© Copyright 2005, Ron Bates, Executive Advantage Group, Inc.
Many people over the years have asked me for help in finding their next job. Through the resume feedback we give to people, we try to point them down the right path with additional suggestions about how to increase/maximize their exposure to more and better career opportunities. I thought other individuals might either benefit from some of the same suggestions, or know someone who might. As such, I’ve written an article that I’ve called:
Guidelines for Conducting a Successful Proactive Job Search Campaign
Do you find yourself (or know someone) in a situation where you need or want to conduct a proactive job search campaign?
Regardless of your reasons, need, or desire to engage in a proactive job search, conducting a proactive job search can be one of the most frustrating challenges for anyone at any level and at any point in their career. Why? Because the outcome is often a function of timing, and has nothing to do with how marketable you are. That said, increasing your marketability and exposure to opportunity only improves your ability to capitalize on being in the right place at the right time to take that next step in your career.
With the right strategy and approach not only can your increase your exposure to more opportunity, you can also increase your exposure to better opportunities.
It isn’t complicated, but it can be a lot of hard work and it’s critical you have access to the right tools to get the job done.
Use the following Ten Commandments to help you network and expedite your way through your next proactive job search.
1. It all starts with your resume if you are going outside of your immediate “friends & family” business contact network.
Most executives fall into the trap of trivializing the importance of having the best possible resume by saying, "I communicate my value and the substance of my career best in an interview."
If your resume isn’t pin sharp in its ability to concisely articulate your unique differentiated career value proposition by quantifying the scope and scale of responsibility and the business impact your efforts have produced in a -measurable- way for each position you’ve held in your career, you are dead before you even start. You will simply get lost in the pile of resumes that end up in electronic or physical recycle bins without a second thought – let alone without an interview.
You really need to understand the quality, content and format of your resume (especially for an executive) is a strong reflection of your capabilities and focus. Executives are given a measurable scope and scale of responsibility, and they are paid to produce measurable business impact. Nobody is paid to simply produce effort. It is amazing how many executive resumes fail to articulate this measurable information. Most resumes are nothing more than unquantified statements of effort that beg the question: “That’s nice, so what did that effort produce in the form of any measurable business impact?” Don't fall into the trap of failing to articulate your measurable scope and scale of responsibility, and the measurable business impact you've driven in your resume.
Also give thought to a non-traditional 1-2 page resume, and devote enough physical space to adequately differentiate your career, or risk being lost in a sea of 1-2 page vanilla resumes. Some may think this is heresy.
If you are trying to differentiate yourself, it probably isn’t a good idea to have a resume that looks like everybody else’s. Want to see how –everybody– else looks? Just look at the -AFTER- "Samples" that e-Resume (examples), Career-Resumes (examples), and even Monster’s Resume Center (examples) touts as massively differentiating "Stellar" resumes to see how -EVERYBODY- looks when they constrain themselves to this 1-2 page criteria. If your goal is to conform and look like EVERYBODY else and as a result - compete head-to-head in today's job market, then by all means follow their bad advice. If you want to change the game in your favor and get interviews that others with the same vanilla resumes won't - then don't follow their advice. Simply ask yourself if you want to work for someone that believes the length of someone’s resume is a valid hiring criterion, and make your own decision.
Just be very careful in reacting to feedback that “Your resume is too long.” Why? Because the –only– person that you should listen to that comments on the length of your resume is someone that can actually benefit by hiring you. Any other feedback is coming from someone that does not need to hire you, and as such can’t benefit from the information that is actually in your resume.
Don’t put your success in the hands of a “professional resume writer”. If you want a simple straight forward way to implement the above advice simply get the CV Advantage Toolset at www.CV-Advantage.com.
In response to all of the executives that have come to us over the years for career and resume advice complaining about the poor results they see after using a “professionally written” CV or Resume, we built the CV Advantage Toolset.
The CV Advantage Toolset is a $39.95 self-guided job search oriented executive-coaching process and resume writing tool. It is the self-guided equivalent of the exact same process we charge executives $5000 to take them through directly. The toolset includes the exact same template driven exercises that help identify career metrics and unique differentiating executive skills and abilities – ultimately giving an executive a newfound ability to interview infinitely better and uniquely differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
The toolset includes many examples supporting each step in the process, and includes a resume template and example resumes giving –you– the ability to create an infinitely better than what “professional CV-resume writers” will produce.
