Career Change & Executive Coaching

From years of consulting with recruiters, successful job-getters, and career clients I have culled their suggestions to come up with the top - five ways to help you change your career and land the gig you want.

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Most successful job seekers land their dream jobs through contacts that they've previously made and assiduously kept up. John Price, Operational Director at GEC Druck got his last several jobs through contacts and says that he doesn't understand why people don't go the extra mile to stay in touch -- particularly when they're not looking for a job.

"The main thing is not burning bridges," he says. After he has left his previous jobs he has made a point of stopping by and saying ‘Hello.' Once he heard about his current role his former contacts spoke highly of him.
 
But what if you've just learned of a great job at a company where you don't know a soul? You're just not going about it in the right way. "People who say, 'Gosh, I don't know anyone' are not thinking about the six degrees of separation."

Once you've identified a contact who knows somebody at the company, ask him what it's like to work there and for names of people in the department you're targeting. Talk to as many people as possible. The result? The more people you get buzzing about you by the time you go in for the interview, the more it will seem like destiny that you work there. 
 
Buy a three-ring binder to plan out your network strategy. Start taking notes about people you might call. Call key people who you know respect your work or friends who you know would lend advice or help out.

On average, people spend a total of 15 to 20 seconds on every CV and cover letter that they see. If they're staring at a stack of 300 of CVs and cover letters, it's likely to be even less. Their primary goal at that point is to eliminate as many as possible as quickly as possible.

That means you've got very, very little time in which to avoid the wastepaper bin. The best way to do it, is to have a clean, two-page, chronologically organized CV with plenty of white space and a short, to-the-point cover letter. You should include "scope data" - important quantifiable data and discrete facts that tell the person doing the recruiting how you can make his company better. But don't go on too long:

Too much clutter is exhausting for someone who's halfway through the stack. The biggest mistake job seekers make is writing a too-long cover letter. The goal of a cover letter is for potential employers to put your CV/ resume into Pile B.

Copyright Scott AdamsIn this tight-fisted environment, any company that is willing to spend money to hire someone must need something pretty badly. The question for the job seeker: What is that itch, and how can I scratch it? If the company has a headache, you want to be the aspirin.

Look for ways to present solutions in every contact you have with the company, from the cover letter to the phone call to the interview itself. When asked how you'd handle a particular situation, ask for an opportunity to return at another time and make a presentation on your solution.

Prove that you can do the job. Do the assignment and then come back to the company. It's as if you're already working there.

So be prepared for interviews, keep a master blog on file, listing every worthy achievement of your entire professional career, from negotiating a deal with Microsoft to beating a sales projection by 54%. Add every achievement to the master list, so when it's time to find a new job, you can simply cut and paste the most relevant parts into a slimmed down paper resume, and can develop very specific talking points for the interview. 
 
Imagine a photographer or artist who has a portfolio. What you actually show is one thing, but keep track of all your stuff. Your master blog can have some 25 bullets for each job, and you can easily tailor a paper resume (CV) without having to finesse what you did three years ago all over again. Blog On To A Career Change!

In tough times, anyone who goes into an interview unprepared is dead in the water. Everyone knows that you have to research the company thoroughly before you land the interview and go in with guns blazing. You need to be armed with ready examples of what you learned in certain situations, how you demonstrated leadership, and the like.

In the new job market, you have to interview like an investor. If you had a few million dollars, would you back the company you're interviewing? When you are to be interviewed, you read everything that you can find on the company and speak to people who are involved with it, including investors and employees. This work pays off two-fold.

First, interviewers are impressed that you are so diligent, and second, you land the job with a company that is very well positioned."