address some of these adverse resume situations:

Gaps in your employment history

Although, resume gaps aren’t always due to getting laid off or laziness, they usually cause employers to see a red flag. For this reason, try to minimize how they appear in your resume and consider using a different format.

By using a resume format that focuses on your functional skills instead of your work history, gaps in employment are less obvious. To do this, begin with a short summary of your experience at the top of your resume. Follow that summary with a section that details your transferable skills that are relevant to the job you’re applying for. You can group these skills together under categories that apply, such as managerial experience. Lastly, list your work history in reverse chronological order.

You’ve been a job hopper

Employers often raise an eyebrow when they see that you’ve held a lot of jobs in a short amount of time. And while you might be tempted to omit a few of these positions, as mentioned before, honesty is always the best policy during a job hunt. The best thing you can do in this situation is just be ready to explain yourself regardless the reasoning for these short job stints. Whether you were taking temporary work because of the tough economy or you were looking for higher pay, just be prepared to endure a little scrutiny and have a justification ready.

You have little work-related experience

Whether you’re recent college graduate or an experienced professional looking to transition to a different industry, not having any relevant work experience to list on your resume can be an obstacle. However, even with this setback, there are strategies you can put into action to help you get your foot in the door, despite having no previous experience.

You can focus your resume on your transferable skills. Although you may not have experience in a particular industry, you probably have skills that you picked up while earning your degree or working miscellaneous jobs in the past that can translate. The key to this is identifying the skills you already have that the employer would benefit from and selling them.

Also, remember that the work history section of your resume isn’t exclusively for paid, full-time work. You can also list any relevant internships, part-time jobs or volunteer work that you have done.

So you’ve found an ad for the perfect job but you don’t quite meet the employer’s qualifications. Should you still apply? It’s a common but frustrating dilemma many job seekers run into, but don’t give up all hope if you have two years of relevant experience instead of five.

Whether you’re a recent college graduate with little to no experience or someone who is changing career paths and has experience only in a different industry, you can come out on top of this difficult proposition.

Nevertheless, you should consider a few things before you apply. Although it may seem like you have nothing to lose by submitting your resume regardless of your qualifications, you should gauge your options. Are you close enough to being qualified that you will even have a chance? Will you be wasting the employer’s and your time by applying? If you were the employer, would you hire you? These are all questions you should ask yourself before diving in. Then, if you do decide that despite your lack of qualifications you could still be a candidate, you should employ strategies to rise above your shortcomings.

Emphasize your transferable skills.

Although you may not have the exact qualifications required, you probably have skills that could transfer. Examine the ad for the job you desire and try to identify your transferable skills that could translate. Types of transferable skills that can be utilized to land almost any job are communication, interpersonal, teamwork and leadership skills. To better your chances of getting the job, prominently place the skills you posses that could apply to the job on your resume.

Be the answer to their needs.

Find out what the employer needs before you apply. If you’re applying for a job at a company or in an industry that you’re not quite qualified to work, figure out how you can help them. By presenting yourself as the answer to a problem, need or challenge the employer or industry is already facing, you can essentially pave the way to your own employment. Employers should never have to figure out how they can you use you. Instead, you should always present yourself in a way that shows how you would actually be an asset to them.

Show that you are flexible and willing to learn.

If you don’t posses the qualifications that the employer desires, show them that you are enthusiastic about the job and willing to learn as much as you can. State in your resume that you are a quick learner and willing to do what it takes to succeed at this position. Prove to them that although you may be underqualified, you are trainable and willing to pursue any additional education, training, licensing or certification it might take to land that job.

Keep in mind that even if you employ these strategies, some employers will always favor candidates that meet their qualifications and have experience. But don’t be discouraged. Continue to show employers that you are positive, enthusiastic and confident about your skills. If you find yourself continuously overshooting for jobs, consider pursuing further training or doing an internship to boost your qualifications.

Did you know that during an interview, it is just as important to ask question as it is to answer them well? By asking questions during an interview you can show the employer that you are interested in the job and it enables you to assert some control during the interview process.

Likewise, asking the wrong questions during an interview can also cost you a job offer. This can cause the interviewer to think that you didn’t do your homework on the company and came into the interview unprepared. The nature of the content of the questions you ask during an interview can tell a lot about you.

For this reason, you should prepare a list of questions to ask before the interview. Because each interview is different, it’s important to come up with more questions than you think you need. Here is a list of quality questions you can ask during an interview.

“What are you seeking in the ideal candidate for this position?”

After receiving the interviewer’s response, you can use this as your opportunity to add any skills or qualities you possess that you haven’t yet mentioned in the interview but that the employer thinks are important.

“Can you give me some examples of the type of assignments I will be working on?”

