Strategy

"What do you want to achieve or avoid? The answers to this question are objectives. How will you go about achieving your desire results? The answer to this you can call strategy."

William E Rothschild

Without a proper strategy you will not succeed in what you are trying to do. Having a strategy means that you are planning ahead and that you are able to set a course. Because of planning ahead you will more effectively deal with the unexpected when it happens. I remember well trying to find a job and not having any plan at one time. It didn't take me too long to figure out that this was why I couldn't find a job. Slowly, I began to figure out what I wanted to do which was customer service.

After figuring out what I wanted to do I was able to focus my job hunt.

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Get The Job

Written to help you  with your job hunt  

Everyone can use a little help  

Now available at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006H5OCTC

Something to say

You're needing to write your resume and you are sitting in front of a computer monitor. A blank page is staring back at you as you begin to think about what to write. A number of ideas begin to circulate in your head as you think of your accomplishments. I'm sure there have been many over the years as you've worked. Don't be afraid to write out every success that pertains to a position either. Your new employer really does want to see that, they want to know you'll be a success with them.

While accomplishments need to be listed I would recommend that you don't get too wordy. Short and to the point works much better when it comes to resumes. Managers are rather busy and they would like to read the important stuff quickly. Because of this I recommend making your resume to be read in 10 seconds or less for most people. Management positions however they do expect to get a longer resume for the submission. Two and three pages are quite common for management positions.

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Packaging

A way that I like to look at everything that you present during a job hunt is what I think of as packaging. Next time you are in a store take a close look at the boxes that you see. Notice the writing and the pictures on the box, they are designed to catch your eye. They are designed to make you want to purchase the item that is in the box or packaging. Quite often there are also TV, radio and internet ads that do some of the same thing for when you are not at the store. All of this is marketing in its purest sense and its how you need to look at the job hunt.

How all of this correlates to the job hunt is that you need to market yourself just like all of those packages. Your resume, body language, how you dress and speak are all sending messages. They are in fact your advertising and directly relate to how others view you in every situation. All of it has to work together in unison to sell you to a prospective employer. Once you have everything working together you begin to take control of the situation. You can't help but become a success and get the job.

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Attitude

When it comes to a job search your attitude is everything. It can drive you forward when it seems like there is everything in your way. I used to tell myself each morning when I got up that I would be successful that day. After a while I began to believe it which further drove me to continue on with the hunt. This especially was necessary when I was receiving no responses from any employers. Receiving no responses can be a very disheartening thing if you focus on it. So I recommend not focusing on it, begin to take control of the situation with your attitude.

I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination."

Jimmy Dean

Your attitude is the key to whether you are successful or not. It is one thing that you and no one else controls. Taking control of your attitude is where you begin to control the situation and it no longer controls you. You will begin to notice a difference in how you interact with others especially during interviews.

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Social Networking

From what I've been reading social networking sites will take a primary role in job hunting. I'm really not entirely sure that this will be the case. There have been some improvements with social networking apps that are specific to job hunting. Having played around with them a bit they work pretty well to tell you the truth. Right now though the social networking apps won't work on most cell phone web browsers. This probably needs to change for them to be truly useful as you really need the ability to be mobile. In fact right now I know people that have no home internet service, they do everything through their cell phone.

Personally while social networking is great, can't go very long without checking out my Facebook account. I would probably go through withdrawals if I couldn't pull up Facebook for a couple of days. Some of the groups will run pretty well in a mobile web browser like my own "Get The Job" job hunt group. Come to think of it this blog is also set up for coming up well in a mobile web browser. In my mind every web site has to be set up to come up on a mobile browser because that's where the job hunt is headed. Mobile is really where it's at and will be far into the future. When they make the social networking job hunt apps to work on mobile devices is when they will truly be useful.

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Keywords

The last two days I've been setting up keywords for a couple of my books in the Kindle store. I remember thinking about how keywords for the book and keywords in resume are a bit a like. To be found you need the correct keywords in both cases, it's that simple. At the same time it's also difficult to know what keywords to use and where exactly they are at. Well, since there aren't exactly lists of keywords like there used to be you have to know where else to look. In most cases I find them in the job postings that I'm applying to.
Sometimes the keywords aren't listed in the ads. Those keywords are for skills that considered integral to the position. This could very well be a specific software suite like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop. Knowing what these special skills are is what comes with studying what they are looking for in that job. I can tell you that call centers in particular are looking for people that know Microsoft Office well. This is because I've worked in call centers before, four of them to be exact.

Each job has a different set of requirements, there is no way that I could cover them all. I just recommend spending some time looking at ads for the keywords. Don't apply for a bit, you're just looking for keywords as a part of this exercise. It won't take long once you are focusing on the words themselves for the keywords to begin jumping out at you. A clue here would be looking at a half dozen ads for a position and see the same word in three ads that's probably a keyword.

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Happy New Year

It's now the beginning of another year and my sincere hope is that everyone will find the jobs that they need. Now for a few future trends for great employment opportunities that I see will happen. If you are in retail or other customer service positions you will probably have some great possibilities. These positions will begin offering a bit more money also because the economy is picking up slowly but surely. Another great possibility will be if you're a phone or tablet app programmer. There will be more apps in the coming year, you might as well be a part of the action since it is a growing trend.

Now some additional notes on programming, multi-processing computers and phones will be hitting the market. As for the phones there has only been some demonstration models shown but they have great promise. While they won't completely eliminate desktop PC's they are well on their way. From what I seen Intel is getting ready to release their own smart phones and they are the ones pushing multiprocessing in mobile phone processors. They are right now in particular trying to port Pentium architecture to mobile devices. Apparently the main issue is power consumption, desktop processors use a lot of power, a little too much for most mobile devices.

Another thing to note regarding programming is parallel processing that comes with multi-processing devices and computers. Be ready to show a capability to program for such systems, you'll be in great demand. This will bring you at least some semblance of guaranteed employment for the future. It doesn't matter where you live at either, these opportunities will be opening up worldwide. Well, enough of my conjecture on employment opportunities for the coming year. I do wish you all the best and hope that you are able to fulfill every dream.

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