Steve had 8 interviews and 6 offers in only 6 weeks

That’s 6 job offers in 6 WEEKS.

Click the picture just below to see the video

This video was taken the day after Steve accepted an offer that exceeded all his expectations.

In his ordinary job search, Steve emailed his resume “hundreds of times” to employers, with no response. (Sound familiar?)

But in a Guerrilla Job Search, coached by Mark Haluska (on the right), Steve enjoyed an 80% success rate when sending his Guerrilla Resume to employers.

He got 8 job interviews from 10 resumes sent, which resulted in 6 job offers. In 6 weeks.

Employers loved the creativity his Guerrilla Resume showed. And many asked, “How did you find me?” That’s what our coaches, led by Mark, can help you do — reach decision makers at the top, who can hire you and who want to meet you.

Headhunters network every day out of pure necessity.  That’s our life.  And More often than not I’ll have an assignment for “X,” — whatever “X” may be today —  and I’ve got to deliver,  even if I’ve never recruited an “X” before. That doesn’t stop me from completing the mission. Instead, there are tried-and true methods for locating, identifying, and recruiting candidates.

AND I’m going to blow the whistle on one of the best.

Networking with the Newly Departed

The following four steps show you how to do that for yourself.

Step 1: Locate Your Target Companies

Determine which companies you want to work for, how you can add value, and why they should hire you.

Step 2: Identify Who Runs the Department

Find out who is in charge of the area you want to work in. This generally means identifying a vice president or general manager. For companies with less than 50 people, it may mean the owner or president. You can get this information by calling the company and asking, “Who’s responsible for X” or by looking on the firm’s web site to find the person in that position.  Several methods for doing this are outlined in Chapter 5.

Step 3: Research Referrals

Find people who worked at this company in the past [that's the newly departed part]—refer to Chapter 8 on Guerrilla Networking—call them on the telephone, and get information about:

• The person you are targeting
• The department the person runs
• The company

Be sociable and ask these people how they liked working there.  Watch for any hesitation before they answer. The pause may be a clue that they don’t want to answer negatively and are framing a safe answer.

The reasons for asking most of the following questions should be obvious. Having said that, keep the following select questions in mind even though it may not be immediately clear why you need to ask them. This exercise will help you prepare for an interview at a later date.

You should ask the following questions in the order they are presented here:

About the Potential Boss

1. Did you work directly for [insert name of potential boss]?

—If the people you question did not work directly for the person, they may not be able to answer the questions 100 percent accurately, but their feedback may still be of value.

2. How long?

—Longer is better.

3. What is [insert name] like?

—What they mention first will be a dominant characteristic. You may need to push a bit to get the response.

4. What kind of person is [insert name]?

5. What kind of manager is he?

6. What does this manager look for in an employee?

—How does your experience compare to that of the people they normally hire?

7. How is [insert name] positioned in the company?

—This is a crucial question to confirm that you are targeting the right person.

8. Is [insert name] on the way up or down?

9. Does he have the ear of the president or owner?

—You need to know whether this person has the capability to hire you and can get the president to sign off.

MORE?

If you’re not scared off by now then Extreme Networking as taught in my book Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters is an option for you.  If you click the link below you can download sample chapters from the first book.  The newest book Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0 can be found at www.GM4JH.com

More: Download gm4jh_from_perrymartel.pdf

Would you ever walk into a busy airport, amble up to the counter and say, “I want to go on vacation. Could I have a ticket, please?” Of course not. You’d get nothing but a baffled look from the ticket agent (not to mention a body search from Homeland Security).

Finding your ideal job is like taking a dream vacation. You can get there from here and have the time of your life. But first you need to know where you’re going, then plan how to get there.

STEP 1
To find the shortest route to your next job, you need to create a plan that is detailed in every way. The ideal plan will be solution oriented, results driven, marketing based, inexpensive to execute, realistic and specific.

Here are some ideas for incorporating those elements into your job-search plan.

Solution Oriented

News flash: Rarely is it the most qualified candidate who gets hired. (If you’ve ever had a nincompoop for a manager, you know exactly what I mean.)

In the real world, jobs often go to those who best position themselves as the solution to a problem. Now here’s the catch: Employers often don’t realize they have a problem until someone points it out to them. So, if you can identify employers’ problems – and offer yourself as the best solution – you’ll increase your chances of getting hired. Immediately. Every time.

Results Driven

Like a runner training for a marathon, you must measure your progress. Doing so tells you how close you are to your goal. It also keeps you motivated and committed to your plan.

Measuring results requires you to track certain details. Here are a few of the dozens of proven tactics from my book, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters, that you can track:

• How many out-of-the-box activities have you deployed?
• How many targeted resumes have you sent out?
• How many guerrilla networking activities are you engaged in?

Marketing Based

In business, the companies with the best marketing usually win. Winning the War for Talent is similar. It requires you to become proficient at marketing yourself better than other candidates.