The CV Advantage Toolset also includes discounts codes to additional job search oriented sites such as:
www.ResumeRabbit.com (the leading CV/Resume Distribution Service)
www.NetShare.com (leading 6-figure Executive Job Site)
www.TheLadders.com (leading 6-figure Executive Job Site)
www.SGAExecutiveTracker.com (contact information database)
www.Lead411.com (contact information database)
www.Jigsaw.com (contact information database)
Example testimonials:
“I’m grateful for Ron pointing me to the www.CV-Advantage.com resume/coaching process. As a result, I’ve had “1st Class” responses off a resume that is 500% better. I think once someone really understands the quality and format of the resume (especially for an executive) is a strong reflection of their capabilities, they will think about their resume much differently.” – Tom Chapman (September 12, 2005)
“I cannot overstate the value of Ron's coaching or the tools he recommends. www.CV-Advantage.com, for example, is a wonderfully simple, yet very powerful approach on how to best present oneself in print and in person. This process helps you identify your unique value, differentiate yourself from others, and gives you the ability to crisply communicate your unique value to others.” – Frank Eck (July 20, 2005)
"None of the leading retained executive search firms I've worked with, as a CEO and Senior Executive in both Fortune 100 and pre-IPO corporations, have demonstrated an ability to go beyond basic assessment of executive candidate career accomplishments in order to truly identify how an executive's skills would project success. Ron Bates excels at this." – Joe Kozak (March 22, 2004)
2. Have the right tools for the job.
What the heck does that mean?
You’re about to engage in the biggest networking project of your life. You want access to every business card, contact and email address you’ve ever collected. You want access to every tradeshow, symposia, conference, user group, relevant industry specific blog and website you can identify. You want access to additional contact information via free and subscription based research services and databases. Possess, ideally, ongoing memberships, and as a result – a working familiarity with professional business networking environments.
3. Consider budgeting for and leveraging the two types of resume distribution services available.
Resume Distribution Services that target Job Posting Sites and Resume Distribution Services that target Recruiters. Many people aren’t familiar with Resume Distribution Services. It is typically free to post a resume on at a Job Posting Site, but there are hundreds of Job Posting Sites all with different information and information format requirements. It can be a full time job just managing your resume postings at Job Posting Sites. Resume Distribution Services that target Job Posting Sites basically give you access to an ability to manage all of your resume postings from one convenient site/interface. Resume Distribution Services that target Recruiters do just want you’d think – they send your resume out directly to thousands of recruiters, and some let you even focus on recruiters specializing in specific industries or functional disciplines. Resume Distribution Services can help you increase your coverage of opportunity. Many can be found on the web by simple doing a search in Google on “Resume Distribution”
4. Develop a plan of attack.
The old adage of “those who fail to plan; plan to fail” is absolutely true in a proactive job search campaign. You can’t simply focus on approaching recruiters. Read: E-Mailing Resumes to Recruiters Won't Generate a Big Response. Combine reaching out to recruiters, reaching out to hiring authorities/executives directly, utilizing a resume distribution service, combined with direct networking to create an effective job search strategy that will increase your exposure to more opportunities. Don’t kid yourself; you are conducting a direct marketing campaign. If recruiters and hiring authorities/executives don’t know who you are and don’t know how to contact you, you will miss out on a lot of opportunities to advance your career.
5. Understand how to leverage an electronic email campaign tool.
Take charge of the campaign by not simply relying on resume postings and recruiters to make your phone ring. Reach out directly to as many hiring authorities as possible. How? It starts with having the right tools again. Get Group Mail, the email campaign management tool that allows you to send formatted html emails with attachments. Outlook email merge does not allow you to send attachments.
Who do you send your resume to? Ideally you’d want to cover the earth by sending your resume out to every hiring authority/executive on the planet. Again, remember this being all based on timing? Only a fraction of the available job opportunities ever go out side of the employer to contracted search entities (retained or contingent). Most employment openings are fill directly through the efforts of an employer’s internal staffing departments or the employer’s hiring authority/executive directly.
OK, so how do I identify “everybody on the planet?” This comes back to #2. Have right tools for the job. You want to think about everything you touch as a possible source of contact information and names.