This question can be essential if the job description was a bit vague or if the duties of the job have yet to be described during the interview.

“What are the opportunities for advancement in this position?”

Asking this question might help you better understand where this job could lead down the road and what skills you might need to advance in this position. It also lets the interviewer know that you are ambitious about doing well and committed to being at their company long-term.

“Could you tell me about how this job was performed in the past and what improvements you would like to see?”

This will give you a good idea about what will be expected out of you and what areas of the job need to be worked on most. This also gives you the opportunity to convince the interviewer that you have what they are looking for by giving specific examples of how you can fulfill their requirements and help improve the position.

“What do you like best about working for this company?”

By asking this you will be able to get good insight on the organization. It’s nice to hear positive things that you can look forward to if you do get the job, but if the interviewer can’t come up with something good to say you can usually take that as a red flag.

“What is the next step in the process?”

This can be your final question that can give you some sort of clue of how long it will be before you hear back from the employer and if there’s anything else you can do to increase your chances of landing the job. It’s good to also ask for the interviewers business card so you can send a follow-up thank you note.

On the other hand, there are also questions that you should steer clear of during an interview. Don’t ask questions pertaining to salary, hours, time off or personal information about the interviewer.

In order to increase your chances of being successful in a job search you first need to understand the things that could potentially hold you back. To be successful in today’s job market, you have to make sure to address the 10 major mistakes that can derail your search and lead to failure.

The 10 major mistakes most job hunters make:

• They rely on old methods and don’t follow a plan. At the heart of any professional job search is a need for a step-by-step action plan. Having a personal action plan in a job search can save you both time and money.

• They don’t minimize the impact of their liabilities. There are over 25 common liabilities that can cause you to be ruled out but if you plan how you will neutralize them, you will get much better results. Despite your liabilities, if you have the right mindset and know what information you should and shouldn’t reveal on your resume and in interviews you can significantly decrease the impact of your liabilities.

• They never fully market all their transferable skills. Most people need to identify and market 10-20 skills. If properly communicated in resumes, letters, phone discussions and interviews, they can significantly expand their appeal. Some examples of transferable skills that could land you a job are communication skills, time-management skills and organizational skills.

• They don’t uncover exciting new industry alternatives. You should be prepared to market yourself so that you are attractive to employers across a broad range. When you do this you will be able to identify new industry options where you can market your skills, essentially expanding your market by 500% or more.

• They present themselves with average resumes. With 30 million resumes in circulation and the Internet so dominant as a job search tool you must alter your approach. Look at your current resume and assess it. If it looks like others, reveals your liabilities, doesn’t properly sell your transferable skills, doesn’t show how you can contribute, isn’t scanning ready or isn’t a strong selling document in general, it needs to be redone.

• They don’t have a personal marketing website. Job hunting is all about getting enough of the “right people” to look at your credentials. A personal marketing website presents your universal resume, and sometimes your biography, for those who wish to review it and it can make job hunting easier and faster.

• Their interview and negotiating skills are average. Most people don’t realize how important these skills can be when job hunting. The interview is your time to seal the deal so you need to practice and know what to expect before going in. Also, negotiating an offer is important and can mean the difference between getting an initial offer raised, sealing a signing bonus and getting other perks at a new job.

• They don’t know how to find enough suitable openings. In today’s job market it’s important to know how to uncover both published and unpublished job openings. Knowing where to look for both types can significantly increase your chance of landing a job.

• They don’t ever contact their best prospects. Contacting carefully targeted employers can be a fast way to get interviews. Since job hunting is all about getting your credentials in front of the right people at the right times, making direct contact with employers can be a great job hunting strategy that not many people use.

• They never uncover leads to emerging jobs. When you uncover leads, you can get in the door first. Every day, events occur that lead employers to start looking privately to fill a position. If you know what to look for in the news, you can be the first to find out and therefore have a greater advantage.

More than one-third, or 36%, of workers plan to leave their jobs in 2011, according to a recent study by insurance provider MetLife. The recession ravaged employee allegiance, and now less than half of all employees report “very strong loyalty” to their current companies. Workers may be scrambling for a fresh start, but career experts warn that you are more often remembered for your exit than your tenure.

“With each job change you are leaving a trail of opinions,” says career coach and author John McKee. “Those opinions could build a solid reputation that helps in securing future jobs, or they could result in negative comments that could kill a great job opportunity. How you behave towards the end can greatly impact your reputation.”

From handling the breakup speech to turning over the reins, career coaches offer advice on how to walk away with pride—while avoiding the dangerous traps that will trip you up.

Continue reading here.

For the past year, the economy has slowly but surely added new jobs. Employers were taking a cautiously optimistic approach to business, afraid to hire too quickly. Fortunately, several signs point to more energetic hiring currently happening.

