T.A.P. Q#396 – Is Sending Holiday Card to Hiring Manager Trying Too Hard?

The holiday season is fast approaching. I am sharing a previous Twitter project question on careerealism.com and provided an update on the custom of demonstrating courtesy to a potential employer. Read more below.

Dear Experts,

I interviewed at a company recently and haven’t heard back yet. The hiring manager told me he was interviewing a lot of people for this job and wouldn’t make a decision until after the first of the year. I sent a hand-written thank-you note to the hiring manager right after my interview. I feel like we had a really good connection. So, I was also thinking perhaps I should send him a holiday card, but wondered if that would be seen as trying too hard.

What do you think?

Dear job seeker:

Congratulations on sending a hand-written thank you note. Most job seekers don't make the effort. If you examine the statistics of job seekers who fail to send a thank you note, it is staggering. The jury is out as to whether a handwritten note is appropriate. Some experts believe that the handwritten version has a short shelf life. If you happen to know that the hiring decision will be deferred or not immediate, why not make yourself stand out and show your personality of paper with a hand written communication. Other experts believe that in the interest of expediacy, an electronic note is acceptable.

No matter what the outcome of your immediate job search, you will have "scored points" in your application and conveyed a personal communication. In other words, you resisted the urge to be complacent in your job search and take the "tried and true" job search methods, which no longer have the same currency as five years ago.

On the whole, I believe the gesture of sending a holiday card versus a handwritten note shows two things:

• you are demonstrating the desire to make a human connection
• you understand the importance of follow-up, which is essential to "clinching the sale."

Remember that job searching in the new millennium is all sales and marketing, in nature.

Wishing you best of luck in your endeavours.

Melissa Martin

webinarcareercoach.blogspot.com
Please follow me on Facebook: fb.me/careercoachingbyphone.com
Career advisor: careeraviators.com

 

FreeWebSubmission.com

Motivation from A-Z

MOTIVATION, THE HEART OF SELF IMPROVEMENT

Pain may sometimes be the reason why people change. Getting low grades make us realize that we need to study. Being humiliated gives us the ‘push’ to speak up and fight for ourselves to save our face from the next embarrassments. It may be a bitter experience, a friend’s tragic story, a great movie, or an inspiring book that will help us get up and get just the right amount of motivation we need in order to improve ourselves. With the countless negativities the world brings about, how do we keep motivated? Consider these tips from A to Z…

A - Achieve your dreams. Avoid negative people, things and places. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
B - Believe in your self, and in what you can do.
C – Consider things on every angle and aspect. Motivation comes from determination. To be able to understand life, you should feel the sun from both sides.
D – Don’t give up and don’t give in. Thomas Edison failed once, twice, more than thrice before he came up with his invention and perfected the incandescent light bulb. Make motivation your steering wheel.
E – Enjoy. Work as if you don’t need money. Dance as if nobody’s watching. Love as if you never cried. Learn as if you’ll live forever. Motivation takes place when people are happy.
F – Family and Friends – are life’s greatest  treasures. Don’t lose sight of them.
G – Give more than what is enough. Where does motivation and self- improvement take place at work? At home? At school? When you exert extra effort in doing things.
H – Hang on to your dreams. The "little" stars in your dreams may be your driving force.
I – Ignore those who try to destroy you. Don’t let other people to get the best of you. Resist the comopany of toxic people – the kind of friends who dislike hearing about your successes. True friends or fairweather friends, you may wonder?
J – Just be yourself. The key to success is to be yourself. And the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
K – keep trying no matter how hard life may seem. When a person is motivated, eventually he sees a harsh life finally clearing out, paving the way to self- improvement.
L – Learn to love your self. Now isn’t that easy?
M – Make things happen. Motivation is when "your dreams are put into work clothes." (Sorry, I cannot claim this phrase. I do not know its original author).
N – Never lie, cheat or steal. Always play a fair game.
O – Open your eyes. People should learn the horse attitude and horse sense. They see things in 2 ways – how they want things to be, and how they should be.
P – Practice makes perfect. Practice is about motivation. It lets us learn repertoire and ways to recover from our mistakes.
Q – Quitters never win. And winners never quit. So, choose your fate – are you going to be a quitter? Or a winner?
R – Ready yourself. Motivation is also about preparation.
S – Stop procrastinating.
T – Take control of your life. Discipline or self-control is symbiotic with motivation. Both are key factors in self- improvement.
U – Understand others. If you know very well how to talk, you should also learn how to listen. Yearn to understand first, and to be understood the second.
V – Visualize it. Motivation without vision is like a boat on a dry land.
W – Want it more than anything. Dreaming means believing.
X Factor is what will make you different from the others. When you are motivated, you tend to put on “extras” on your life like extra time for family, extra help at work, extra care for friends, and so on.
Y – You are unique. No one in this world looks, acts, or talks like you. Value your life and existence, because you’re just going to spend it once.
Z – Zero in on your dreams and go for it!!!

