Summary: There are 5 key areas in a job search – including promoting yourself with reference letters and creating a powerful professional brand – that can help you find work fast.

There are 5 basic steps in any job search. How well you perform in these areas will determine the speed and ease with which you land a new job. Failing to optimize your performance for any of these steps can dramatically lower your chances of finding work within a reasonable time frame.

Review Your Resources

This is the time to look back over your job history and identify those experiences and relationships that will assist you in gaining new employment. Very few job candidates collect reference letters from previous employers. Any manager or executive you have reported to over the past 7 years could be a valid source for a written recommendation. When you receive a written reference, it could open your eyes to what your previous boss found most valuable about you. That’s information you could highlight later in a job interview.

Fine Tune Your Resume & Branding

A resume that targets the key skills and responsibilities for a specific job position with a powerful summarization of your achievements is absolutely vital. It’s well worthwhile to have your resume developed by a consultant who knows what recruiters want in a top job candidate. Your LinkedIn profile is an additional aspect of your professional branding that boosts your credibility and visibility. Double check any publicly viewable information that’s available through a Google search of your name to make sure your online presence displays you in a positive light.

Expand Your Network

In this economy, there’s no shame in being out of work. Let everyone know that you are looking for a job. This includes social “friends” on Facebook and professional contacts in your industry. If you’re not a member of a professional association, join one now. There’s no telling who might know about a great job opportunity. You could even attend a local pink slip party to get some instant face time with local recruiters and HR professionals who are looking for talent. The more people you have in your network, the better your chances of finding a good job match.

Hone Your Interview Skills

Interviewing is often the most stressful part of a job search. However, if your resume is strong enough to convince the recruiter that you are worth a phone call, you are already a strong contender for the job. You can prepare for interviews just as you would for any other test – if you have the right information. For example, you need to devote your energy to preparing for the questions recruiters are actually likely to ask rather than the ones that you are afraid they might ask. Additionally, you need to know which questions you should ask to gain the respect of your interviewer and establish a good rapport.

Compete Aggressively

This applies to every stage of your job search. Often, it’s about being proactive and investigating local companies to understand their hiring needs. Sometimes, it’s about being decisive (but polite) in an interview instead of beating around the bush when you need an answer to a question. More than anything else, competing means being willing to put in the extra time on preparation and follow up. If you are really serious about getting work fast, invest in job search, resume writing, and interview coaching resources. These services offer the advantage of helping you market yourself effectively without a lot of trial and error.

Jerome Young is the founder of www.AttractJobsNOW.com, a recruiting and job search consulting firm that has achieved over 100 job search success stories in the last year.

One thing to avoid is making your cover letter a duplicate of your resume summary. That serves no purpose and just makes you look like you don’t have much to say. However, the purpose of a cover letter is still to position you as a high-value candidate. It’s kind of the “pre-sell” section where you introduce yourself and catch the recruiter’s attention. Here are a few sure fire ways to get noticed (in a positive way):

Address the Recipient by Name

A cover letter addressed “To Whom it May Concern” isn’t going to impress anyone. You don’t want to hire a private investigator to find the recruiter’s home address and hand deliver your cover letter, but you do need to at least know the recruiter’s name and company contact information. If you are having trouble obtaining this information on your own, a staffing agency with a strong industry network can usually put you in touch with the right person.

Name Drop If You Can

If you heard about the job opening from a current employee or a previous employee who left the company on good terms, this could be a valuable “in”. So is hearing about the position through contacts at a well respected professional association of which you are a member. You might mention this type of connection in your cover letter in the following way: “Mr. Larry Jones, the chairperson of our local AITP chapter, recommended your company to me as an excellent employer currently looking for highly qualified IT personnel.”

Be Specific

Your cover letter should mention the specific position that caught your interest. This should be followed by a paragraph about how you envision adding immediate value to their organization based on your skills and experience. Again, this shouldn’t be information you will be repeating word for word in the summary sections of resume – although you can touch on some of the same areas. Use professional but conversational language throughout including referring to yourself as “I” and the recruiter as “You.” For example, “Thank you for taking the time to review my resume.  I look forward to speaking with you about this position in more detail soon.”

