Today’s topic is I am stressed, not getting enough interviews. I hear that quite a bit, and people are very frustrated when I present across the world. Job search is a frustrating project.
It is a project. Treat it as a full, if you’re in career transition, unemployed. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world. Job search strategy should be the same. Treat it as a full-time appointment. Like anything, the more you put into it, the more rewards will come your way.
So if you’re just sitting on a couch, maybe job searching one or two hours a day, you’ll get very little. You’re getting few trophies. You won’t get many wins, but you want to get as many interviews as you can. I cannot express how important it is that you put in effort, time, and endure frustration.
Yes, because you are getting interviews, but you only need one interview to get one job. So think of it that way, and the more interviews you have, the closer you are to getting the winning interview when you accept the job offer. There are plenty of jobs out there. So please feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.
I welcome any questions. No question is stupid because so many people don’t know how to job search or manage their careers. I am stressed about not getting enough interviews. There are many reasons. I’m going to cover a few today, but there could be more.
So if this is you and I don’t address your confusion, please put it in the comments, and I will answer that question. There are many jobs; you need to have a succinct, ambitious, aggressive job search strategy, as I said earlier, it’s a project.
So when you are at work, if you are engaged in corporate life or public life, you have a project, and that project is your work assignment. Treat your job search as a work assignment, a job search strategy. Like anything, the more hours you put in, the more rewards will come your way.
For those who have heard me present before, if you are just applying on job boards, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, although the percentage of jobs available varies per country, you probably aren’t executing your job search properly. Job board.
It doesn’t matter where they are, what type of job board, it is only a small percentile of the overall jobs available. In Canada, job boards account for about 8% or less, including print, media, and corporate websites. In the UK, it’s about 23-24%, and in the US, it’s about 18-19%. You can see it’s not a huge chunk, so you need to concentrate on other ways as well.
The more you apply and not get interviews, the more frustrated you will get. I suggest airing your frustration. Take time off from the family, go for a walk, go to the gym, or take your frustration out with your coach or someone who can champion you through that emotional process.
It can be emotional. Sadly, you’re not going to win every time. There’s only a trophy for number one, so think of it that way. Just applying via job boards won’t bring the rewards you thought. Clients think that 80-90% of jobs are on job boards, but that’s not true. Only a small percentile is on job boards. Use job boards in your job search strategy, but don’t rely on them.
The more you churn out resumes, apply, and not receive correspondence back, the more stressed you will get. Being unemployed and not having money coming in adds to that stress. Just applying to jobs doesn’t bring the rewards you thought you deserved. You need a very defined, ambitious, targeted job search campaign.
I bet for everyone watching this presentation, you have brands you want to work for. The bulk of jobs are hidden. If you want to work for a specific company, why not target the person who will be your boss or your boss’s boss? With today’s social media and LinkedIn, it’s easy to uncover people who will be your boss or your boss’s boss.
Just applying by your boss won’t bring rewards. You need a very targeted job search campaign. If you’re just sending resumes out where you only have about 60-70% or even 80% of the skills they’re looking for.
Not only are you wasting your time and raising your frustration, anger, and stress, but you’re also wasting the potential employer’s time. They don’t want to see resumes that are only 50, 60, 70% where you are skilled. They want to see you as close to that hundred percent, about 85 to a hundred percent, where you have all those skills and can check all those marks in the job description.
Make sure you don’t send resumes out willy-nilly. In fact, it’s better to send 10 targeted resumes out than it is a hundred untargeted resumes. Be careful how you send those resumes out, and to whom. You’ll get frustrated if you’re sending out gazillions. Keep it very low numbers, but each one is worthwhile.
Then it brings me to the resume, the CV. One of the ways people assess you is if you can bring the skillset they’re looking for, or close to it, to that particular job. Each job has a different skillset. Please ask questions. I’m more than happy to answer those questions. I am here for you, not just for me. I will answer the questions. If anything’s on your mind or you want to make a comment or vent your frustration, that’s fine. I’m a coach, and I hear this all the time.
