With all of the new ways people are looking for jobs (online job boards, social networking sites, etc.), many people forget that job fairs are just as popular as ever in today’s employment market.

Job fairs normally offer employment opportunities at companies in your local community. They are full of small companies and large corporations looking to recruit new candidates. Thinking about relocating to a new area? Larger corporations may also be willing to discuss opportunities at other locations, as well.

Job seekers are just as likely to be able to secure an interview at a job fair as they are posting their resume online. Better yet, some job fairs offer on-site interviews during the job fair. A good candidate is a prepared candidate. Research in advance which companies are at the job fair and decide which ones you need to spend time with. Have plenty of copies of your resume with you and dress in professional attire. If you have business cards, pass those out as well. Networking is key in any job search!

The next time you see a job fair advertised in your area, take the time to attend. Being active in your job search does not mean just sitting by your computer or phone waiting for someone to reach out to you. Check your local news stations, newspapers, and professional organizations to find job fairs in your area. You never know where your next employment opportunity may come from.

The electronic age has revolutionized the way job seekers and employers meet. Online services take the volume of resume traffic to levels unimagined only a few years ago. With services to job seekers expanding continually, it’s important to understand the different options available to increase exposure of your resume to potential employers and recruiters. Two types are resume posting and resume distribution.

Resume Posting. This is a service where job seekers post their resumes to a job board for employers and recruiters to find. This is a passive approach in that the employer or recruiter must find you within the resume database. They usually find you by calling up resumes via key words. The chances of their finding you depend greatly on your including all the appropriate key words in your resume.

This service is normally free to job seekers, and used only by those employers and recruiters who have paid a substantial fee to access the resumes. In other words, when you post your resume to an online resume posting service, not every employer or recruiter will find you.

Resume Distribution. This is actually opposite of a posting service. With a resume distribution, the job seeker has access to a select database of well-qualified employers and/or recruiters to email his/her resume to. This service does cost the job seeker a fee. The amount will vary depending on the service you use.

There are several advantages of a distribution service. The advantages include not having to wait to be found, you decide who receives your resume and you are in control of who actually gets your resume.

Make sure the distribution service allows you to target the employers who receive your resume. At a minimum, you should be able to query the employer/recruiter database by industry, job function and geographic region. If the service offers no targeting capabilities, your resume may be sent out indiscriminately to employers and recruiters who do not match your employment criteria.

For optimum resume distribution or posting effectiveness you’ll want to make sure your resume is updated. If you are not currently getting the response rate from your resume that you’d like, using a resume distribution service will only be marginally helpful, because you will still be distributing a resume that is not working for you.

Both services, resume posting and resume distribution, are valuable strategies for your job search. Don’t be turned off by the fact that one is free and the other you must pay for. The money spent on a good quality resume distribution will repay you over and over again with valuable job leads and introductions to influential recruiters. After all, aren’t you worth it?

With all the new technology available on the Internet today, there is absolutely no reason anyone should simply stop once a resume has been completed and sent. There is a wide world of other venues just waiting for you to use them to market your personal brand. Blogging is only part of it.

Some may think blogging and job searches are two different things. They are, but they aren’t. There has never been a better time to be able to talk to people, to get the word out about you and your skills than blogging.

Build a blog site that highlights your job skills and your previous jobs. Talk about something every day. Add links to your resume and use the social networks to retweet or repost your site.

There are numerous job boards for you to use to post your resume, whether it’s an executive resume, professional or entry level. And there are people who will retweet your blog post so others can see it. Before long, you have reached thousands of people. Before, you would have sent it to only a few. So, what’s smarter?

Twitter has a very easy way to help individuals with their blog posts and to be able to integrate both together. Facebook does as well, and LinkedIn too.

Now, you can increase your visibility and get more options available to you during your job search. Take a chance and see how much fun it is and how much it will help at the same time.

Before you send your next resume out, give blogging and social media sites a try. You just may have more opportunities than you originally thought.

If you have been out of work for a while, then you know just how stressful a job search can be. It seems as if you apply over and over for weeks on end and still not an interview in site.

One thing to remember, it is very stressful, but at the same time make sure you are doing everything you can for it to be different.

If what you are presently doing is simply not working, change it up. Sit down and think about what you could do differently. Perhaps it’s searching for jobs in a different field altogether. Or maybe for some, you are simply not applying to enough jobs in a week’s time. I know that some will not understand this but there are those who only apply to one job a week. At that rate, in these economic times, you will never find a job.

Take a look at your resume. If you are applying for an executive position, does your resume reflect that? If your resume is more generic, then you will want to spice your resume up. In other words, your resume must reflect your jobs skills. If not, hiring managers will not look twice at a generic resume for an executive position. There are a number of ways to transform a regular resume into a professional or executive resume. If necessary, look at a few resume samples for some ideas.

