• Contacting employment agencies


• Posting your resume on Internet job boards


• Reviewing print-based or Internet-based classified ads


• Sending out targeted mailings

Recruiters (headhunters, employment agencies, search firms) Success rates for obtaining work through recruiters can vary tremendously depending on the position and industry you are pursuing. Individuals in fields enjoying high employer demand will have much more success utilizing recruiters than those in occupations where employees are more plentiful. Additionally, you are likely to experience greater success with recruiters if you are currently employed and/or at the managerial or executive level. One clear exception to this, however, relates to temporary agencies, which routinely work with junior level administrative people.

Most recruiters specialize in certain fields or industries. They may focus exclusively on technology, finance, public relations, not-for-profit, or administrative support, to name a few. Therefore, you must select agencies that work with candidates in your field. To find the best agencies for you, peruse classified ads, both in print and on the Internet, and relevant periodicals such as trade magazines. Look for agencies that regularly advertise the kinds of positions you seek.

Several large employment agencies are located in the Melville, Long Island business corridor. For your convenience, they are listed here.

Access Staffing
25 Melville Park Road, Suite 115, Melville, NY
631-777-2800
accessstaffing.com

Adecco Staffing
50 Republic Road, Melville, NY
631-844-7650
adeccousa.com

Lloyd Staffing
510 Broadhollow Road, Melville, NY
631-777-7600
lloydstaffing.com

1. To research information about companies and organizations
2. To locate actual job listings
3. To apply for positions by posting your resume on a job board or e-mailing it to a company

Research

Use the Internet to find specific information about companies and organizations of interest. This will help you write focused cover letters as well as prepare for interviews. In addition, the not-for-profit website www.dmoz.org/business/ will allow you to search companies by industry type, a great tool if you are targeting a specific kind of industry.

Locating Job Listings

Job listings on the Internet are extensive. Many can be found on the individual websites of companies and organizations. Therefore, on a regular basis, search the corporate sites of organizations that interest you.
There are also job listings on the websites of professional and trade organizations. So, if you are interested in a job in the insurance industry, for example, look at the website of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (naifa.org). The third and largest category of Internet job listings belongs to the commercial sites. You can use these sites like an electronic version of the newspaper classifieds, perusing the job ads by category. Though you won't have to pay to look at the listings, employers pay to post and that's why these sites are called commercial. Some of the most well-known and largest are monster.com, hotjobs.com, and career builder.com, but there are hundreds of these sites.

Posting your Resume

In addition to looking at the job ads on the commercial sites, these sites also function as a giant searchable bulletin board where you can post your resume (and cover letter) for employers who are searching for talent. Each of these websites, or job boards, as they are called, will have directions on how to do this. Be aware that these boards use plain text for document storage and transmission. This means that all formatting enhancements that dress up your resume and make it look attractive on the page (lines, bullets, indented text) will be lost and some may actually become distorted in the process. Therefore, you will need to "clean up" your posted resume to a certain extent. Many of my clients manage this on their own, however, if you would like assistance with this, please call. (The fee for creating this plain text or ASCII version of your resume is $55.00)

The strategies I am advocating are frequently referred to as networking and targeted mailings. Career experts agree that these are the most successful job search strategies with 60-70% of the job-seeking population finding employment using these methods.

The premise of networking is that you know someone who knows someone who can introduce you to many of the employers you would like to meet. As such, networking involves telling many people you are in the job market and looking for leads. Begin your networking strategy by writing down the names of all your acquaintances. Include all relatives, friends, neighbors, your hairstylist, people at your gym, professors, physicians, dentists, fellow commuters, and colleagues (only those that you can really trust). Make this list as large as possible. Keep it with you for several days so you can write down the names of people as you meet or remember them. We will call these people your primary contacts. After you have created your list, call or visit each of your primary contacts. Tell them about your job search and ask for leads.

Example of what you can say to your primary contacts:

"John, I was wondering if you could help me out. I'm looking for a job in corporate training and I' m targeting companies in the financial services industry. Do you happen to know anyone who does corporate training?…What about anyone who works in the financial services industry?"

As your primary contacts provide names of others, contact these new folks who become additional (secondary) contacts.

At a certain point, depending on the situation and on your personal style, you will switch from calling people to sending your cover letter and resume, which makes it a more formal job search inquiry. Imperative to this whole process is keeping good records of who you have contacted and when. Doing so will enable you to evaluate if you are reaching out to enough people (volume is important) as well as tracking your activity for follow-up with employers.

The approach called targeted mailings, is closely related to networking but gives you the opportunity to contact companies you are interested in working for, even if there are no advertised job openings and even if you can't identify a single insider. It starts with developing a "hit list" of employers to target. You then send your resume and very compelling cover letter directly to them and follow-up with a telephone call.

There are several resources you should explore to help you develop your "hit list" of potential employers. As mentioned earlier, I like the not-for-profit site, dmoz.org. You can think of dmoz.org as a directory of the Internet. It organizes a tremendous volume of commercial websites into tiered categories, which you can use to hone in on the type of employers you seek. As an example, if you were looking for a job in pharmaceutical manufacturing, you would start on the first page of dmoz.org and select the category "health," since that is the closest matching category provided on that first page. Then you would select "medicine" as the best subcategory of the choices next presented. Then "pharmacology," then "pharmaceutical companies," and finally, "manufacturing." If you do that, you will land on a page that provides company names and website links to over 250 different pharmaceutical companies that do manufacturing! It can sometimes take a little trial and error to find what you are looking for, but you could certainly hit pay dirt here.

Also, reference librarians can be very helpful in finding employer information. They are most able to assist you if you can be specific about your needs. Do so by saying something like this, "I am looking to develop a list of employers in the advertising industry within the metro New York area." Reference librarians will direct you to business directories, which are useful for this type of research. Most use the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) system, which assigns a code based on the business' chief industry. Therefore, all companies within an industry will have the same NAICS code. This makes it easier to cross-reference other directories. Check out:

The Directory of Corporate Affiliations
The American Wholesalers and Distributors Directory
D&B Million Dollar Directory
Ward's Business Directory of U.S. Private and Public Companies.

Finally, other good resources for identifying companies or organizations to target include trade publications specific to your field, the Yellow Pages, and for Long Island job seekers, The Book of Lists and a few other directory-type publications created by The Long Island Business News, www.libn.com. Your local library will have those publications.

The list you develop should include addresses and (ideally) the names of the best people to send your resume to within those organizations. It will also be helpful to collect some information about these businesses-information that you can use to customize a cover letter or help prepare you for an interview.

The targeted mailing strategy has the great benefit of allowing your resume to arrive solo, not in a pile with dozens or hundreds of others, which is what always happens in response to an advertised job opening. Though your resume and cover letter will sometimes arrive when there is no opening, sometimes there will indeed be one. When that happens, you become the front-runner. Additionally, even if there are no current openings, your quality resume and cover letter will surely be saved for future reference. Sounds great? Well, there is one catch. The catch is that targeted mailings can be a lot of work and you will need to invest some serious time and energy.

Know that job searching is inherently frustrating and time consuming and some of what happens, or doesn't happen, is beyond your power to control (such as competing with another applicant who has a better background for the job in question). However, work hard at what you can impact, such as your overall knowledge and proficiency levels, your proper targeting of employers that may need you, your persistence in following-up, and your interviewing skills.

Stay positive and focused and believe in yourself. Press on in the face of turndowns, which are experienced by virtually all job seekers.

If you find yourself needing additional assistance, please call. I can probably help by answering a quick question, or suggesting a career counseling session where I can fully customize a job search strategy for you.