The Secret Keywords for Your Job Search: Unveiled!

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Have you spent hours searching job boards for position listings?

Do you know what you want but get too many search results when you look for it?

Did you know employers and hiring managers are very sophisticated when they look for candidates, and know just the right key words to use?

Here are a few examples of how recruiters scout candidates 

C++ java -jobs -samples intitle:resume OR inurl:resume AND Cleveland
this is an example of a Google Search for software candidates in Cleveland

("business analyst" OR "systems analyst" or Analyst or BA) and (Retail or POS or "point of sales") and (ecommerce or e-commerce or web or internet) and (inventory or SCM or "supply chain") and ("crystal report*)
this is a search string from a recruiter challenged to find candidates for Business Analyst positions with experience in Crystal Reports. This search string is one that can be used inside job boards.

Today, we're going to help you level the playing field.

I'm working with the recruiting industry insiders who built the products used by 70% of the Fortune 500 to find candidates. We are going to give you a customized string for your job search.

After years of helping companies identify candidates to find jobs, my friends Chris Forman and Tim McKegney founded StartWire, a private social networking platform, to help job seekers find the right jobs.

If you join StartWire by Monday and complete a profile that share your interests--ideal job title, industry sectors of interest and location, Chris and Tim will provide you with your own custom Boolean search string you can use to save time.

Registering on StartWire takes less than five minutes, and you'll get your search string within 48 hours--at the latest. Sound good?

To your success,

Chandlee

(P.S. StartWire will help you find keywords to search for the right job, if you need help finding keywords for your resume, check out this post I wrote on how to find the best keywords through a tag cloud.)

Cross-posted on Secrets of the Job Hunt. Photo by Cayusa.

The Six Reasons You'll Get the Job (Learn 'Em in NYC 10/14)

My friend and former colleague Elisabeth Harney Sanders-Park has just co-written her second book, the 6 Reasons Why You'll Get the Job (Penguin). I am pleased to announce that the NYC Job Seekers Group, the grassroots job search group that I host in Manhattan, will be offering a special four hour workshop with Elisabeth and her co-author, Debra Angel MacDougall, the morning of October 14, 2010.

There is no cost to sign up. For additional details--including hours and location of the event--please sign up for the MeetUp group and RSVP.

Hope to see you there!

On the Job Hunt & The Listening Effect

I am pleased to announce that I've joined Susan Joyce and a host of other career management professionals on Job-Hunt.org.

I'm serving as the New Grads Job Search Expert on Job-Hunt, and will be writing a monthly column for the site. If you haven't checked out Job-Hunt.org before, I encourage you to do so. The site is very easy to navigate and includes comprehensive information to help you throughout your job search process--from getting started with your first job search to how to work with recruiters and deal with a tough career transition.

In my first piece for Job-Hunt, I shared stories from my own first job, work in career management, and lessons learned from rocket scientists as well as the proverbial "water under the bridge."

This month, I focus on the importance of listening. It's not a skill that you find frequently in a position description, but your ability to be a strong active listener can make all the difference in the interview process--and once you get hired.

For the past year, I've been taking classes in storytelling from Narativ. I'm learning how to tell stories that make an audience lean forward. I'm learning strategies to tell what happened instead of how I feel about a situation. The Narativ methodology is helping me to become a better storyteller. But mainly, I am learning how to be a better listener...without listening, you lose impact--in your job, in your ability to work with others, in your ability to communicate.

The process of finding your first job--and positions after that--can be fraught with anxiety, self-doubt, and doubt: Am I really qualified to do this job? Do I have the experience that it takes? All too frequently, you may miss a really obvious skill---one that can make all the difference--and that you already have. The skill I am referring to, of course, is listening.

Several years ago, I watched an Ivy League senior with a 3.98 GPA from a relatively unpopulated state (let's call it Nebraska) participate in the selection rounds for a Rhodes Scholarship interview. He had a long list of organizations he'd been involved in as well as measurable achievements for his extracurricular efforts. But there wasn't a single activity that he was involved in that he didn't hold the top title--President, Captain, Chair. As he told the committee, "I just prefer to be in the leadership role."

He didn't get picked. The committee went with other candidates who had experience in simply serving as a committee member, a participant, a team player.

In the midst of everything, never forget: Employers are looking for great listeners who can follow directions! Often, they will hire you for this singular ability--and then teach you the rest.

That's my two cents on listening. Now I want to hear what you have to say...

Free e-book (Collective Wisdom for Share)

In my spare time, I've been spending time with Narativ, a Manhattan-based organization that helps people tell stories. Not stories as in fibs, but personal storytelling. Narativ teaches the mechanics of storytelling. Take one of their classes, and you'll learn how to nail an interview question, how to tell a story with a detail that makes people remember your name--or the story forever--or simply how to keep your audience awake the next time you talk in public.

I digress. In the last paragraph, I intended to share with you one of Narativ's core beliefs about storytelling: Narativ believes everyone is "hardwired" to tell stories. We all want to tell stories, sometimes we just don't know how to start, how to shape the middle, or how to end. Or we don't know who our audience is.

As a writer who talks a great deal about careers, I'd like to think that I'm a decent storyteller. But I recognize that the stories I tell won't resonate with everyone. That's the beauty of an anthology, right? In reading through multiple stories, there's a better chance you will find the story which resonates with you--and which makes all the difference.

I wrote this post to share with you a new resource that has amazing stories. Penelope Trunk and Rich DiMatteo have conceived of and executed on a great, free e-book, especially made for the millennial job seeker. The e-book is called What I Know About Getting a Job and you can find it through the site Corn on the Job.  

There are 18 job search experts on the list, all of whom have been ranked as one of the Top 25 Digital Influencers in HR by HRExaminers. I am pleased to have gotten to know several of the people on this list: Mark Stelzner wrote the foreword for the Twitter Job Search Guide, Jason Alba contributed, and Peter Clayton is a great guy who runs a wonderful career radio show,Total Picture Radio.

You should download this book. Because in addition to having great advice, everyone who is in this e-book tells great stories about careers, and one of them may be just the thing you need to hear right now.

To Your Success,

Chandlee