Career Management Alliance Blog

During the summer months, the prospects of reaching a contact’s voicemail increase at least 50%. So, this is a good time to review my tips for making the most of your voicemail marketing to ensure you receive that return call.

Get to the point
About thirty seconds is the longest message you will want to leave. Begin with a short greeting and a reminder of who you are. If the contact asked you to call, state that as well.

“Hi Lisa, this is Michele Haffner, we met last Wednesday at the HRMA dinner. I’m following up on your request for me to call you about your HR Director opening.”

Give a compelling reason for the contact to call you back
What makes good sales and marketing copy work? It uncovers the pain and solves the problem. Find out what your contact’s most pressing problems are, and solve them.

“You mentioned that you are ramping up your sales team to begin a product launch in the fourth quarter. This is one of my specialties. With Motorola I put together a sales team in 90 days for the launch of our e-Phone. In fact, the team was successful in generating $50 million in revenues the first 12 months.”

Take it away and give detailed instructions
You don’t need to be overly eager because this might not be a good fit. Using the words “I need” is a good way to generate a response.

“Lisa, I don’t know if my skill-set is a good match for your needs. However, I would be happy to meet with you next week to discuss it further. My calendar is very full, but I am open next Tuesday or Thursday at lunch. I will need you to let me know what works best for you. The best way to reach me is on my cell phone at 414-313-7404. Otherwise, I check e-mail frequently and my address is mhaffner@wi.rr.com. Thank you.”

Rehearse
Write it down and rehearse it several times until it flows naturally.

Posted by Michele Haffner

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LinkedIn is a great tool for anyone who is looking to build their on-line identity and it offers multiple features for finding people and being found.

One of my favorite features on LinkedIn is the profile section. It allows users to create an elevator pitch and mini resume and broadcast it to hundreds of thousands of users in a global 24/7 environment. These profiles are searchable by keyword, so it is easy to quickly find people who work in a particular industry or company, went to a certain school, or belong to a particular professional organization.

LinkedIn helps users quickly turn a cold call into a warm lead by blending the concepts of networking with the profile section that helps job seekers market their candidacy through their on-line resume, specialties section, and endorsements area.

LinkedIn is kind of like networking in one really big elevator with tons of decision makers listening to your message on the way up. Give them something worth listening to. Create a robust profile on LinkedIn today and enjoy the ride!

Here’s a great post from the ERE blog that discusses how to beef up your LinkedIn profile.

Posted by Barbara Safani

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The interview strategies mentioned in ComputerWorld’s “You Don’t Need to Show Up for this Kind of Job Interview” may be extreme for the average job seeker … today. However, it drives home the importance of understanding and embracing the ever–evolving strategies that are critical to winning that next great opportunity.

Continuing to play the “posted position game,” where a candidate is only reacting only to those ads for positions that appear to be a fit with your skill sets, is highly–competitive, inefficient, and ineffective. It takes on average posting 100 resumes to get four interviews … and that is assuming you are posting to positions for which you are qualified.

Rather, devote about 10% of your overall weekly job search time to posted positions, and then spend the balance of your time networking, building visibility, and targeting companies directly. A more balanced search strategy will increase the return on your investment by shortening the length of the search.

You can move the process along even faster by knowing your market differentiation. Do you? If not, unfortunately, you are relegated to mere commodity status … you look and sound like every other prospective candidate. Knowing how you are unique and better (personal brand) than the competition will help you stand out from the competition and leverage just the right opportunities!

Once you know your market definition, make sure your target audience can find you. Networking today is as much about who you know as it is about who knows you! Creating branded visibility is a long–term career management strategy that is quickly becoming “the” strategy for shifting the paradigm from job hunter to hunted candidate.

Posted by Cindy Kraft

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Last week I wrote about monitoring your Google on-line presence to
manage and elevate your visibility during a job search. This week I
came across an interesting post on Blog for Jobs
about a blogger that was discovered by a Google recruiter. No, he was
not actively searching for a job, just blogging about what he is
passionate about. This caught the recruiter’s attention and led to an
invitation for an interview.

Never before have candidates been so
empowered to proactively manage their careers.The Internet has
significantly minimized the negative connotation of the cold call and
given job seekers scores of resources for quickly transforming a cold
lead into a warm lead and a potential connection. An abundance of
on-line friends and communities are available to users in a nano-second
and new applications are released every day that allow people to
showcase their competencies, creativity, and amazing insights.

Don’t
be left behind. Find a way to be found. Create a blog or comment on a
blog that is relevant to your area of expertise. Review a book on Amazon
that discusses a work-related topic you are knowledgeable in. Submit an
article to an e-zine that positions you as an expert in your field.
Many of these activities are less time consuming than posting to job
boards and the results of your efforts may be faster and more
measurable.

Posted by Barbara Safani

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