Think like a recruiting researcher. You want to be able to identify a contact’s name from one source (e.g., EVP Technology, John Doe speaking about XYZ technology from a trade show website speaker’s list) and identify an email of someone else at the company (the press contact for the company: jane.doe@company.com) and be able to put the two together: john.doe@company.com. Will these really work? 70-80% of the time they will. You can go into some sites and identify literally thousands of employee names. Paste them into a spreadsheet and do some simple manipulation to create thousands of contact emails. Buy a cheap email extraction tool such as Email Address Collector to pull all the email addresses you’ve communicated with or saved (e.g., in the spread sheet you just created) from every document, file, and email (To, From, CC, and BCC) on your computer. Identify as many relevant sources of contact information as possible. There are many that are industry specific and free (e.g., Media Post will expose you to tens of thousands of media & entertainment direct contact emails for free). SGA Executive Tracker tracks those hard to find hiring line managers & sub ”C-level” executives. www.Lead411.com is a relatively inexpensive database of direct downloadable contact information for 50,000 Companies and 200,000 executives. www.Hoovers.com will expose you an unbelievable amount of companies and names, but no direct contact information. The PriceWaterhouseCoopers MoneyTree Survey is the definitive source of information on emerging companies that receive financing and the venture capital firms that provide it. Many sources of information will also lead you to other sources of direct contact information. And there are many, many more that you can identify on the Internet. Some are free, and some are subscription based. If you are looking to save money, you can even trade business contacts at Jigsaw, an online business contact marketplace where marketers, recruiters, and sales people can buy, sell and trade business contact information. Jigsaw has over 1.5 Million contacts at over 100,000 companies.
Dump all of these contacts into your email campaign management tool and send your “pin sharp” resume out to the world.
6. Have a 30-Second Elevator Pitch. Read: How to get your point across in 30-seconds or less. By Milo Frank. NOW!!
You will be leaving lots of voicemail messages and connecting with people that haven’t scheduled the time to speak with you. You must be able to get your purpose for the call across, articulate your situation, and articulate your core value proposition quickly. 30 seconds is actually a long voicemail if you are talking at a reasonable pace. The problem is that most people are not oriented around assimilating information via auditory input; rather they are oriented around assimilating information visually. Hence the term: sound bites. You will lose people if you do not have a concise strategy for articulating yourself and getting your purpose and message across.
If you need to practice with a script reading it into your voicemail until you can leave the message without looking at your script. Smile when you leave a voicemail. This may sound stupid, but it comes across in your voice. This also keeps your voice from sounding like a recording. Practice on unsuspecting friends and family members. Remember, someone might actually answer the phone when you call, and you don’t want to sound like you’re reading off a telemarketing script. Have a message for an executive assistant prepared and practiced for obvious reasons.
And remember: Whenever leaving a voicemail do – not – simply leave your phone number. Make sure to leave your – EMAIL ADDRESS – and your phone number, and speak s-l-o-w-l-y when you do. I’m always amazed when people leave voicemail message that are easy to understand – right up until they start giving me their contact information at light speed.
7. Understand how to approach recruiters effectively.
Even though you don’t want to have your job search strategy rest solely on approaching recruiters, many job seekers inadvertently shoot themselves in the head because they don’t know how to effectively approach recruiters. Many people don’t even understand what a recruiter does and doesn’t do, or more specifically – how they get paid. It definitely differs from country to country, but predominantly the following is true:
Recruiters are not agents for candidates; they are agents for clients.
Or alternatively: Recruiters don’t find jobs for people; they find people for jobs.
Approaching a recruiter and telling them you want to discuss working with them, telling them you’d like to discuss having them represent you; telling them you’re trying to choose someone to represent you; presenting them with the opportunity to represent you, are all approaches that will expedite your listening to a dial tone or having your email deleted. The only real way you are going to get the majority of recruiters’ attention is if – based on timing – you happen to align with the requirements of a position they are trying to fill. If not, then you are simply going to be perceived as someone who is about to waste his or her time – time they can’t afford to waste. Ouch that hurts.
Reality check #1: Recruiters are some of the busiest people on the planet. Good ones are also some of the hardest working 24X7 dedicated people you will every meet. Many recruiters regularly work 12-hour days 6 days a week or more. Why? Again, because timing is everything on the candidate side as well as on the opportunity side, and time kills all deals. It is also a bandwidth issue in that the faster a recruiter can fill a search the more searches they can do in a year – the more income they generate from the clients that pay them.
Many recruiters don’t even answer the phone if it isn’t a scheduled call. Why? Because they’d never get anything done if they had a 15-minute conversation with every unsolicited candidate that called them about their proactive job search campaign. It is an unfortunate reality that many unsolicited candidates never receive a return phone call or an email acknowledging a resume submission or attempt at communication with a recruiter.
Reality check #2: Most of us are busy right. Ever hear an executive complain about the number of voicemails they get, or the number of emails they receive? A recruiter’s life revolves around the phone and email. I’ve never met an executive that really had to deal with the volume of voicemail and email recruiters have to deal with.
Want to increase your chances of connecting with a recruiter? Send them an email; don’t just leave them a voicemail. Why? Emails are infinitely easier to respond to than a voicemail. You might actually answer the phone if the recruiter simply wants to respond with a quick message, and then they are sucked into an unplanned conversation. It doesn’t mean don’t call a recruiter. Just leave them a voicemail as a back up to your email, and tell them you are doing so in the voicemail.