So, sit down and think about what you need to change. There is no telling how long the job market will stay down and you just may not have the time to wait it out.

You have applied to the most important job of your executive career. This is the job you have been working towards for years. You have done everything right.

Then, you find out you are passed over because a reference on your shiny new executive resume came back in a bad light. What? How could that be!

You forgot all about the confrontation you had a few years back with a supervisor that you just could not get along with. Words were exchanged and you quit abruptly. At the time, you were not worried about it as you got a better job within a week.

Now, it’s come back to haunt you. Hindsight is golden, so the saying goes. If we could see into the future at the time we make mistakes, we wouldn’t make those mistakes, right? Right. But we can’t, so we burn bridges that we shouldn’t.

It’s very important not to burn bridges in any job, but especially if you are climbing the ladder to an executive position. It will return to haunt you because no employer wants someone who is hotheaded and cannot control themselves.

Be sure your executive resume is not going to have burnt bridges popping out when you least expect it. If the position has to be on your resume, then be sure to speak with the company that you had the conflict with and make sure they are willing to give you a good reference. Many times they will, as long as you are taking the right steps to work through it.

Additionally, speaking with a resume writing service and getting counseling from them on how to proceed will go a long way in helping with your executive resume and you during the interview process.

With the advent of the internet, emails, texting and online applications, some consider the thank you note after an interview to be over. Those of you who know me, or are used to my ranting about this, know how I feel.

Not by a long shot it’s not. It is never and will never be proper etiquette to ignore a simple thank you.

By not showing proper etiquette and respect for the employer who is interviewing you, it is telling that person that you really just aren’t concerned with trivialities. This sends the wrong message to a prospective employer, who may very well put your resume to the side simply because you didn’t seem to be that interested if you couldn’t even send a thank you.

In today’s world, it is proper to send a thank you email. You don’t have to mail it and you certainly don’t want to text it. Texting can cause way too many spelling errors. It is also proper to send that email very soon after the interview, while it is still fresh in your mind.

Some things to include in the email is the thank you, followed by what you found interesting about the company and how your particular skills would be an asset to that company. You do not want to speak in a laid back fashion as if you are talking to someone on Facebook. That is totally unprofessional.

We may be living in a new technological world but old world manners are still more important even in the employment field. Manners and simple respect toward another will return to you in the same fashion. Think about if you were the hiring manager and you didn’t say thank you for the interview, you just might be a little put off by that.

As your mother probably used to say to you, “mind your manners,” and send those thank you emails so that you will be one step ahead toward landing that job.

I’m sure most people remember the song “Working 9 to 5″ by Dolly Parton (that song is in your head now, isn’t it?). Not too long ago, that was the perfect job position, to work nine to five with weekends off. Everyone wanted to work those hours. But today, can you even find many positions like that? Are work environments changing? How, and is it for the better?

With the advancing use of the internet, more jobs are offering telecommuting and work from home positions. Some of the older generation does not understand this concept because they can’t walk by and see an employee at work. They feel that it will hurt business by working from home. In fact, studies show that the opposite is true. More work is actually getting accomplished and at all hours of the night and day. The eight hour shift is not the norm any longer.

The companies who are embracing new technology are seeing more loyalty out of their employees. There is less absenteeism as people can schedule their day to have time with family and still work. There is not a log of turnover in employees who can telecommute or have the freedom at a workplace to stay in contact with family while at work.

In a word, yes. Work environments are changing, for the better for everyone involved. If you are looking for work, now would be a good time to overhaul your resume to reflect the flexibility and work ethic that you can bring to the table. Even if it doesn’t mean telecommuting, but flexibility in a managerial position that you would do what it takes to keep employees happy and willing to work.

Expert resume writers will help you fine tune your executive resume so that you will be reflected in a more powerful light for the new workplaces.

 

With many college graduates unable to find full time employment and a new crop ready to come up, many of them are starting to wonder where they will find a job. It wasn’t long ago that a college degree all but guaranteed you a stable career and higher earning potential. Now, many are not seeing the same returns they once did. So is a college degree worth it in today’s economic terms?

How do you quantify who earns more?

One area to look at is recent graduates from the past 5 years when the Great Recession began. The data shows that of those people who graduated college – nearly 90% were employed – when compared to people who did not graduate college who were employed at 64%. These figures do not show whether these graduates were employed in a field related to their degree or not. But, another telling fact is that college graduates are earning almost double that of people without college degrees. This advantage will likely stick with them throughout their working careers.

Another Option

Another way that we assess the value of receiving a college degree is to compare the rate of return from investing in a college degree versus using the same amount of money for investment opportunities. College degrees are obviously expensive. Tuition, books and housing all add up to well over $100,000 for a four year degree. This is only average as some colleges cost considerable more.

