Knock 'em Dead

The Ultimate Job Search Guide

Martin Yate

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781507205365
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Completely updated with new material, this bestselling job search guide can help you keep up with changes in the job market—from updating the language of your resume to using social media networking to make professional connections that are essential in finding new employment opportunities. For more than thirty years, Martin Yate's Knock 'em Dead series has helped millions of people succeed in their job search and has continued to be one of the most powerful in the field, constantly meeting the challenges of the modern marketplace.In Knock 'em Dead, you'll learn to create a resume that works, build strong profession-relevant networks, and develop street-smart strategies for getting more interviews and learning how to turn those job interviews into job offers. More than a job-search guide, you'll have a blueprint for becoming more successful, while gaining the ability to control your professional destiny and your economic security.This unique book gives you a practical, thoughtful, and carefully integrated new approach to successful career management in an age of uncertainty. Rather than a series of canned answers, this book is your gold standard for job change, professional growth, and a successful and fulfilling life.

PART I

THE WELL-STOCKED BRIEFCASE

THIS SECTION WILL show you how to discover, define, and package your skills, and how to put together a comprehensive plan of attack that uses all the most effective job search techniques.

ONCE UPON A TIME, long ago, there lived a man who spent his days watching life go by. He lived in a town ravaged by bears, and one of his dreams was that if he could shoot bears, he could travel the world as a bear slayer. Every day he sat on his porch and waited for a bear to go by. After weeks of watching and waiting, he thought he might go looking for bears.

He didn’t know much about them, except that they were out there somewhere. Full of hope, he loaded his single-shot musket and set out. Arriving at the edge of the forest, he raised his rusty old flintlock, and fired blindly into the trees. Then, disappointed at hitting nothing he could eat, he slouched back to sit on the porch.

Because our hero couldn’t tell dreams from reality, he went hunting unprepared and earned exactly what he deserved: nothing. The moral is: When you go bear—or job—hunting, get a grip on reality, and don’t go off halfcocked.

Out there in the forest of the professional world are countless opportunities. Even in times of severe economic downturn—and remember they are cyclical and likely to come by every seven to ten years throughout your career—there are always jobs out there. Yes, they are harder to find, and yes, the competition is tougher, but someone is going to find those jobs and land those job offers. It can be you.

All companies have two things in common: They are in business to make money; and things go wrong, so they hire problem solvers to fix them. This is an important life lesson. Think about your present job: You were hired to cope with certain problems within your area of expertise, to anticipate and prevent them from arising, and where they cannot be prevented, to solve them. At some elemental level, everyone, in every profession and at every level, is paid to be a problem solver. There are three lessons you should take away from this:

Lesson One: Companies are in business to make money; they have loyalty only to the bottom line. They make money by sales and by being efficient and saving time. If they save time, they save money and have more time to make more money; we call this productivity.

Lesson Two: Companies and MeInc. are exactly alike. You both want to make as much money as possible in as short a time as possible: think efficient systems and procedures, and multitasking (time management and organization). Think of focus and goal, not task and activity.

Lesson Three: There are buyers’ markets (advantage: employer) and there are sellers’ markets (advantage: employee). Job offers put you in a seller’s market and give you the whip hand.

Lesson One tells you the three things every company is interested in. Lesson Two teaches you to recognize that MeInc. has the same goals as any company. Lesson Three reminds you that anyone with any sense wants to be in a seller’s market.

If you look for jobs one at a time, you put yourself in a buyer’s market; if you implement my advice in Knock ’em Dead, you can generate multiple job offers (even in a tough economy) and put yourself in a seller’s market. This means making sure MeInc. is ready with a properly packaged product and integrated sales process.

In this first part of the book you will:

• Learn to evaluate market needs and package your professional skills for those needs.

• Discover how to identify every company in your target location that could be in need of your services.

• Get connected to the most influential people in your profession so that you’ll have personal introductions at many prospective companies.

• Implement an integrated job search plan of attack.

While I will cover each of these areas in sequence, I recommend that you mix and match the activities. In other words, when working on your resume starts to drive you nuts, switch to researching your target market or building your professional networks. An hour of one activity followed by an hour of another will keep your mind fresh and your program balanced.

CHAPTER 1

THE REALITIES OF A JOB SEARCH

JOB SEARCH ISN’T nanotechnology; you’ll find a common-sense logic in everything I show you and wonder why you didn’t see it before. You can get your job search moving onto a new trajectory this week, and reap the rewards for the rest of your career. You can do this.

Everyone feels crappy when they are looking for a job—you aren’t the only one—but while there used to be a stigma about looking for a job, times have changed. Job change is an integral part of modern life. It comes around about every four years, making change and job search a constant factor for everyone.

Because everyone understands this, once you organize and follow the plan of attack, you will find many, many people are ready to give you a helping hand if they can.

We live and work in a time of immense change. When you were born, there still existed a world in which hard work, dedication, and sacrifice led to long-term job security and a steady, predictable climb up the ladder of success. The world you now work in is entirely different: Companies still expect hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, but their only loyalty is to the profit imperative. You are expendable.