Is your resume meeting the job at the other end? But more so, is your resume ATS (Applicant Tracking System) friendly? Does it show your performance? Is it in the 2023 format rather than the 2020 format? If you’re just adding on as you go through various jobs and get promoted or move laterally, that could be a major hindrance. A resume from 2017, 2018, 2019 is outdated. You need to look for the most updated format, which is ATS friendly, performance-driven because you are going to be hired not for your responsibilities but for your performance, generating revenue, saving revenue, eliminating jobs, introducing new systems, and more. Make sure your resume is up to scratch and in the current format.
That is another reason why you aren’t getting interviews because it will fail that scanning machinery. You will never get an interview if it’s an outdated, non-ATS, non-performance-driven resume or CV. So make sure you have your up-to-date resume, and if you want a free, no-obligation resume critique, I’m more than happy to provide that.
I will provide my email. In fact, I’ll put it on the screen right now, and you can email your resume to me. I’m more than happy to give you 30 minutes of my time to go through your resume from top to bottom for a free, no-obligation resume critique. So you can send it to me, mention that you were here on Tuesdays at two, and I will contact you for a convenient time.
Doesn’t matter where you are in the world. I work globally. I’ve got clients in 24 different countries. So is your resume, your CV ATS friendly? Is it the current format? Because if it isn’t, that’s another reason why you aren’t going to get interviews.
A resume doesn’t get you the job. A CV doesn’t get you the job. It gets you the interview. It gets you that foot in the door. If you can’t get that foot in the door, you are going to be in a job search for weeks, months, if not years. So a job search is, and the strategy of job searching is changing all the time.
So get a coach. If you’ve gone through career transition, you’ve gone through outplacement, ask that coach or ask me. I’m more than happy to have a consultation with you to lead you through that particular job search. So is your resume, your CV up to date? Is it the old format or is it the current format?
Make sure you are delivering, you are selling yourself because you are a salesperson, and you are selling yourself to a defined market. So make sure it’s this market, not that market. As I said earlier on, if you fire resumes out in the 85 to a hundred percent range, where you are certain or have all those skills, you’re going to get more traction and less frustration than if you send it out to a wider audience where you haven’t got all the skills.
Plus, you’re wasting their time and your time. Next one is your LinkedIn. If you aren’t on LinkedIn and you are active on LinkedIn and you haven’t got a fully complete LinkedIn profile, you are committing career suicide. You need to be on LinkedIn. You need to have it filled out right, top to bottom.
The more text you put on there, the algorithms from Google and LinkedIn will pick up, and the more people will be searching for you. When people are searching for you, the more you will be found. But don’t be passive. Be active. Share, comment and build your own content on LinkedIn. So that could be another reason why you are not getting too much traction.
If you’ve got a fully complete LinkedIn profile, even when you are gainfully employed, that raises your search engine optimization within LinkedIn. And that means when an executive recruiter is looking for talent, your profile will come out higher, so you may be happy in a job, but there may be a better job.
More pay, fewer hours, different location, more challenges. You might like to at least listen to the executive recruiter who’s talking about that job. So is your LinkedIn up to date? Is it fully complete? And are you active on LinkedIn? Next one, are you networking? Networking is going to bring you huge value.
Don’t just get out networking when you are in career transition, when you’re gainfully employed, you also need to be getting out networking, but not as much as when you are unemployed. So networking is going to bring you huge value, but don’t network aimlessly, network within a defined, targeted audience.
You don’t want to network with thousands of people; you want to network with tens or twenties or 30 people. If you want to go and work for IBM or ABC company or DR company, find the person who will be your boss or your boss’s boss. Networking is going to bring you massive value.
Here in Canada where I am, 80% of the jobs are hidden. Where are they going to come from generating leads, whether those leads come from the bulk of it is going to be networking, so that figure slides down per country, but it’s still the bulk of the jobs are hidden. So networking, networking, networking.
And there are videos on my YouTube channel talking about how to network, how to plan your networking, and then how to activate that network. You need to network, network, network. So three things. If your resume, your CV is not ATS friendly, even 2019, or you’ve added to it over the years. You don’t have the buzzwords, it’s not scannable.
Is your LinkedIn profile fully complete? Are you active on it and are you networking? Those three things could be adding to your stress, could be extending your job search for a tremendous amount of time. Today’s economy, today’s recruitment, doesn’t matter what function, what sector, what industry, what level is the best I have ever seen.