The first clue has been the improving unemployment rate, which recently hit a two-year low. In addition, 216,000 new jobs were created in March alone. While statistics are helpful to gauge the economy’s state, job seekers want to see actual available positions in their neighborhoods, and not just in one industry.

Each month we assemble a list of companies hiring in order to simplify your job search, and judging by this amount of employers ready to bring on new workers in April, the economy is looking up. Look no further than Walmart, who is hiring hundreds of workers, but not only in the fields you probably expect.

Continue reading here.

Everyday events occur that cause decision makers at companies to start privately looking for new employees. The key to successfully uncovering these job leads is to know what kinds of news events are signals to emerging jobs. Employers will often start the process of hiring when these types of events appear in the news:

• An employer receives a new capital.
• A firm kicks off a new product.
• There’s word of new local business operations.
• New contracts are being awarded.
• Relocations are planned.
• There are major licensing agreements.
• Growth expectations or record sales and profits are announced.

If you are able to uncover leads in the news, you most likely can get in the door first and generally, these positions will be less competitive than published openings. If you’re looking for a job, acting on leads should be one of your key strategies. After you uncover a good lead, your next step should be to write a letter or a brief memo or email, linking to your personal marketing website or attached to your resume, in response to a news event. Consider the following examples of brief memos.

• Today’s news indicated that you’re expanding to Georgia. Maybe I can help. As you can see from the attached resume, I’ve had five years of solid experience in plant operations.

• I would like to have the opportunity to tell you how my energy, plus years of experience in your field, can be a winning combination for you.

• My background is a perfect match for the qualities you are looking for to manage the new division. My resume will support this, and I am very much interested in your company.

• Your company was recommended to me by a friend who saw today’s article in the Chicago Tribune. May we have a brief talk?

(CNN) — When Kendra Reddy started helping a client prepare for a senior-level executive interview, she wasn’t shocked that he’d purposefully avoided socializing online.

As a leadership coach based in Toronto, she’d seen many professionals steer clear of personalizing their online activity, under the belief that it was safer to refrain altogether rather than risk a misstep and develop an unflattering image on the web.

Reddy’s job, as she saw it, was to convince her client that Google had already assembled him an online profile — one that he probably needed to augment.

“People still don’t believe that they have a presence online. Whether or not they choose to participate, they’re still being talked about,” Reddy said. “I’m amazed by how many people still don’t Google themselves.”

Most people know the basics to keeping personal photos or embarrassing conversations locked behind privacy settings. But for a wide swath of professionals, testing what to put online — and how much — is still a confusing, and sometimes intimidating, task.

“Everything you choose to do or not do online affects your brand,” Reddy said. That doesn’t mean she advocates trying to wipe clear every trace of yourself. In fact, “inactivity” adds up to something very concrete online, and can’t be considered a genuinely neutral option, she said.

Continue reading here.

Job seekers often hear that networking is the best way to find a job. In this day and age, one of the easiest ways to do that is on LinkedIn, a professional networking website at www.linkedin.com.

Learning the ins and outs of LinkedIn is smart, according to local job search and media experts, especially in today’s market.

Here are a few tips on using the popular website to find a job:

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It may sound simple, but knowing how to find all the right public job openings can be difficult. That is why it’s important for job seekers to understand how the public job market works in order to uncover the most number of openings suitable for you and to maximize your activity in this part of the marketplace.

The public job market consists of five segments. In order to maximize your activity and chances in your job search you should consider searching in all five of these segments because 99 percent of all job hunters compete for jobs in the public market.

The first segment of this market is employer websites. Over 300,000 employers now post their openings and often, job openings are listed on the employer websites exclusively. In fact, employer websites represent the fastest growing means of recruiting staff and many of them are doing their recruiting solely through their own websites. So pinpoint your best prospects and check out their websites for job openings.

You can also find public job openings in 2,000 newspapers. Although newspapers have declined rapidly, they can still be a good source for lower and mid-level openings for professionals. While you won’t see many executive and above positions in the want ads of a newspaper, you will see most mainstream lower to mid-level positions advertised because they’re easy, inexpensive, online and local.

If you are seeking a middle level to upper-middle job, trade magazines are a valuable source for public job openings. Many job openings are listed in trade magazines because they are positions where industry knowledge or experience is valuable and important to the employer.

Job boards are probably the most popular means of searching public job openings and they have also become the largest source for jobs. Staffing industry sources claim that upwards of 40,000 job boards now exist. Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs are a few of the best know job boards out there, but there are many others that can help you in your job search.

The last of these five segments is web recruiters. Once you have a superior resume you should send it to a web recruiter who might be able to assist you with your search by finding jobs relative to your experience.