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Leni Miller EASearch Blog - The Value of Executive Support Wisdom

                                                  Leni Miller, Founder & President EASearch

Job Hunting in Tight Market

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Tips for effective job hunting in a tight job market Proactive and creative focus

How to Access More Creativity in Your Job and Your Life

Posted by: Leni Miller Posted Date: 09/14/2011

Would you like to learn how to access more creativity in your job and in your life?

Creativity is a critical ingredient for success in the changing workplace!

Come visit a Sausalito Houseboat and learn the secrets to increase your creativity from a great local artist and good friend of mine!

Threshold Workshops are in their 11th year helping people become more creative. The workshops develop abstract thinking and explore the relationship between authenticity and creativity.

Participants in a Threshold Workshop
• Use a variety of art materials to paint & collage
• Write poetry & prose through guided exercises
• Learn to make abstract thinking a conscious process
• Learn tools to reclaim the conceptual mind
• Break free of left-brained linearity
• Expand their relationships to creativity
• Discover their blocks to creativity and let them go
• Build confidence & enthusiasm in their artistry
• And have a lot of fun doing it

More about the workshops 
• Held at a Sausalito studio: 13 Issaquah Dock, Gate 6 Rd
• 5 hours on one Saturday and... All materials provided
• No artistic skills required

Additionally, business groups can sign up, find solutions to real-time problems, facilitate better communications, and improve group effectiveness

Jim Woessner, Threshold Facilitator, is a former engineer and corporate executive who became a fulltime artist, poet, and teacher. He has an MFA from Bennington College; and his paintings have appeared in numerous Bay Area shows and galleries, including the Sausalito Art Festival. He is also founder of the Artists of Issaquah, a Bay Area community association of waterfront artists whose mission is to help people discover themselves as artists.

Check out Jim's art website at JDW Artworks.
CALL JIM WOESSNER AT 415-342-2399 or email Jim.

Looking for jobs in all the wrong places?

Posted by: Leni Miller Posted Date: 08/26/2011

Question:

How is responding to an ad on line like buying a lottery ticket?

Answer!

You have just as good chance of winning if you buy it/post it as if you don’t!

I got a call this morning from an employed Executive Assistant who had read my blog comment that our company had received hundreds of resumes after posting an ad online.

“Is it true??” she asked with a horrified tone of voice. “I can’t imagine that many people responding to one ad!”

“No”, I said, “There were actually well over 700 resumes that have since come in from that one posting as we placed it on several sites!”

Anyone who is in the business of recruiting knows that placing any kind of ad on line is a little like putting you in direct line of a working fire hose. There is about a five minute lag before the hundreds of resumes begin to arrive. We read the first hundred or two, but then…it’s just too many... For those of us that genuinely care about people, it is painful to not be able to respond personally to each inquiry. 
 
Anyone who has responded to ads online knows that since about January of 09, it is rare to get a response from an online application... (My friend Terry Pearce, http://www.terrypearce.com placed an ad on Craig’s List and personally responded to every one! Kudos to Terry!) 
 
Good News! There are great companies who are hiring! 
 
Would you like to know the Steps to finding a job in a great company?

Read on!

There are things to know and steps to take.

What is to know?

  1. There are great companies who are hiring people
  2. Much of what many people used to do to find jobs, no longer works.
  3. Accept the fact that recruiters are not likely to “find” you a job
  4. There are steps you can take that, even in this tight market, will lead you to a great company and eventually, a great job!
  5. Place the quality of the company as more of a priority than the type of job or the salary. It's more productive to not look for the "perfect" salary, "perfect" location, "perfect" job and "perfect" company ...all in one.

What is to do?

  1. If possible, take on the project of hunting for work as a proactive, full-time job
    • If you can’t spend full-time on it, be proactive in the time you have 
    • Creativity, innovation, out of the box thinking rule!
  2. Give up watching any news that discusses high unemployment statistics
  3. Make a list of all of the companies for which you would love to work
    a. Create a Google Search Engine for all the company names and stay abreast of activity at each of the companies.
  4. Be clear about what skills, experience and focus you would ideally utilize in your next job
  5. Carefully Identify your personal and professional network (use social networking here. Linked In and Face book are some of the more powerful networking tools!)
    • Reach out to each person in your network with a personal phone call first, telling them what kind of company appeals to you and what is your experience and skill set that you most want to use in your next job. Ask if you can forward a list of your target companies to see if they have any contacts in those companies. Ask if you may forward your resume and a cover email so that they can forward to anyone in their network who may be relevant
    • Make the effort to leave each phone call with two additional names to add to your network.
    • Follow up with an email that is easy to forward with a bulleted list of your target companies, your objective and related experience and skills, and resume attached as a Word Doc. Include lots of white space. Less is more.
  6. Before you respond to an on line ad, ask your network if anyone knows anyone at the company. If they do, ask for an introduction
  7. Subscribe on business journals so you can be advised as to what companies are hiring.
  8. Don’t wait to see job listings before you approach companies for work; every company has openings before it lists them.
  9. Search for the "right" company first, and the "right" job second and the "right" salary third. If you get it all, congratulations!
  10. Stay proactive, innovative, creative and positive as much as possible every single day!
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    Leni Miller, President • EASearch, LLC • Sausalito, CA •415-331-0269