27 May 2007

How To Stop Searching For A Job: Get Recruiters, Headhunters And Companies Directly Knocking On Your Door.

Finding your dream job can be a difficult task indeed with so much competition for places, you need to stand out from the crowd and be different in your approach so as to secure the key position and company you desire. You should find the information in the next few paragraphs useful as it shows you how you can adopt the lazyman's approach, after all life is stressful enough without the burden of searching for your next job.

It always amazes me the amount of times that people send in their resumes or CV for a position advertised on the internet or in the newspapers that they are not quite qualified or experienced. The approach by these candidates is one of the scatter-gun method hoping that somehow it sticks and dreaming you get called up for an interview anyway. But how can this be? You will find if you adopt this style that you get less contact from professional recruiters who have little time to scan through all your details as they are constantly looking for relevance for their immediate vacancies. Time is important to all concerned and companies are unlikely to contact you if your CV is not relevant. You may however get a call in the end, but can your stomach wait or go 24 hours or more without any food or water? My guess is no, you want immediate results and contact from the employers asap, therefore, you must realise 1st impressions count. Your CV must stand out in terms of its design format, layout and most importantly its relevance to the job advertised.

Secondly, if you would like to have recruiters, headhunters and companies calling you directly then you must make yourself visible to the outside world. What i mean by this is that you need to be online, on the internet where professional recruiters seek for suitable candidates. The obvious medium online are jobboards which are increasing by the day, it seems almost each day there is a new website that is launched specific to a niche industry profession where prospective candidates can post their details. These are places where headhunters, recruiters and companies all look for candidates at some point, so it does you no harm, even if you are not looking at that time, after all the final say is yours whether you wish to move into a new job.

Another way of increasing your chances of being headhunted or contacted by a potential employer direct is making sure you are prominent in your field online as well as offline. You must have heard of this saying before that the best form of marketing is through 'word of mouth'. So if you have written articles make sure you have these published online, you can also join special interest groups or associations which are relevant to your field. For instance if you are an electrical engineer in the UK you want to make sure you are affiliated to the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE), every profession has an association which has been setup for likeminded people to learn and discover new information about their field. This is all networking and today's world is about networking successfully.

This leads us into the next way of giving yourself visibility to employers and recruiters searching for candidates to fill their vacancies. Online networking or Social networking as it is commonly known today is catching on like wild fire, you only have to look at some of the biggest innovations or movements in the internet world over the last 2 to 10 years, the likes of Linkedin.com, Openbc.com, Facebook, Myspace are all fantastic ways of reaching people within and outside of your immediate environment, creating an amazing abundance of opportunity. Linkedin, a US networking site, with more than 7 million people's profile worldwide present on its database is perhaps one of the best, mainly dedicated to professional people, it forms an excellent forum for placing your details, finding work and having people contact you direct for work by some of the biggest and most successful companies in the world. I have heard of many stories where people got hired for great jobs through online networking websites, and in one particular case, the candidate was catapulted above those that had applied through the normal medium, i.e. responding to a job advert in the newspaper. The reason briefly was this candidate had a very good profile on the internet, one that came with written testimonies all visible online. So making yourself visible online is key to your success.

Online networking or Social networking is one of the biggest events to hit the online community in recent years and its impact is one which is likely to last for decades as it appears to be the future for doing business and communicating with people online. It is often said that 'success is not about what you know, but who you know', and online networking allows you to expand your 'who you know' part, creating a level playing field, as a result enabling you to leverage other people's network and thus securing you potentially a dream contact that leads to your dream job.

Femi Yusoof

25 May 2007

The Secrets To Gaining Supreme Personal Confidence

Developing and maintaining your self confidence is as important as any technical skill you might possess in your job or business. Often you might find your self confidence and belief will sway others to your side. So it is a powerful tool to have in an interview scenario. But what is ultimate or supreme confidence? And how can you measure it if possible? Well it is rather difficult to measure such, however i have come to the realisation that you can determine personal confidence through a person's character.

You might have heard of this quote before, but i will repeat it here as it is pertinent to this point: "If you lose your wealth, you have lost nothing, if you lose your health, you have lost something, but if you lose your character, you have lost everything". I believe the statement to be somewhat true, though health would be quite high if not the most important. But for the benefit of this discussion, your character is just as significant, i guess it kind of goes to the heart of the matter, or to the heart and soul of the person. And once you have lost that as a person, it is downhill from there with no coming back, unless you get rescued and get some major help.

Some of you might be saying the secret to having self confidence is acquiring lots of money, nice house, nice family and so on, and my answer would be it is not entirely the case, there are 1000s if not millions of people with all the money in the world and still not happy, so how do you explain that? One thing i do believe is that to be successful at anything in life you must have self confidence in your abilities as a person, it has to be unwavering almost indestructable.

The downfall for most people is the envy which they show towards their neighbour(s). When you are envious of someone else it means you are lacking in self confidence, you feel inadequate, low in self esteem and this can affect your morale. So if you were preparing for an interview and have negative thoughts towards another person because of how well they performed, no one gets hurt but you, this type of thinking is negative and self destrcutive. In my opinion it is at the root to most of mankind problems. Instead of us to learn and be inspired from the success of our friends some look for their downfall, how they can better them anyhow, anyway possible. Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in wanting to be better or admiring another person's success but it is the thinking process, the negative thought patterns of some people which is abhorent and only detrimental to themselves in the end. It shows up their true innerself, they lack self esteem and personal confidence.

Some of the people i admire today as having supreme confidence would be people like Sir Richard Branson, Justin Timberlake, P. Diddy, Sir Alan Sugar, John Harrison, Ted Nicholas, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet to name but a few. What these famous and successful people have in common besides all being multi millionaires and billionaires in their own right, is that they have a certain 'care free' attitude as they look to others for inspiration and support. Money has certainly helped them, but i can promise you envy was not a part of their policy, as it would have ate at their self confidence and belief and surely would kept them at the basement of the success ladder. You know they say envy is the root to all evil. It is also the root to people's downfall and lack of confidence.

I will finish with a little story that illustrates the feeling that envy is somewhat in grained most people. I had attended an interview a long time ago for a position as a recruitment consultant for an executive search firm and i got invited to the 2nd stage, i was asked to do a presentation to the group. I proceeded to give my presentation, at the end there were some questions asked. But i remember one of the employees asking me if i would be envious if one of my colleagues was doing better than me in terms of generating results and revenue, ok and reasonable question. But they were not quite prepared for my feedback, in that i said i would certainly not be envious of he or she, why should i be envious, the money? Well, ladies and gentleman, it is the wrong focus, mine would be on learning from the person, watching, observing and listening to what has got them to the top of their field. Envy is a sign of weakness and if you are this way inclined it is something that can be worked on and must be addressed. With regards the story of my 2nd interview and presentation, the company hired me in the end.

So the secrets to achieving supreme confidence is simply developing your inner self, your self thoughts, and banishing all forms of envy, envy is a cancer that eats away at the mind and spirit of a human being.

Until next time.

Femi Yusoof