It’s a fantastic recruitment time, so no excuses for you not to expedite your job search. Are you connected with executive recruiters? Now, depending on your level, there’s different types of recruiters, but you need to have, if you are an executive level senior manager and above, you need to start building those relationships with executive recruiters.
But the trick is you also need to retain those relationships because once you’ve built a relationship, you need to keep that dialogue going. Even when you are in career, even when you are gainfully employed and having a great time, keep those communication channels open. So executive recruiters here in Canada at the executive level, they count for about 12 to 13%.
So are you connected with executive recruiters? If not, you need to embark on a connection exercise to communicate with executive recruiters. It’s a very emotional time. It can be very tempting to show your emotions if you are stressed. If you are frustrated and it goes on prolonged your job search, that means your emotions go down.
Then you can show that. You can show that in your demeanor and your verbiage when you go to an interview. Do not show your frustration in any communication with a potential employer, whether it be just a casual meeting or an informational interview. And of course, the fully proper scheduled interview where you want to be, number one, you don’t want to show your frustrations. You don’t show that you are terminated. You don’t talk about your previous employer negatively. As many videos on my YouTube channel there again, I encourage you to go to my YouTube channel and press the subscribe button where you will see a multitude of different videos talking about interviews, personal branding, the list goes on. So I hope that you’ve got something out of this today. I know I hear this all the time as a coach, as a resume writer, I hear that people are so frustrated. Yes, it can be very frustrating, but you can minimize that frustration by taking on board what I have said today.
Hopefully this has jogged your mind. Anybody got any questions, please ask them. I’m more than happy to answer those questions. Don’t see anybody coming in with any questions. Please feel free. It can raise your tempo, it can raise your temper and your anger, and you don’t want that to come out because that also plays into your personal life.
So I suggest you might have a champion, somebody who’s there or a coach to see you through that. And then you can have that coach to listen to you rant and rave about how frustrated and then ignite your motivation. So, yes, it can be very frustrating. It’s very tempting to be very upset, and I totally understand that.
But if you have a very succinct, very powerful, very targeted job search, and you treat it, if you are in career transition, as a full-time gig, the more opportunities will come your way. You have your up-to-date CV/resume and you have your fully complete LinkedIn and you network, you should be on the road to success.
Don’t apply for jobs where you’re only less than 80% qualified; that’s going to raise your tempo, raise your frustration. So hopefully you’ve got a message today about how to reduce, how to decrease your stress during a job search and getting more interviews because the available interviews out there are vast.
So that wraps it up for me today, Tuesdays at two. If anybody, as I said, wants a free, no obligation, no sales pitch resume critique, I will give you 30 minutes of my time. If you want to email it to the email on the screen right now. And if you want a free, no obligation audit, LinkedIn audit, I’m more than happy to go through your LinkedIn as well from top to bottom.
Now, as I’ve mentioned a couple of times during this Tuesdays at two, I also have a YouTube channel. Please go and subscribe there and press the bell button where you will be notified of any future videos that will be coming down the pipelines. I think somebody’s coming here with a question, which is good.
Hang on just one second here. Oh, okay. So let me put this on the screen.
So Farha has come in and asked me a question on any recommendations for executive recruiters. Farha, I don’t know where you live, but yes, I would suggest you build relationships with executive recruiters. If it’s one of the big executive, the global executive recruiters, they have research assistants, build relationships through that way.
If not, go into, see if you can get a friend or a colleague or somebody else who knows an executive recruiter to introduce you. It is tough for them to communicate with you because they don’t work for you, they work for the client at the other end. But yes, embrace executive recruiters, but as I said just a few minutes ago, maintain that relationship, that is very crucial.
So make sure you build a relationship and retain that relationship. So let me see what, Chicago. Yeah, so there are lots of executive recruiters in Chicago. So look them up and then see if you can get a friend or a colleague or somebody else who knows an executive recruiter to introduce you. The whole of career management revolves around relationship management. It’s very crucial. You help them and they’ll help you.
So that’s what I want to end on today unless anybody’s got any other questions. Thank you, Tyler. Hopefully you’ve got something out of today. I know you might be frustrated, but you will win. There are plenty of jobs out there for you. So that just about wraps it up for today, unless anybody’s got any other questions.