So let’s say you have a recent high school graduate who has $100,000 to invest in their future. Is college the right option or would you use that money for something else? Would investments such as stocks and bonds outweigh the lifetime earnings that a college degree would bring?

The correct answer is, technically speaking, investing in a college degree. A college degree has a rate of return of 15% a year for $100,000 invested. Compare this with the average returns on the stock market  at 6.5%, along with the rate of corporate bonds at 3% and other stable investments and you’re not even close.

Higher Rates of Return

A better rate of return translates into higher lifetime earnings as well. Over their lifetime, the average diploma holder will earn over $550,000 more than the average person with a high school diploma. So the incentive to receive a college education is high.

Some high school students would do well to invest in technical or trade schools that offer specialized skills which will keep them employed throughout any recession. There are opportunities out there for everyone and remember – many people who never graduated college have become successful in different fields. Think of the Bill Gates’, the Paul Allen’s and the Larry Ellison’s of the world. Not having a college degree never stopped them and it should not deter anyone from achieving their dreams.

 

Some states have better economies than others, some have not seen the tremendous job loss and mass exodus that states like California have seen–or my home state of Michigan at 10.5% as of June 2011– and other states have a robust economy with opportunity for job growth. With unemployment averaging over 9.0%, finding the right job can be frustrating and time consuming, but one thing you might consider is looking out of state for employment options. You could find a job that suits your skill set, while allowing you or your family to branch out into a new area.

Yes, it can be scary to pick up and move to a completely new place, but you’ll meet new people and have a new experience that changes your life in a positive way. So how do you know if you should move out of state for employment? Well there are a lot of different things to think about before you decide to move. Take your time when considering the move and try to follow some of the following ideas.

Before you decide exactly where you’re going to move send out some resumes to different business in that area. Pick at least 5 different locales that would suit your job needs and start sending out resumes to them. If you have a degree that’s more popular in one area, you might consider moving to that area to take advantage of higher job growth. If you have a degree in engineering and can not find anything but a servers position, then look at what areas around the country have a high need for engineers. There is a lot of opportunity out there, but you may need to look high and low for it.

Consider contacting a headhunter. If you’re serious about finding employment in a new area, then find a headhunter who knows the city and can find you a position that would match your work experience. A temp agency might be one option but you want to find full time employment and most of these only offer contract work. They can be a good stop-gap option for you while you’re getting your feet wet in the new town, but a lot of people are wary of moving without full time employment.

How do you move when you have a family? One option is to pack early and get all that out of the way. You might want to have your spouse or significant other stay with the children before your start your new job. You should go and get settled before moving the family to you. This allows them to step into their new situation with the house in order and avoids any culture shocks. Make sure you do a lot of research on your new location – read the newspaper online, listen to local radio shows online or just Google your new city. There’s so much information to be found online and you should take advantage of that.

It can be tough to find a job even when the economy is thriving, but during down times it seems almost impossible to find a position that fits. Recessions take their toll on just about every job sector. But, that doesn’t mean you have to be discouraged by the lull in the market. Now is a great time to show your resiliency, improve your skill-set and prove how qualified you are. So how do you begin your job search?

Prepare Yourself

Education is key. It’s a perfect time to take additional courses or go for accreditation in your field. Subscribe to your industries newsletter, find out about upcoming projects, look at what firms are hiring, which market segments are experiencing growth, so that you can target your job search appropriately. Connect yourself. Join online groups like Facebook, LinkedIn or Fastpitch.com. Now is the time to make the internet work for you, make yourself the authority in your field online and you will see the job market expand. It’s imperative to keep up with the changing landscape, so do what you can to stay abreast of trends.

Reach Out and Connect

Your network is the most valuable asset you have, but it’s only strong when you utilize it. Make a list of business associates, friends, owners, coworkers and anyone else that you’ve ever known or done business with. Get yourself out there and let these people know that you are available and looking for work. You may just be the missing piece that their company has been looking for. Until you have one, networking should be your full-time job. Contact friends, family, old school roommates, vendors or anyone else that might allow you to find a job.

Time to be Flexible

Flexibility will help you find a job no matter the economy. However, in a down market, you have to be open to trying different things. Maybe your full-time job will get its start through a small contract position. Some firms are reluctant to hire a full-time position due to fears of failing financially – so getting a contract position could give you an in that you need. Just get your foot in the door and be open to positions that are not related to your work experience.

Always be Prepared

Remember, everywhere you go, no matter if it’s dinner with friends, a social gathering or networking event – it could lead to job opportunities. Finding a job is your job now, so you have to do everything in your power to find a job. There are so many opportunities to work with people who will help you find a job. Who knows, maybe the next person you strike up a conversation with will know of an open position. You don’t know, so you should always be prepared to showcase what you can do.

Try to leave a lasting impression with the people you meet. Many people have found a job just by talking to people they meet at parties or through friends. Keep those eyes open.