Make it Clear that You Are Action Oriented

Closing by inviting a recruiter to call you is great. However, you should also let the recruiter know that you will be following up with them at a specific date and time. If you’ve addressed the letter directly to the recruiter and included their contact information in the header, they know you can make good on that promise. This makes you look like you are taking your job search seriously and know how to get things done.

Jerome Young is the founder of www.AttractJobsNOW.com, a recruiting and job search consulting firm that has achieved over 100 job search
success stories in the last year.  Have a free resume consultation today.

1. Know  Your Audience

Researching a company before you go in for an interview is a tip you’re probably familiar with. But what kind of information should you look for? Here are some helpful
things to know:

• The company’s  history including any recent downsizing, acquisitions, or mergers
• What’s going  on with the company’s industry in general (is it in a boom or bust period?)
• Whether the  company is embroiled in any major lawsuits (so you can avoid hitting a  nerve in an interview)
• The company’s  culture (if the employer has a corporate blog, YouTube channel, or networking page, this is a good place to get a feel for the culture)

2. Use Your Resume as a Cheat Sheet

During your interview practice sessions, set a copy of your resume on the table where you can glance at it casually without being too obvious. If your resume has been correctly customized, it will offer you reminders about what to focus on when answering questions. For example, you will want to talk in more detail about the skills you’ve listed in the summary section (which should match the skills listed in the employer’s job description). That way, you are subtly reinforcing the fact that you are the right fit for the position.

3. Polish  Your Visual Language Skills

One of the reasons most recruiters still do interviews face to face is that they want to get a feel for who you are in person. Learning to control your own body language and respond appropriately to your interviewer’s body language is essential. For example, if the interviewer asks a question that makes you feel defensive, lean forward to engage the question with confidence instead of leaning back to deflect it.

4. Get Comfortable with Silence

This is a skill you will need to use late in the game when it’s time to negotiate your salary. Don’t babble to fill in the blanks in a conversation. If you ask a question or make a proposal, give the recruiter a chance to mull it over. That way, they have time to come up with a counter offer that isn’t just “No.”

5. Ask for Help

Having a friend or family member help you prepare by asking you a list of common job interview questions is a fine place to start. But it’s more beneficial to work with someone who knows what they are doing and can tailor questions to be more specific to your industry and your resume. Also, a professional career coach is more likely to be honest with you about areas you need to improve.

Jerome Young is the founder of www.AttractJobsNOW.com, a recruiting and job search consulting firm that has achieved over 100 job search success stories in the last year.

These technical resume formatting secrets and contact strategies could give you a leg up on the competition.

Let’s assume that your resume content has already been expertly crafted to put you ahead of the pack. The information is up to date, features impressive recent accomplishments, and has been customized to make it relevant to the position for which you’re applying. What are some extra ways you can give your resume a boost to the top of the stack when you are competing with hundreds of job applicants?

Leverage These Formatting Secrets

There’s a science to making your resume perfect for on-screen viewing and ensuring that it captures a recruiter’s attention. When you email a resume or submit it via uploading to a job board or employer’s application platform, consider switching to a sans-serif font such as Arial or Calibri. These are more “screen friendly” than printed text fonts like Times New Roman and Cambria.  Yes, recruiters may end up printing out your resume at some point (if their company doesn’t have a paperless policy). But, that first impression will still be made on screen where maximum readability is vital.

According to research conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, most people scan a computer screen in an F shaped pattern. They glance across the first one or two paragraphs of text and then down the left side of the screen from top to bottom. Your resume should be formatted to put the most critical, relevant information in the summary section at the very top. Additional important information should be in bullet form along the left margin midway down the page. This ensures that even a recruiter who is fatigued from being on the computer all day will absorb the highlights of your resume.

Get Inside Information

Technical tricks like those listed above will only take you so far. The recruiters and other hiring decision makers who hold the keys to some of the best jobs are notoriously difficult to identify and reach in person. Most job candidates give up and simply send any correspondence to “Recruiter” or “HR Manager”.

Some job seekers will try sending resumes to the “Director” of a department that has an open position for which they want to apply. These generically addressed resumes will usually be funneled directly into the run-of-the mill resume review process without being read first by the intended recipient. Forget being able to get a busy recruiter on the phone to talk about your resume by dialing in through the switchboard. It’s just not going to happen.