Looking for a job is a sales and marketing activity – and you are the product.

Inexpensive

In 1997, Tom Peters introduced the concept of “The Brand Called You.” At the time, personal branding was a sort of luxury, reserved for high-flying techies and senior executives who wanted to maximize the financial returns of their biggest asset – their career.

Today personal branding is no luxury – it’s a requirement for career survival. For more on how to brand yourself for free, visit GuerrillaJobHunting.com, and click on the appropriate topic.

Realistic

Knowing what you want to do is good. Combining it with what you are ‘qualified’ to do is even better. You may be pleasantly surprised at how your current skill set can transfer to other industries.

For a clear picture of what’s possible with your skills, visit America’s Career InfoNet (acinet.org). If you’re not qualified for what you want to do, get moving and determine how to get qualified.

In my 20+ years of executive recruiting, the biggest problem I’ve run into is that people aren’t realistic – especially unemployed people. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you apply for jobs you’re not qualified to do. Sometimes you may have to take a temporary step backward to move forward in a new career. BUT . . . the sooner you take that step, the sooner you’ll arrive at your goal.

Specific

Knowing the exact title and function of the job you seek gives you a clear, specific goal, with no possibility for error. If you have a clear target and don’t hit it, you’ll know for sure. So, get clear and get specific. The more, the better.

For example, I’ll wager that Vicki Vlachakis knew exactly what she wanted to do and who she wanted to work for before she started her job search. When the opportunity came along to design the new two-seater convertibles for Saturn and Chrysler, she recognized her chance to hit not one, but two home runs in her career.

Nothing is more important to your success than a clear ‘picture’ of your goal. (Please read that sentence again. I’ll wait

If you can envision your dream job AND you’re qualified to do it, then you can find it. With a specific goal in mind, you can organize your job search and networking efforts with a laser-like focus.

Yes, some people are lucky and fall into great jobs, but luck (as Tom Peters says) is terribly unpredictable. The dramatic changes in today’s world of work mean that tried-and-true methods of job hunting will soon be outmoded.

The one constant in all successful job searches, however, is clarity of purpose. It will give you the goal you seek and the fuel to reach it. So, get specific, get clear, get busy . . . and get hired!

Are you a job seeker looking for how to deal with recruiters? David Perry is Managing Partner of Perry-Martel International, Inc. an international Executive Search & Recruiting firm specializing in high technology. The Perry-Martel International, Inc. website offers articles for candidates, including “10 Tips for Dealing with Recruiters.” Perry’s ten tips are the following:

1. Find a recruiter BEFORE you absolutely have to have a new job
2. Find a recruiter that specializes in your talents
3. Find a recruiter that you like to work with and that you trust
4. Don’t be too quick to send your resume to an unknown but “smooth talking” recruiter… especially if you’re still employed
5. Provide the recruiter with current salary information and expectations
6. Don’t put important facts in the cover letter you send to a recruiter
7. Make it easy for a recruiter to get and read your resume
8. Recruiters are usually NOT good vehicles to help you change careers
9. Executive recruiters recruit; career counselors counsel
10. Executive recruiters recruit; bus drivers drive busses

Recruiters are interesting. I was once pitched the perfect VP of Marketing job for a C-level position in my industry. I remember the scope of the job being impressive. It was a new position that reported into the President; it was responsible for all marketing related functions like strategic and tactical planning, market segmentation, product marketing, product management and development, recruitment and management of the marketing team, marketing communications, lead generation, creation and support of joint-marketing partnerships, educating potential clients, and optimizing resources to assist the sales team.

While I was tempted because of the product management responsibilities, I was already in my dream job with a boss I loved reporting into and working with, a management team that I had fun working with, and team that I adored. Needless to say, I didn’t pursue the opportunity with the recruiter. However, what I did learn was the once you’re at the C-level, recruiters search for industry-specific company websites for potential recruits, and then poach executives listed on site. It was an interesting exercise to receive phone calls from recruiters quietly calling into our company switch board to talk with me. Perry’s ten tips should help you if you understand recruiters.

As for David Perry, he’s responsible for hiring 700+ Presidents, senior executives and key technical people in his position. Another reason why Perry’s name may sound familiar is because he’s the coauthor of Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters: 400 Unconventional Tips, Tricks, and Tactics for Landing Your Dream Job.

Skip Freeman

Skip Freeman

In a job search, one often measures his or her progress by tallying up the total number of résumés submitted, usually online at the job boards, to prospective employers. To put it mildly, this measurement is largely meaningless.

The only true measurement that is an accurate gauge of progress is this one: the total number of First-Time, Face-to-Face (1FTF) interviews you have completed or have scheduled. No other measurement is more meaningful in your job search. None. If you are NOT getting 1FTF interviews, you are NOT going to be getting job offers! It’s really that simple.