Melissa Martin is a bilingual career/social media strategist. She is an approved expert on the www.careerealism.com, the number three ranked career site on the internet and a career advisor on www.careeraviators.com
Follow Melissa on Twitter @ravingredhead and @melissacmartin
Facebook fan page: fb.me/careercoachingbyphone.com

Want to wow an interviewer? Use competitive intelligence

Want to really "wow" the interviewer?

In the job search, use competitive intelligence.  The term refers to pre-information.  How does this apply to job seekers? Competitive intelligence is valuable information that you can demonstrate to potential employers that you have foresight about their product, service and company. Let's suppose that you're applying for a position at a top retailer. You find yourself on an interview panel, and the inevitable question is posed by the interviewer:"WHY do you want to work for OUR company?" In your mind, you compose yourself in the heat of fire and formulate a response that represents competitive intelligence.

Whether you are crafting a "sales letter," cover letter or are promoting your USP (unique sales points) during an interview, find out essential points about your desirable company or business such as:

-competitors' distinguishing features, products and services
-competitors' strengths and weaknesses (For example, if you preparing for an interview, be a sleuth and visit the employer to evaluate what they're doing and not so well. This is not unlike a "mystery shopper." In military terms, it's doing a "recce," by paying a visit to the siite). If a visit is not possible, visit an employer's web site and FB fan page and then go to the competitor's web pages and see what they are lacking.

-after doing preliminary research on the competitor, tell your desirable employer what YOU can offer and how you would improve upon what the competitor is doing
-present these findings briefly during an interview and then discuss what you would propose to do in the first 90 days of your hire (Peggy McKee refers to this as the "30/60/90 day" sales technique). Use your competitive intelligence information to apply the ABC (always be closing) tactic to get you hired.

If you take this approach, employers will take you seriously as a candidate. Even better, you will hold enough sway for employers to evaluate you or advance to the second round of interviews.

Use competitive intelligence to your advantage and slay your competitors!

This is just one of my tips in my free report: Turbo charge your job search: 16 tips to irresistible to employers and promote your brand. I would like you to have a FREE copy on this site.

Melissa Martin, bilingual career coach and ebook author, How do find a job using social media
Facebook fan page: fb.me/careercoachingbyphone.com

FreeWebSubmission.com

10 ways to stay focused during your job search

Hello job seekers:
Never lose your focus during your job search. No matter how tough things are, here are 10 tips to share with you:

1. Practise self-care. This is SO vital. Job searching can drain your energy unless you take preventative measures to stop it. Plan time for exercise, balanced nutrition, adequate sleep and supportive relations with friends, family and yes, pets!

2. Don`t take rejections too hard. Rejections, no responses, etc are part of  job searching. It really is a numbers game. Rejections do bring you closer to a positive outcome.

3. Get a copy of your performance evaluations from your last position (aka PER`s in military jargon). Embed your performance evaluations INTO your résumé. If nothing else, the evaluations will set you apart from other job seekers and serve as a conversation piece with an employer during an interview.
(An effective résumé should elicit good questions from an employer).

4. Get recommendations from former supervisors, colleagues, character references, etc. Use LinkedIn recommendations to maintain your social media profiles. Facebook also has a recommendation application called Branchout.com. Use it to your advantage. Another Facebook application that will promote your good name and brand is www.Beknown.com

5. Get support for all of your job searching efforts. Support includes the emotional, social and familial components of conducting a useful job search. Join a job finding club or join an online job finding club such as  http://www.careerealismclub.com

6. If you were laid off, allow yourself to grieve. Losing a job is synonymous with losing one`s identity, especially in North America.  (J.T. Donnell referred to this in a webinar on thise site previously). Check out my article on How to deal with the signs of a layoff on THIS BLOG). The article has also been posted on www.careerealism.com

7. Instead of acting like a `wounded job seeker, transform yourself into a solution builder.  Research desirable companies and come up with ways to improve their bottom line or appeal to their one track minds: can you save or make money for the company?

8. If your job search is stalled, apply the Zen approach. Do NOTHING. But only for a short while. Re-energize and then get your focus again.

9. No matter what your job search results are, maintain a professional demeamour through your personal brand. Make sure your brand is professional and consistent with how you want to be portrayed by potential employers.

10. Keep track of your milestones, whether major or minor. In all likelihood, you will be rewarded. Ensure that these milestones are reflected in your job searching marketing documents, such as a résumé.
Need help with staying focused in your job search? If you want to learn social media job searching strategies that work, please contact me.
blog: webinarcareercoach.blogspot.com
Facebook fan page: fb.me/careercoachingbyphone.com
Twitter: @raving redhead and @melissacmartin (bilingual)

FreeWebSubmission.com