A winning job search focuses on getting into conversations with hiring managers - and the people who know them - as quickly and as often as you can. Who are these people? They hold:
The people with these titles are the ones likely to be in a position to hire you or know the person who can. Your challenge is how to find them. We’ll look at how to identify higher-level hiring managers, corporate recruiters and headhunters.
Google & Bing for job search contacts
You can use the search engine(s) of your choice to find the names of high-value contacts. Imagine for a moment that you work in pharmaceutical sales and want to make direct contact with hiring authorities in the Abuja area. If this were you, you would execute a number of searches for each of the people with job titles one to three levels above your own. Each search would include one of these targeted hiring titles plus:
Of course, job titles vary, and with professions like pharmaceuticals that sell their products and services into every community in the country, there are more complex organizational structures. In that case you would include searches with this sequence of titles:
If you wanted to find contacts at a specific company, you would repeat these searches using each company name. A little work, yes, but this is your future calling. Besides, this work isn’t exactly brain surgery-- you can do it while watching TV. You’ll find job postings, recruiters, headhunters and, when you dig down far enough, you start to find names that go with your high-value target titles.
Google News, Discussions and Blog Searches
As you complete each search, repeat it as a Google News search. Leave your search terms in the dialog box and simply hit the News tab above on the navigation bar. This searches for the same terms, only this time scanning for media coverage. You also have the option to search for mentions of your keywords in Discussions and Blogs.
Doing News, Discussion and Blog searches has multiple benefits: again you’ll find job postings, recruiters, headhunters, and some names that go with your high-value target titles. However, the biggest advantage of these searches is that the names you find come within the context of a story or a publicly visible discussion. This gives you a conversational icebreaker for your e-mail and/or phone conversation. It also doubles as market research on the companies you hope to interview with. As all Knock ’em Dead readers know, your interviewer will invariably ask what you know about the company. A Google News search can help you prepare.
Here’s how to leverage the vital information you get from a Google News search:
Recycle Media with Your Social Networks
Interesting articles, blogs and discussions about your profession that you run across in this way also offer good material to post on your social networking groups. It shows you are engaged—which is appealing to recruiters—and because you are sharing items of potential interest to others in your profession, it positions you as a sphere of influence and useful knowledge. You can then reach out to connect with anyone who comments or “likes” your discussion, delivering more valuable networking contacts.
With these results, you will often be able to make direct contact with potential hiring managers or the people who know potential hiring managers. Once you have established an online connection you are very close to getting you into meaningful conversations with someone who has the job opening and the authority to hire.
The Best Career Strategies Deliver on Multiple Fronts
By sharing useful information, you become a center of influence, increasing both your visibility and your credibility with the people who matter in your professional world. With the Knock 'Em Dead approach to career management, work you do toward reaching one goal—getting job interviews—invariably helps you reach an additional goal, which is branding. When you increase your visibility and your credibility with network-integrated job search strategies like these, your networking activities simultaneously contribute to building a desirable professional brand.
Martin Yate, CPC
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