The Top 10 Skills Needed By Job Hunters.

I have looked at all the skills needed to sell successfully, and converted them into a short list that a job hunter needs to make your one single sale.

This e-letters is slightly different then previous top ten lists, because I have included many more links. The links provide ideas and knowledge to help you improve on your current expertise with each skill.

Here are the top 10 skills the job hunter needs:

1. Understanding that job hunting is about marketing yourself. In conversation after conversation, I am finding that for hob hunters this is the hardest skill to learn. Experienced executives think that job hunting is about sending out a resume with your “skills” listed and the employer will just see how you fit perfectly and call for an interview. They are shocked when they are not called. The reality is that you may be a perfect fit and you understand why, but the hiring authority has no clue. Let me explain with a simple analogy. A brochure for a sports car converts the feature “Rack and Pinion Steering” into the benefit “Full Control On The Twisting Open Road.”.Your skills are your “Features” that must be converted into “Benefits” for the employer. Converting your “Features” into “Benefits’ that will get you a job is what marketing yourself is all about. Here is one of many articles on different ways of marketing yourself.
2. Have no fear about contacting people. Job hunting is about contacting people for networking, for information, for interviews, or to ask for a job.. Many of these people will not want to be contacted, even though you can improve their companies and their lives. The better you present your case, the more likely they will listen, but you must accept the fact that some people are rude or don’t want to improve themselves. These people will say “No”. As David Perry and Kevin Donlin say, “A No means not today, it doesn’t mean No forever”. I add an exception to that rule. A rude or obnoxious “No” means forever. A person who acts rude to a stranger is demonstrating how they think internally. Here is an article on a tactic to help you start doing something that makes you very uncomfortable.
3. Creating A Personal Mission Statement. This doesn’t look like a skill, rather it looks like a task.But in fact creating a Personal Mission Statement is hard and one that needs to be continuously worked on. It requires you to look at yourself, what you want to do, and what you are really good at. Insight is understanding that you are totally in charge of your life, and that you are totally in charge of your career. You are compensated with a salary, a salary is simply another name for sales. Just like a company is paid for delivering a service, you receive a salary for delivering your service. Here is an article about creating your major definite purpose in life. Here is some help on goal setting.
4. Following a plan.The plan is how you will achieve your major definite purpose in life. It is said that one minute of planning saves 10 minutes in execution. If this is true, that means for every one day you invest in planning your job hunt, you will have a job 10 days earlier. It doesn’t matter if you purchase a job hunting plan or you create your own. In either case, you must have a job hunting plan and you must follow it. Here is a short video interview on the effectiveness of their job hunting plan. Here is an article on using GOSPA (Goals, Objectives, Strategy, Priority, and Actions) as a way to create a plan.
5. Have multiple approaches to finding your  job. Finding a job is not about a single activity. (Never ever is it “Click and Apply”!) When you start your job hunting efforts, you don’t know where you will get the job, you don’t know how they will hear about you, and you don’t know what skill is the one the employer needs. Therefore you need to have many different approaches to job hunting, and many different tactics for each approach. One approach is job fairs, another is online networking, another is face-to-face networking, another is a job club. Click here to read my 77 Guerrilla Job Hunting Tips.
6. Be at ease when you speak with strangers. The old saying is more true now than ever, “Its not what you know, its who you know.”Everybody in job hunting emphasizes the importance of networking and of course this is true. But, some people don’t have a clue about how to correctly converse. This skill is used in networking, the job interview, and of course while you are working.The ability to to converse is critical when marketing yourself.   You can read an article on three skills to improve your conversation with strangers here.
7. Writing powerfully. If you can’t write powerfully, then you will not get your message across to the reader. That is one of the reasons, people take so long to get a job. There writing does not get the message across. In Job Hunting your first impact to the majority of hiring authorities is through the written word. Words are used in your cover letter to convince the reader to review your resume, words are used on your resume to demonstrate your competence, words are used on your LinkedIn profile to get people to understand who you are, words are used in e-mail you send out. Learn to use words to convince people that you are the person for the job. Click here for a series of posts on how to write well.
8. Giving great presentations. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize that every conversation with anybody connected to your job hunt is a sales presentation. The most important and biggest sales presentation during the job hunt is the Job Interview. Many job hunters think the job interview is out of their control. This is a fallacy. You can control your part of the job interview you can ensure during the interview, that you can solve their business problem. Here are four tips for effective job interviews tips and a checklist for success.
9. Asking for what you want. One of the toughest challenges facing a sales person is asking for the order, but, if you don’t learn how, you never will make a sale. In the job hunt, the sale is  many things. Its asking for an interview, asking for an introduction, and even asking for the job. When you ask, you need to know how to ask and how to respond to a no. Typically, many people who can say “Yes” say “No” because its easier. And they will give you a reason. This “reason” is called an objection. For you to get the job, you need to learn to overcome objections.  Here are nine common objections in sales, and how you can address them.
10. Negotiating the job offer. Bingo – you have been given a job offer. For some people in some situations they are satisfied with what ever they were offered. But, remember if you have been given one job job offer, then you can get another one. On the other hand, a bird in hand is worth more than a two in the bush. How should you handle this conflict, negotiate for the best salary possible for that job in that city. To understand a few more details on negotiation, check out this article on my 4 steps to negotiate a salary.

I hope this gives you food for thought on the top skills you need in finding a job. These are not all the skills you need, but, if you focus on these, the rest will come along.

I have only provided one or two articles on each topic, you can find many more by using the Search box on http://www.ZaleTabakman.ca