6 Job search tips that are so basic people forget them

As companies move to remote work to fight the coronavirus pandemic and an increasing number of workers are being laid off or furloughed, you might be wondering if you should continue to send out resumes or just assume that no one is hiring for the foreseeable future. It’s true that economists are predicting a recession, but career experts say it’s best to keep networking and applying, provided you change your approach a bit to acknowledge these are uncertain times. “Companies might not be hiring today, because they’re trying to figure out how to do business virtually, but they will be hiring,” says Danielle Beauparlant Moser, managing director and executive coach with bltCareers in Asheville, NC “The people who continue to relationship-build and share their ideas will be in a better position when companies start hiring.” Most HR departments and managers are just getting everyone up to speed on the logistics and daily routines of a fully remote workforce so it might be difficult to reach people in the first few weeks of the transition, says Kathleen Landers, executive director of SEQUENCE Counseling and Consulting Services in Silver Spring, MD. Plus, “people have a lot of concerns—they might have elderly parents, relatives in other countries, young children to take care of, even their own health issues.” Be prepared for job openings to be put on hold or disappear, even if they’ve been open for a while. That doesn’t mean they won’t open up again in a few months. Landers admits she herself was getting ready to hire someone but decided to put that on hold for a few weeks. “If I can tell my business will maintain the same level of income and consumers will still want the product, then I will move ahead,” she says. With all that said, you can still be actively working on your job search. These tips will help you navigate the process during the pandemic and the accompanying economic slowdown. 1.Consider How Urgent Your Search Is If you can afford to put your job search on hold, you may want to wait it out, Landers says, because it could be challenging to get on a hiring manager’s radar right now. “If you’re currently employed, think about how to make your job more palatable,” says Nancy Halpern, founder of Political IQ, a Manhattan-based leadership-consulting firm focused on developing emotional intelligence. “If you’re not employed, don’t think of your next job as the perfect job. It might be short term.” While many industries have and will continue to be hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, others are still hiring. If you’re unemployed and need a stopgap, consider looking there or wherever else you can find an opportunity that makes sense for you—and pays the rent and puts food on the table—in the meantime. 2.Get Comfortable Networking Online Events will be cancelled for a while, so you’ll need to find a new networking strategy. Seek out like-minded professionals online and ask about virtual events, Halpern says. Look for professional groups to join on Facebook and LinkedIn. Both platforms offer a wide range of options with groups for every profession. For instance, if you’re looking for a job in marketing, you could join LinkedIn’s Global Marketing and Communications Professionals group. “Join in the conversation, post and comment, and make yourself visible,” Halpern says. Just be sure to keep the conversation professional by posting relevant articles and chiming in on topics that allow you to demonstrate your expertise. Get ready to ace a virtual informational interview or networking chat by practicing with a friend, says Laura Labovich, CEO of The Career Strategy Group in Bethesda, MD. Have your friend ask questions and give you feedback on your delivery. Make sure you know how to angle the camera so the person you’re meeting with can see your entire face, not just your forehead or your left eye. Once you’ve mastered the technology, invite professional contacts to meet for a virtual coffee. 3.Stay In Touch Maybe you recently had a promising interview and a job offer seemed to be on the horizon, but now the company has moved to remote work and you haven’t heard from the hiring manager. What should you do? Check in with the hiring manager by email, acknowledging that they might be scrambling to help their employees get used to the new setup, Moser says. For instance, your email could say: “I’m looking forward to learning more when it makes sense for your organization.” This conveys that you know this is an extraordinary circumstance and acknowledges that this isn’t easy for people, she says. Make sure you also demonstrate a thoughtful attitude. Rather than asking them to help you, ask if there is anything you can assist them with, Moser says. The idea is to connect with people on a human level, she says. Let’s say you’re contacting someone you’ve networked with in the past. Your email can simply say: “I wanted to reach out to see if there’s anything I can do for you. You’ve been so generous with your time, I want to return the favor if I can.” If you have a specific skill a hiring manager might be able to tap into, mention it. You might say: “Given that I’ve led virtual teams, I might have some ideas to share on how to keep your employees feeling connected when they’re not in the office.” “Networking should be driven by what the company needs and how it matches up with your superpower,” Moser says. “It’s also an opportunity to demonstrate what type of employee you would be.” And find other ways to stay top of mind in addition to email. For instance, connect with the hiring manager on LinkedIn and, if they post a status, comment on it, Labovich says. If the hiring manager posts a company report or press release, make a comment that illustrates you read it and have valuable insight to contribute. Pretend you’re giving them a preview of what you’d add to the team if you worked there.

4.Accept That You Will Never Bore Anyone Into Hiring You Don’t get me wrong—you absolutely must come across as polished, articulate, and professional throughout your job search. However, many people translate this into: Must. Be. Boring. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Realize that few people get hired because they had perfect white space on their cover letters, memorized all of the “correct” interview questions or used incredibly safe, common phraseology (i.e., clichés) throughout their resumes. All of this correctness is going to make you look staged and non-genuine. Instead, give yourself permission to be both polished and endearing. Memorable, likable candidates are almost always the ones who go the distance. 5.If You’re Not on LinkedIn, You Very Nearly Don’t Exist Considering that more than 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn as their primary search tool, this is not an understatement. If you’re a professional, you need to not only be on LinkedIn, you need to be using it to your full advantage. Don’t believe me? Think about it this way: If tomorrow morning, a recruiter logs onto LinkedIn looking for someone in your geography, with expertise in what you do, and you’re not there? Guess who they’re going to find and contact? Yes, that person’s name is “not you.” Pro Tip If you figure out how to harness the power of no other social media tool for job search, figure out LinkedIn. It’s (by far) the best resource we have available today for career and job search networking, for finding people working at companies of interest, and for positioning yourself to be found by a recruiter who has a relevant job opening. 6.Your Thank You Matters I once placed a candidate into an engineering role with a company that manufactures packaging equipment. He was competing head-to-head with another engineer, who had similar talents and wanted the job just as badly. My candidate sent a thoughtful, non-robotic thank you note to each person with whom he’d interviewed, within about two hours of leaving their offices. The other candidate sent nothing. Guess why my candidate got the job offer? Yep, the thoughtful, non-robotic thank you notes. They sealed the deal for him, especially considering the other front-runner sent nothing. Pro Tip Consider crafting, original, genuine thank you notes (one for each interviewer) the moment you get back to a computer, following the interview. The speed with which you send the notes, and the quality, will make an impact. And finally, remember that the interviewer cares much more about what you can do for them than what you want out of the deal. Certainly, they’re going to care a bunch about what you want once you establish your worth. But during the interview, you must demonstrate why you make business sense to hire, period. Now, go forth and show your job search exactly who is the boss. Taken from: https://www.themuse.com/advice/6-job-search-tips-that-are-so-basic-people-forget-them