Different times require different strategies; you need a new mindset for today’s job search and for your long-term career success. The job security and professional growth our parents were raised to expect as the norm is a thing of the past. Here are the realities you’re facing, expressed in numbers:

50—4—3—7—10

A 50-year work life

Job change about every 4 years

3 or more distinct careers

Economic downturns every 7–10 years

Integrate my job search advice into the long-term career management plan I outline in these pages and you need never again be caught flat-footed, urgently needing a job to put food on the table.

Along the way, we’ll discuss many long-term career management initiatives that are also essential parts of your job search plan of attack. For example, you’ll learn about credibility, visibility, and professional branding. These are all issues that can have great impact on your job search and even greater impact on your long-term career management initiatives.

Not surprisingly, the process starts with your resume. The resume creation process helps you focus on the job you want and package your skills effectively. It’s the first step in turning your dreams into realities, and as you’ll see, the resume techniques you’ll learn in Chapter 3 to help you land a new job can also be leveraged to get you promotions on that job; but first things first.

How Business Works

Companies exist to make money for the owners, as quickly, efficiently, and reliably as possible. They make money by selling a product or service, and they prosper by becoming better and more efficient at it. When a company saves time, it saves money, and then has more time to make more money; this is called productivity.

If a company can make money without employees, it will do so, because that means more money for the owners. Unfortunately for the owners, a company requires a complex machinery to deliver those products and services that bring in revenue. You can think of any and every job as a small but important cog in this complex moneymaking machine, and every cog has to be oiled and maintained; this costs money. If the company can redesign its machinery to do without that cog (automation) or can find a cheaper cog (outsourcing that job to Mumbai), of course it is going to do so.

There are two reasons jobs exist. First, as I’ve said, every job is a small but important cog in the corporation’s complex moneymaking machine: It exists to help the company make money. Second, the company hasn’t been able to automate that job out of existence because in your area of technical expertise, problems arise.

Consequently, the company hires someone who has the technical skills to solve the problems that typically occur within an area of specific expertise. The company hopes to hire someone who knows the territory well enough to predict and prevent many of these problems from arising in the first place.

It doesn’t matter what your job title is, you are always hired to be a problem solver with a specific area of expertise. Think about the nuts and bolts of any job you’ve held: At its heart, that job is chiefly concerned with the anticipation, identification, prevention, and solution of problems. This enables the company to make money for its owners, as quickly, efficiently, and reliably as possible.

These aren’t the only factors that are critical to your success and that all jobs have in common. In the next chapter you’ll learn about a specific set of transferable skills and professional values that all employers are anxious to find in candidates, whom they then hire and promote just as quickly as they can find them.

GET A FREE RESUME REVIEW FROM MARTIN YATE!

Go to the website of the store where you bought the book, write an honest review, and send the link with your resume to [email protected].

CHAPTER 2

THE TRANSFERABLE SKILLS AND PROFESSIONAL VALUES THAT GUARANTEE A SUCCESSFUL JOB SEARCH AND CAREER

UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR customers want to buy.

There are certain keywords you see in almost every job posting that relate to skills: communication, multitasking, teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, leadership, determination, productivity, motivation, and a few more we’ll discuss shortly. These words represent a secret language that few job hunters ever show they understand. The ones who do “get it” are also the ones who get the job offers. That is because, as discussed in the previous chapter, these keywords and phrases represent the skills that enable you to do your job well, whatever that job may be. They are known as transferable skills and professional values because no matter what the job, the profession, or the elevation of that job, these skills and values make the difference between success and failure.

The Professional Everyone Wants to Work With

Over the years, I’ve read a lot of books about finding jobs, winning promotions, and managing your career. One theme that runs through many of them is just plain harmful: the advice to “be yourself.” Wrong. Remember that first day on your first job, when you went to get your first cup of coffee? You found the coffee machine, and there, stuck on the wall behind it, was a handwritten sign reading:

YOUR MOTHER DOESN’T WORK HERE
PICK UP AFTER YOURSELF

You thought, “Pick up after myself? Gee, guess I’ve got to develop a new way of doing things.” And so you started to observe and emulate the more successful professionals around you. You weren’t born this way. You developed new skills and ways of conducting yourself, in effect creating a professional persona that enabled you to survive in the professional world.

There is a specific set of transferable skills and professional values that underlie survival and professional success: skills and values employers all over the world in every industry and profession are anxious to find in candidates from the entry level to the boardroom. Why this isn’t taught in schools and in the university programs that cost a small fortune is unfathomable, because these skills and values are the foundation of every successful career. They break down into these groups:

1. The Technical Skills of Your Current Profession. These are the technical competencies...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Why Knock ’em Dead?
• Part I. The Well-Stocked Briefcase
• Part II. Get the Word Out
• Part III. Great Answers to Tough Interview Questions
• Part IV. Finishing Touches
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• General Index
• Index of Interview Questions
• Copyright