In the important eight years of the mannequin new century, from 2000 till late 2008, the job market was very good for expert, educated workers. I started my recruiting enterprise in January 2000, and yearly for the following eight years my enterprise grew considerably from the earlier 12 months. Companies have been searching for new expertise in all of the areas I labored in, collectively with gross sales, engineers, operations professionals, HR, and accounting/finance. It was a superb time to be a recruiter.
Things modified in an huge methodology by the important quarter of 2009. Most of us bear in thoughts that the inventory market took better than a seven hundred level nosedive in all by way of October 2008 when the housing bubble burst. Within a terribly brief time, the shock waves of the inventory market downturn and the collapse of the housing market started to have a critical, destructive have an effect on on job creation inside the US financial system. Not solely did many corporations cease hiring, layoffs and “downsizing” have been widespread headlines. In solely a matter of months, the job market reworked from a strong vendor’s market the place most candidates had a quantity of provides to a strong purchaser’s market the place the hiring agency had the elevated-hand and there have been dozens, typically tons of, of people competing for the identical job.
The most instantaneous affect of these market modifications grew to become very evident to me when my shopper corporations stopped hiring. Most of my enterprise was inside the manufacturing sector, and that sector was hit very laborious by reductions in drive, layoffs, downsizing, and a lot of corporations going out of enterprise altogether.
Many workers who had been on the identical agency for many years found themselves out of the blue and unexpectedly unemployed, and most of them had no clue about recommendations on how to current themselves to completely different corporations effectively of their searches for mannequin spanking new jobs. Many of these workers have been expert, expert, and actually ready to their fields, however they have been woefully unprepared for advertising themselves inside the “new” financial system the place employers had the elevated hand. I in some methods it was like what somebody goes by way of after they’ve been married or in a protracted-time period relationship for a quantity of years, after which flip into widowed or divorced. When they decide to get again into the relationship recreation, they discover that every little thing has modified, nothing is like is was as quickly as, and the ‘guidelines’ of the sport have modified dramatically. If they have been married earlier than the flip of the century, probability is that they know nothing about on-line relationship, which is how a pair of third of married couples in America right this second found every completely different. Online job search and advertising your self by way of social media was a very overseas idea to people who grew to become unemployed inside the financial downturn.
So right here it is… the important rule of promoting your self: When demand situations change, you may additionally change your promotional approach.
I jokingly inform my buddies that as a recruiter, I’m actually simply “Cupid” for enterprise, introducing two events to 1 one other and arranging dates (interviews). If they kiss and get married (one hires the completely different), I receives a fee. However, I am properly conscious that my agency consumers choose me by the commonplace of the candidates I current to them, and the a methodology they get an impression of what they contemplate a candidate is by way of that candidate’s resume. Unfortunately, most job seekers nonetheless use the identical, drained, out-of-date resume type and content material mannequin that was widespread inside the years earlier to the financial downturn. To make issues worse, most universities right this second are preaching to their college students and graduates the identical ineffective mannequin for resumes that they’ve used for years.
What’s the function right here? The level is simple… if you may be in quest of a job, and by no means simply any job, however the job that you merely actually want, you have gotten precisely one alternative to make a superb first impression. That alternative lasts about 6 seconds, the interval of time it takes for a recruiter or hiring supervisor to get your hands on out in case your resume is one worth critical consider or whether or not it is thrown inside the trash, actually or electronically.
You cannott get employed besides you get an interview, and also you will not get an interview in right this second’s market besides you have gotten an supreme resume that provides the recruiter and/or the hiring supervisor what they should see.
Albert Einstein as quickly as acknowledged “The definition of madness is doing the identical factor repeatedly and anticipating completely different outcomes”.
If that describes your advertising plan in your job search, maybe it is time for a change.