Tips for How to Find a Job
Tony Beshara has been recognized as the number-one placement and recruitment specialist in the U.S. by the Fordyce Letter. Tony is also the author of
The Job Search Solution and has developed a system that has helped more than 100,000 people find jobs. He offers tips for how to find a job and highlights the biggest mistakes people make on their résumés:
Finding a Job
If someone started looking for a job today, there is no way of knowing how long it will take. You have to make looking for a job a job itself. It needs to be a 24-hours-a-day, seven-day-a-week, 365-days-a-year job. I've known people who have taken one year and nine months to find temporary work.
There are still jobs in healthcare, education and some in IT, but finding a job in this economy and in these fields may take some reeducation. You can't just get a teaching job if you don't have a degree. It takes a while to reinvent yourself.
There's always the opportunity of working in the temporary arena. People should be calling temporary employment firms to find light industrial jobs, or jobs that will make a minimum wage or maybe a little more. For example, if you've been an accountant your whole life, there are opportunities out there, and you might be able to find some temporary jobs.
Develop a system of looking for a job. This way, you focus on the process without having to worry about the results. Keep track of the calls you make and the interviews you get. That way you can follow up on the interviews.
Sell yourself very well in an interview. What is it that you can offer that others can't? You have to be able to sell yourself. Keep selling until you get a job offer.
You'd better have good features, advantages and benefits in your presentation on yourself. You need stories that show you're successful. It's a numbers game if you're in sales: What are you numbers? What are your results?
Most people get in cycles with going on a couple of interviews and then they stop. You can't stop. Until you have an offer, you have absolutely nothing.
People don't realize that there's no such thing as a hidden job market. You may not know about it, but it's not hidden. Finding a job is all about catching a potential employer at the right time when they need to hire someone with your skill set.
My experience in 35 years of doing this: It's not an issue of people not wanting to go to work; it's about people not knowing how to talk to people.
Do Whatever It Takes to Earn Money Now
Do whatever it takes. Don't be above anything. Which is a greater pain: Working really hard at a number of different jobs or not being able to pay your bills?
A lot of people don't look outside the box enough. People can wait tables or bartend at night, so they can look for jobs during the day. Another thing people can do is deliver newspapers early in the morning so that they have time to go on interviews during the day. Work in another area and wait for jobs in your field to come back. You may need to deliver pizzas, wait tables, clean homes, etc.
People need to realize that the job you get today is not the job you will have forever. It's a do-what-you-have-to-do-for-now. People need to realize that they really need to go to work and work hard. The world doesn't owe you a living.
The good news is that this too shall pass, but you really need to work at it and go in different directions.
Looking Online Is Not the Answer
The number of people who find jobs online is between 2 percent and 5 percent at most. We don't even know if those facts are accurate because no one can define what finding a job online means. It's very hard to define the term, but the odds are stacked against you.
Sixty-nine percent of people only do two things when they go to look for a job: People either call their friends or look on the Internet.
People have to call every person they know, every contact they have. People have to make a passionate approach. Call friends, neighbors, relatives, previous employers, former colleagues, frat brothers, sorority sisters, friends of friends, or whomever.
People assume if they call their church or their friends to ask for help, it's begging, and it's beneath them. It's a matter of picking up the phone and really putting in a lot of effort in talking to anybody who will listen.
People confuse activity with productivity. They update their résumé and keep hitting the send button.
Sending Out Your Résumé
It's not about just sending out your résumé. It's about talking to people who need to hire. Sending your résumé is a waste of time without picking up the phone and calling people.
The average résumé is read in 10 seconds. You need to hit the reader in the mouth. Your résumé needs to show: This is where I worked, how long I worked there, and this is what I produced. Performance needs to be on your résumé.
Making Calls
After you send your résumé, you need to pick up the phone, and call and introduce yourself to a supervisor.
If you apply to State Farm Insurance, you call every office in your area. You call the owner, franchise manager, etc.
Ninety-eight percent of companies in the U.S. have fewer than 100 people working for them. Calling one of those managers is not that hard to do.
Interview Mistakes
Most people go into an interview thinking, what can you do for me? If you give them good enough reasons why they ought to hire you, then you won't have to worry about whether or not you want to work there.
People think interviewing is a two-way street. It's one way until you get to the altar. Once they decide they want to hire you, then you can ask what they can do for you.
After you have a job offer, then you can start qualifying what you want from them. Your job is to get an offer. You can decide if you want the job or not afterward.
Attitude Toward Finding a Job
Winners do what they have to do and figure out how to make ends meet. You pick up the phone, and you go to work. Sitting there, thinking that you don't want to do that job or "I'm too good to do that job" isn't going to help.
Next to dealing with the death of a spouse, child or parent, the fourth most emotional thing we do is look for a job. People need to deal with the emotions. Recognize that you are emotionally strained and drained. You need to get over it because the sooner you do, the faster you'll be able to look for a job. The longer you put it off, the harder it will be.
It's a process. If you focus on the process, you don't need to focus on the results. The process is: Have a résumé that sells you, pick up the phone and call an employer with "pain" (someone that needs to hire somebody), create a need for yourself. You need to make a boat load of those calls. Make a quick, to-the-point presentation of yourself.
The Future of the Job Market
Career employment is a thing of the past. The average job in the U.S. lasts two-and-a-half to three years.
We're a global economy. We are a nation of itinerant workers. You contract yourself out. That's the way the attitude of the whole world is going.
The average company in the U.S. is only 15 years old. In 1975, the average company was 58 years old.
According to the Department of Labor, by 2012 - 2013 there are going to be 10 million more jobs than there are people available.
The Biggest Résumé Mistakes:
- Writing the wrong content
"They write content that means something to them instead of to a prospective employer. So you've got the résumé, and they look at it, and the employer doesn't know what the heck they've written. Their titles are all wrong. It's got to mean something to the person you are writing it to, not you."
- Distracting formats "Fonts, and garbage, and colors and big, full pages of nothing but objectives, which get read in 10 seconds. They want to know what have you done, whom have you worked for and how successful you were, and if that doesn't hit them right in the mouth, they throw it away."
"You don't need an objective. I don't recommend it, unless you're in a very narrow, specific kind of technology or engineering, something where you've customized the résumé to the particular job, but for the most part, get that off of there."
- Using a one-size-fits-all approach
Be sure your qualifications aren't junk, like "team player," "adaptable," "integrity." "I mean, of course, what are you going to put on a résumé, ‘I don't have integrity'? I mean, that's ridiculous. It's junk."
- Having a résumé that is too long
- Not showing performance
Don't describe your job, describe your performance. "‘This is what I did. This is how successful I was.'"
- Errors in objectives, dates, titles and other basics
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