If you want to get past the “gate keepers” and contact company recruiters directly to promote your resume, you need help. Collaborating with a recruiting firm
that already has the industry connections to put you in direct contact with hiring managers is one tried and true approach. Once your resume is in the right hands, you can take the appropriate follow up steps to make sure it stays at the forefront of the recruiter’s mind and on top of the pile.

Jerome Young is the founder of www.AttractJobsNOW.com, a recruiting and job search consulting firm that has achieved over 100 job search success stories in the last year.

By watching the video, you will learn the process employers use to find candidates, how to STAND OUT despite immense competition, how to create resumes and cover letters that get job interviews, how to customize your resume for each job, how to turn your network into job opportunities, how to use LinkedIn to get job interviews, where your resume should be posted and much more.  In this comprehensive video you will receive all the tools you need to get job opportunities FAST! Many viewers have received job interviews in less than a week and job offers in less than a month.  See a preview of the video at http://attractjobsnow.mindbites.com/ .

I am a recession layoff survivor and FORBES Career Expert.  Before creating the Attract Jobs NOW strategy and getting over 10 job interviews and multiple job offers in less than 30 days, I  conducted extensive research on the job market including interviewing recruiters, hiring managers and successful job seekers to determine the most effective job search strategy which I share in this video.  In just one year, we have used the strategy in this video to help over 100 job seekers win new jobs quickly despite the recession.  Understanding that premium resume writing services are not financial feasible for many unemployed professionals with depleted savings, we have created an affordable video sharing the secrets to job search success so you can help yourself to a new job. 

Please view recommendations from newly employed clients who have used this strategy on my LinkedIn profile at www.linkedin.com/in/jeromeyoung/ and be sure to watch the Attract Jobs NOW video http://attractjobsnow.mindbites.com/ .  You will not be disappointed!

Today’s success story features Charmaine Fuller.  With over 10 years of progressive experience in IT Project Management and System Administration, Charmaine was affected by the recession and found herself hunting for her next job opportunity.  After searching for months, Charmaine turned to Attract Jobs NOW for a new professional marketing and job search strategy which included a makeover of her resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profile.  Additionally, she took advantage of the customized recruiter contact list, which enabled her to have direct contact with decision makers.  Charmaine is now employed as a Project Manager in the Technology division of JP Morgan.  Below, Charmaine answers a few questions about her experience and results with www.AttractJobsNOW.com.  

1. How did you hear about www.AttractJobNOW.com?

I noticed that a fellow HOFSTRA alumnus recommended the company on her LinkedIn profile and I decided to check out the website. While reading some of the client testimonials on the website, I noticed that another friend of mine had left a testimonial about the benefits of the resume service.  After seeing that 2 of my contacts were happy with the company’s services, I was inspired to contact the company.

2. How long were you looking for employment before contacting www.AttractJobsNOW.com?

 I was looking for employment for ten months before I contacted the company. During the 10 month period I worked with several recruiters but they were unable to help me secure interviews for jobs I was well qualified to perform based on my skills and experience. 

3. After receiving the company’s services, how long did it take before you received your first interview?

 I received my first interview just three weeks after I received my job search documents and during the first week I was applying to jobs.  I was very happy to start receiving interviews just two weeks after applying which was great after waiting 10 months. 

4. What did employers say about your resume and cover letter?

Employers were very impressed with my job search documents.  The recruiter at JP Morgan where I currently work said “This is an excellent resume and I really like the format. It’s one of the best formats I have seen in a long time.”  It was great to hear that my skills and experience were finally shining through on my resume.   

5. What did you like most about your experience with www.AttractJobsNOW.com?

The fact that they took the time to understand my skills, experience and career goals and created unique, customized job search documents is what I appreciated most.  The documents really helped me stand out in a very competitive job market and were instrumental in helping me obtain my current position.

7. What would you say to someone considering the services of www.AttractJobsNOW.com?

Attract Jobs NOW is a superb professional organization.  I encourage job seekers to sign up and give the staff as much detail about their past employment and career goals as possible. This will give the staff the necessary information to build an effective resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profile to ensure they will receive job opportunities quickly.

