It's a Wednesday night late in May at New York hot spot Hush, and the place is jumping. Not because of the uneven "dot-comedy" performances taking place in the back room, or the band playing the top-10 layoff songs (People's Choice Award: "It's the End of the World As We Know It," by R.E.M.), or even the $3 beer specials.
The place is rocking because somewhere, hidden amid the strobe lights and booming bass, there are jobs to be had. It's the monthly pink-slip party, and clutches of people wearing neon-pink bracelets are swarming around the few folks wearing green ones. The green braceleteers are recruiters or people with a job to offer, and the pink-wearing ones need jobs. As you might imagine, pinks far outnumber greens these days. And judging from the aggressive bumping and jostling of the job seekers as they gather around the recruiters, they've ripped off their rose-colored shades and are here to do business.
Yep, it's a jungle out there -- but there are still good jobs available. And if you've finally identified your dream job at a company with staying power, what do you have to do to stand out in a throng of pink-bracelet wearers? We consulted with recruiters, successful job-getters, and career specialists, and culled their suggestions to come up with the top-10 ways to help you land the gig you want.
Most successful job seekers land their dream jobs through contacts that they've previously made and assiduously kept up. Susan McPherson, regional vice president at Vocus Inc., a public relations management software company, got her last several jobs through contacts and says that she 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," she says. After she left PR Newswire in 1997 after 8 years with the company, she made it a point to stop by the local PRN staffer's office for a meeting or a quick lunch whenever she traveled on business for her new job. She also clipped relevant newspaper articles and sent them to people in her network who might be interested. All that networking paid off: When she heard about the job at Vocus, she quickly realized that the company had a potential partnership with PR Newswire -- and her former contacts spoke highly of her. "It's all part of how you remain successful," she says.
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, says Beverly Kaye, founder and CEO of Career Systems International, a talent retention and development company and coauthor of the book Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay (Berrett-Koehler, 1999). "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.
When Amy Lambo lost her job at workingwoman.com, the first thing she did was buy a three-ring binder to plan out her network strategy. "I started taking notes about people I might call. I called key people who I knew respected my work or friends who I knew would lend advice or help out." One of those calls led her to a job opening at John Wiley & Sons, where she now works as a Web producer.
Dave Opton, founder and CEO of ExecuNet, an online career-management network devoted to people earning more than $100,000, says that, on average, people spend a total of 15 to 20 seconds on every résumé and cover letter that they see. If they're staring at a stack of 300 of résumés 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 garbage bin. The best way to do that, says Opton, is having a clean, two-page, chronologically organized résumé with plenty of white space and a short, to-the-point cover letter. You should include some of what Opton calls "scope data" -- important quantifiable data and discrete facts that tell the person doing the hiring how you can make his company better. But don't yammer 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," says Opton. "The goal of a cover letter is for potential employers to put your résumé into Pile B."
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