When you send an email, have the body of the email –briefly– (key word) state the purpose reaching out to the recruiter and attach your “pin sharp” resume. Don’t tell your life story in the body text of the email. Don’t cut and paste your resume into the body text of the email. Don’t give an “executive summary” in the body text of the email. Don’t attach additional documents like bio’s, PowerPoint presentations, articles, and other unsolicited information that a recruiter doesn’t have the time to read. Attach your resume.
There is also –never– any reason to send a recruiter an email and not attach your resume if you aren’t already in dialog.
Reality check #3: Recruiters can end up seeing hundreds of resumes a day. Did I mention your resume should be “pin sharp’? Did I mention you should always attach a resume even in a follow up email to an unresponsive recruiter? Even if a recruiter took the time to respond to your email or voicemail there is still a very good chance they have not actually seen/read your resume.
When a recruiter does give you the time of day, take a second to acknowledge their busy reality, acknowledge the fact you are ambushing them with an unscheduled call if that’s the case, and then get to the point. Give them your 30-Second Elevator Pitch. Don’t tell them your life story. Ask them what if anything they’d like to know more. Ask them the best way and when to follow-up, or if they’d like to schedule some time.
This is critical: Ask the recruiter if they might benefit from being connected to any of your contacts based on the current search portfolio the recruiter is working on even if you don’t map into it. You are making a networking call when contacting a recruiter. Realize there is a very slim chance that they are currently working on a search that you will map into, and focus on extending a helping hand – and they will remember you. It is more likely you are in a position to help them with one of their searches based on who you know than they will be working on a project you map into. Did I mention that this was a networking project? Remember this is all based on timing. They will hopefully remember you and reach out to you when they are working on an opportunity you might map into.
If you approach recruiters this way there is a much greater chance they will call you when the timing is right.
8. Manage your time efficiently.
Spend 10-20 minutes or less with each recruiter or hiring authority/executive you talk to if they don’t have an immediate opportunity to discuss, and don’t get sucked into shooting the breeze with other networking contacts. Remember, time is a zero sum game. If your goal is to connect with a given number of recruiters or hiring authorities/executives, be careful not to spend too much time with any one person if there is no identified job opportunity to discuss. If the call was not scheduled, then by definition you are ambushing someone with the call. If you are connecting with someone worth spending more time with, schedule an appointment for a follow-up call. If you don’t do this, you risk having no control of your productivity.
9. Be consistent about reaching out with your resume on a regular basis.
Remember – this is all based on timing? You need to decide how often to send out your resume to the different populations you are targeting. It takes on average between 60-120 days to fill most searches. If you’re not sending your resume to recruiters or hiring authority/executives at least once a quarter, then you are going to miss out on a lot of opportunities from a timing perspective. And follow up by email certainly because it is the easiest for someone to respond to, and by voicemail to back up your email. Don’t simply leave voicemails for people they require more time and effort to respond to than emails.
10. Give yourself some incremental rewards and take breaks to avoid burnout. Remember, it’s about timing. Hiring is also seasonal. Most searches are conducted in the 1st quarter of a calendar year when companies have new hiring budgets. The 2nd quarter of the year is almost as busy as the 1st. The 3rd quarter is the slowest quarter of the year because it’s Summer and people are on holiday, and because hiring needs have already been filled for the year at many companies. The 4th quarter starts to pick up again for companies that are panicking that they still haven’t filled critical positions still open from the beginning of the year, because they are at risk of losing their recruiting budgets, and because they are trying to capture employees that will actually be ready to start work at the beginning of the coming new year.
Conducting a proactive job search can be one of the most stressful frustrating –jobs– you’ve ever had. Like with any job, you need to take breaks and have some balance to be able to keep fresh perspective, stay focused, and keep your determination and spirits up. Reward yourself for getting your resume done with a break. Reward yourself for getting an email campaign out. Reward yourself once you get an interview scheduled. And celebrate when you take that next step in your career as a result of all the great opportunities you’ve exposed yourself to by conducting a well thought out proactive job search campaign.
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Ron Bates is a Managing Principal with the retained executive search firm Executive Advantage Group, Inc. His search practice focuses on mission critical retained searches for pre-IPO Venture Capital backed start-ups to Fortune500 clients. He has delivered personal executive coaching projects to former SAP, E&Y, Oracle, and WorldCom Exec's responsible for multi-billion dollar business units, and co-founded www.CV-Advantage.com a self guided job search oriented executive coaching process. With +22,000 direct contacts, Ron is also the most connected individual in the world on www.LinkedIn.com. His Ecademy profile can be viewed at http://www.ecademy.com/user/ronbates.