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Are you the next job search success story?  Have a free resume consultation today… http://www.attractjobsnow.com/upload-your-resume1   

Attract Jobs NOW clients include job seekers from a variety of fields including marketing, finance, IT, engineering and many others as well as fortune 500 corporations looking to recruit top talent.  Most professionals find it difficult to effectively evaluate their own skills and experience, choose and implement the correct resume format and sell themselves on a resume.  When you think about the necessary knowledge of the job market, writing skills, attention to detail, time and effort it takes to create a well written resume, it’s easy to see why so many people are outsourcing the resume writing process to www.AttractJobsNOW.com.       

When asked why the company has been so successful in its first year, Jerome’s answer was “It’s the research and the passion!  We have conducted extensive research on the job market and the process employers use to find and choose qualified candidates.  The insight from this research enabled me to create the Attract Jobs NOW strategy, which has a 95% success rate in terms of helping professionals get job interviews and job offers fast.  From the employer’s standpoint our knowledge of the job market and extensive network of active and passive job candidates allows us to fill the most difficult requisitions in record time.  Helping our clients accomplish their goals in not just a job for us, it’s our passion and we do everything in our power to provide exceptional results.” 

To celebrate the company’s 1 Year Anniversary and over 100 success stories, www.AttractJobsNOW.com is offering $100 off most of their job search services and giving free resume consultations to job seekers.  They will also be featuring successful clients in a blog series titled “Job Search Success with Attract Jobs NOW.” 

During a time when jobs are hard to find and even harder to obtain, one company is helping job seekers beat the odds and Attract Jobs NOW!  

Are you the next job search success story?  Upload your resume at  http://www.attractjobsnow.com/upload-your-resume1  

You have made it through a first round of interviews, and you get a call from the employer asking you to come in for a second round. You think, “I guess this is good news, but I already spoke with five people and thought it went well enough to get an offer. What more can they want to know?”

Being asked to come in for a second round of interviews is definitely good news, and there are a number of reasons employers make the request. They may need you to speak with their managers for final approval before they make an offer. They may want you to speak with other members of the team to get a sense of whether you will work well with them. Or it may be down to just several candidates, and they’re trying to decide which of you will be the best fit for the job. Whatever the reason may be, at http://www.attractjobsnow.com/, we ensure that our clients are prepared to “close the deal” by implementing our proven closing strategy. This strategy has worked for more than 100 clients in the past year, and it will work for you if you use it. Before your second interview you want to:

Review your first round of interviews. Some of the points you made during your first-round interviews must have encouraged the employer to invite you in for the second round. Your first job in preparing now is to analyze the points you made about your skills and experience during the first round and identify as best you can what your interviewers found impressive, as well as what they found questionable. The foundation of your strategy for attacking the second round with confidence will be giving them more of what they like and providing stronger answers for any questions you might have struggled with.

Know your interviewers. Before the interviews you will most likely be e-mailed a schedule that identifies who you’ll be talking to. Conduct some research on each of your interviewers, so you know who they are. You want to know how long they have been with the company, what titles they have held, what companies they worked for previously and what schools they attended. If you have anything in common with one of them, you can mention it to break the ice. People are always impressed when you’ve taken the time to research their background. At http://www.attractjobsnow.com/, we provide this information for our clients.

Have a 60-day plan: You most likely established during your first-round interviews that you have the basic skills to do the job. During the second round you want to establish that you’re the best candidate. One of the most effective ways to do this is by providing the employer with a 60-day plan. You’ll want to keep it simple by explaining how you will get up to speed quickly and provide results for the company within two months. If it comes down to you vs. a couple of other strong candidates, the employer will have a hard time not making you an offer if you’ve shown them you have a plan for providing results fast.

As the second round of interviews moves to a close, you want to close the deal by asking for an offer. This needs to be done tactfully and with confidence. We coach our clients on the exact words to say to ensure that they leave the second round of interviews with an oral commitment from the employer.

In short, if you’re fortunate enough to get to that second round of interviews, be sure that you’re prepared to impress and close the deal.

Jerome Young is the founder of www.AttractJobsNOW.com, a job search consulting firm that has achieved over 100 job search success stories in less than one 1 year and offers free resume consultations.

