If you have been reading my site for any amount of time, you are pretty bored with my mantra.
Job Hunting Is Making A Single Sale To A Single Customer
Therefore you you know I say the same things over and over again – You will get a job faster by learning to sell your self than by reading (almost) every employment book possible. (The exceptions are the Guerrilla Job Hunting and What Color Is Your Parachute books – because they are a marketing books for job hunters. I will explain more about this later?)
To illustrate, here’s a tactic from Bob Bly, publisher of The Direct Response Letter (www.bly.com) and author of more than 70 books on advertising, copywriting, and other topics.
You probably don’t know the name Bob Bly, but I guarentee you have products in your home because Bob Bly has written words that has influenced your purchase.
Bly suggests the following for publishers of email newsletters (e-zines), but it applies to your job search, too, as I’ll explain below:
“Whenever I am in a used bookstore or — even better — a library selling old books, I look for and buy old business books. At my local library, they are 50 cents each. If you are looking for content for your e-zine, I urge you to do the same with books related to your topic. Why?
“Thumb through any old business book and I can virtually guarantee that within 2 minutes, you’ll find at least one gem — a great quote, a neat idea, a list of how-to tips — you can use as a short article in your e-zine, on your blog, or in other how-to writings.”
As an example, Bly shares a marketing tip he found in an old book bought at the local library for 50 cents. “I flipped through it when I got home and found the item in about 90 seconds,” says Bly.
Here’s what he found, from the book, “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive,” by Harvey Mackay:
“It’s common practice for business owners to paint the company name and logo on the side of trucks and vans.
“But if your business or its customers are located in a city, you should also paint your company name, logo, and web site URL on the tops of your trucks and vans. That way it will be seen by prospects located on the second floor and higher of office buildings.”
Here in Canada we have an amazing resource. Its called Value Village. They have a ton books in them. I have built a marketing library that is the envy of any copywriter in the world. While Bob gets books for 50 cents, its costing me $0.99 – $3.99 CDN.
Now. How can you adapt the material you find in marketing books to your job search?
Write A Cover Letter That Sells
Most cover letters that people send me are worse than birthday present wrapping paper, they hide the real treasure and look pretty. They are quickly tossed away.
Use Bly’s marketing approach to research your industry, then strategically put in next cover letter ideas to make or save money for an employer. You will likely get more calls to interview.
Promote Yourself Everywhere
From accounting to zoology, you’ll find a job faster if more people know who you exist
Write a short blog postings on topics relevant to your industry, by tracking down evergreen ideas from old books. These Monday Morning Job Hunting tips are based on material provided to me. I take existing content, I add my own ideas and experiences and change it into my own voice. At the bottom of every article I acknowledge the source of it. Do you as a reader care that I am doing it? No. What you care about is that the material is useful and helpful to you. In fact the only reason I acknowledge my source, is because I am honest and grateful. If you were to read the original article, you would see the similarities, but see that my approach is different.
I use blog articles to raise my visibility. You can do the same. It will do a number of things for you
- Increase the likelihood of getting called by employers/recruiters.
- When a hiring authority Googles you, and they will. They will find your blog postings, giving you even more credibility. Think about how they will perceive you, if they see some well written articles?
Give Presentations
First of all create a presentation. You can have a powerpoint for every one of your blog articles. Put it up on slideshare.com and then add it to your LinkedIn.com profile. I have one I created for LinkedIn. I have full sound version on my website and soundless version on SlideShare. The Slideshare one generates me emails everyday. And I did it years ago.
You can do the presentation in public or in the security of your own home. Get a cheap Canon video camera ($79 at staples) and film yourself. Put it on your blog, on YouTube and everywhere else.
LinkedIn lets you upload PowerPoint presentations to your profile. Are you taking advantage of this and letting employers see how smart you are?
People in your industry will find it! Trust me!
As you are job hunting, you can ask hiring managers to view your PowerPoint during a phone interview. Imagine the effect of saying, “Ms. Boss Lady, if you’re online, would you have a minute to view a presentation I created for our phone interview? It’s called, ‘7 Ways ACE Corp. Can Save on Procurement Costs in the Next 90 Days.’”
Think you don’t have time for this? Think again.
If you’re unemployed and have been looking for work 8-10 hours a day, why not take 5 hours a week from activities that aren’t producing results — like applying for advertised jobs online, for example — and try this research method for 14 days?
If perusing old books for evergreen ideas to share with employers doesn’t work for you, I’d like to know. And if it does produce interviews, I’d like to know that, too.
Now, go out and make your own luck!
Remember in the first paragraph I told you “more about this later”? Kevin Donlin and David Perry have taken all the great direct marketing techniques developed by Bly and others and put them together in the Guerrilla Job Search System. . The system shows you how to create your resume (the direct marketing piece ), your cover letter (the sales letter) and how to go about getting customer. (who to call and how)
This is my Monday Morning Job Hunting help. I have taken material provided to me by Kevin Donlin and David Perry, co-creators of the Guerrilla Job Search System.
Kevin and David have been interviewed by CNN, New York Times, Fortune magazine, and the Christian Science Monitor about their method to finding a job.
Get a free audio from Kevin and David on how to get your job search into high gear
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