How does your resume compare to other professionals in your industry?  Why aren’t you getting interviews for jobs you’re qualified for?  Is your resume even being read by recruiters?  These are all questions that need to be answered so you can get job interviews and win a new job as quickly as possible.   

Today’s job market is truly a competition.  With so few jobs and so many candidates, every opportunity you miss because your resume was not good enough is compounded by the fact that a similar opportunity may not be available.  When you apply for a job, it’s not just about being good but being better than the hundreds of other candidates who want the same position.  During the job search process your resume often “STANDS ALONE” as a representation of your skills, experience and personality.  It needs to attract the attention of employers and motivate them to contact you for interviews. 

If you have attempted to write your own resume, you know how hard it can be to evaluate and write a compelling story about your own skills and experience, not to mention that you have not written a resume since you applied for your last job…years ago.  Is your format up to date and appropriate for your industry? Are you using the right keywords to be found in resume databases?  Does your resume capture an employer’s attention in 15 seconds or less?    

The resume writers at www.AttractJobsNOW.com view hundreds of resumes each week.  We know the keywords that are being used in your industry to screen candidates, the formats that have worked for our clients in your field and how to transform your experience and skills into a progressive, compelling story that presents you as an expert to employers and attracts interviews.      

With well over 100 job search success stories in just 1 year, we are celebrating our upcoming 1 year anniversary by offering free resume consultations to job seekers.  Upload your resume today at http://www.attractjobsnow.com/upload-your-resume1 and get the information you need to get the job you want.

Jerome Young is the founder of www.AttractJobsNOW.com, a job search consulting firm that provides free resume consultations.  

During your job search you will review hundreds of job postings. Some will be very well written and provide quality information, while others will tell you little about the employer’s needs. The majority of them have a similar format and characteristics, and they provide insight into what the employer wants–if you know what to look for.

As the founder of AttractJobsNOW.com, I have conducted extensive research on the job market and the recruiting process employers use to find and choose candidates to fill open requisitions. In the process I’ve learned a lot about what you can divine from a simple job posting.

Postings can be written by a hiring manager or a recruiter, but it’s usually the recruiter who receives and screens the applications. With this in mind you should be sure that your résumé will make a recruiter feel confident that you are qualified. By making the most of the insight you can glean from the following three sections of a typical job posting, you can better position yourself to impress recruiters and get interviews:

The job title: Every job posting includes a job title. It is often what first piques your interest in the posting, and it’s the first thing the hiring manager thought of when he or she decided to create the position. Most job seekers overlook the intelligence the job title provides and suffer for it. The job title gives you the most likely keywords that will be used to find qualified candidates for the job, and because of that you can use it to your advantage.

At AttractJobsNOW.com we use the job title as our guide in creating effective customized résumés by ensuring that each candidate’s summary statement and areas of expertise are in line with the job title. We ensure that the words in the job title appear prominently throughout the résumé, so that our clients will appear at the top of candidate searches. As a result, more than 95% of our candidates succeed in getting job interviews at their companies of interest.

Responsibilities: The responsibilities section describes what will be expected of the employee in the position. You’ll often find that there are five to 10 bullet points in this section, but in our research with recruiters and hiring managers we’ve found that the first three responsibilities are the most important. Job postings are usually based on a primary business need to which additional responsibilities are added to create a full-time position. Your résumé should focus on your experience, results and accomplishments in the tasks outlined in the first three bullets in the responsibilities section. Also you’ll find keywords in those first three bullets that recruiters will use in searching for qualified candidates.

Qualifications: The qualifications section provides insight into the experience, skills and education the hiring manager has in mind for the person they feel will be capable of excelling in the role. As in the responsibilities section, the first three qualifications are usually the most important. If you meet those top three qualifications, you should directly say so in the summary section at the top of your résumé, to instantly inform the hirer that you’re qualified and to persuade them to read the rest of your résumé. If you don’t meet the top three qualifications but have others strengths that qualify you to excel, definitely mention them in your summary section.

Taking the time to analyze job postings and customize your résumé based on their job titles, responsibilities and qualifications is often the difference between receiving interviews and being screened out of the recruiting process.

Jerome Young is the founder and president of AttractJobsNOW.com, a job search and recruiting consulting firm.