Every single day I hear (or read) comments such as these from job seekers: “I have sent out over 200 resumes and haven’t heard from anyone!” Or, “I had six interviews with one company and still didn’t get hired!” Or, “I have been to dozens of networking meetings and met a lot of people but I can’t seem to get anything going!”

While such frustrations and laments are certainly understandable, the fact of the matter is, these job seekers are measuring—and working on—the wrong things!

Let me use an analogy to underscore my point.

When engineers and construction managers build something (home, skyscraper, road, bridge, etc.), they use a flow diagram or flow chart called a PERT chart (Program Evaluation and Review Technique).The power of this flow diagram is that it lays out the critical path for completing the project in the minimal amount of time. And within the chart, there is always a critical activity around which everything else depends. Everything done before this one critical activity must only be those things necessary to make that one thing happen, and nothing after the critical activity can be accomplished until the critical activity itself is accomplished.

When building a home, for example, completing the roof is the critical activity. The home can’t be finished until the roof is on (the electrical work, the sheet rock, the finishing, the painting, the appliances, etc.). Every one of these subsequent activities is dependent upon the roof being on. Thus, since putting the roof is on is THE critical activity, all activities prior to the roof must be those that are focused on getting the roof on as fast as possible. So clearing the land, digging and pouring the foundation, putting up the frame, etc., are activities geared toward getting the roof on as fast as possible so everything else can follow.

The same principle holds true in your job search. Your most critical activity, i.e., the one activity around which everything else depends, is your “first-time, face-to-face” (1FTF) interviews. This one number, more than anything else, allows you to accurately assess the effectiveness and progress of your job search. And the power that it provides you is that it gives you the opportunity to modify your job search activities immediately to ensure that you will stay on track.

It is not until you have the 1FTF scheduled that you can prepare for the interview. It is only during the 1FTF that you can build rapport and “sell” yourself, and it is only after the 1FTF that you can develop and implement your follow-up plan, discuss offers, negotiate and ultimately start work.

So, everything else prior to the 1FTF needs to be focused on securing that 1FTF. It doesn’t matter how many resumes you send out. It doesn’t matter how many networking meetings you attend. What matters is whether or not you are converting them into 1FTF interviews.

The single most important question, then, that you MUST ask yourself every single day that will keep you on track is, “Where is my next 1FTF coming from?” Any activity that helps you secure the 1FTF is good. Any activity that isn’t getting you a 1FTF must be brutally assessed and changed.

As a “headhunter” I ask myself every single day, “Where is my next 1FTF coming from?” It is the ONE measurement that “headhunters” use to manage our business. I know, with absolute certainty that, if I’m not getting candidates in front of hiring managers for 1FTF conversations, I am not going to make placements! It makes absolutely no difference how many job openings I am aware of. It doesn’t matter how many candidates I may have submitted to a hiring manager or company. The only thing that matters is getting the first time face-to-face interview scheduled and completed! Without that, I am out of business. It is THE critical activity in the job placement world and should also be yours.

Why 1FTFs and not some other measurement? First, seldom is a person hired without someone in a company meeting him or her for the first time. Since that is practically a “given,” it is a constant. Subsequent interviews don’t provide a meaningful measurement because you never know how many additional interviews a company may have. Thus, additional interviews are a variable whereas the 1FTF is a constant.

So, how many 1FTF interviews does it take to get an actual job offer? Currently, in our firm, The HTW (“Hire to Win”) Group, it is taking, on average, 4.1 1FTF interviews to make a placement, i.e., for a candidate to be offered a position. In 2007-2008, it took 2.7 1FTF interviews to make a placement. In 2009, the number was 6 1FTF interviews to make a placement. Today, at 4.1 1FTF interviews, the good news is that the number of “first time face-to-face” interviews required to get hired is trending downward.

So how many 1FTF interviews have you had?

Now that you know it takes 4.1 1FTF interviews, on average, to get hired today, you won’t get discouraged if one company tells you “no.” Remember, getting hired is a sales process and sales is both a “numbers” game and a “skills” game. Sure, sometimes one may get lucky and “close” the “sale” on the first call, but it is generally unlikely.

So, if you haven’t had 4.1 (let’s round to 4) 1FTF interviews, then the questions you need to ask yourself are on the front end of the process. What must you do differently to get the “first time face-to-face” interviews arranged? If you have had more than 4 1FTF interviews and still don’t have any offers, then the questions are on the back end of the process and probably relate to your interviewing skills, your follow up process, etc.

To restate and summarize, to accurately assess your job search progress at any point, focus exclusively and quite heavily upon the only true measurement in the process: The number of “First-Time, Face-to-Face interviews you’ve had! Everything pivots around the 1FTF.

__________________________________________________________

Skip Freeman, author of “Headhunter” Hiring Secrets: The Rules of the Hiring Game Have Changed . . . Forever!, has successfully completed more than 300 executive search assignments in just seven years. Specializing in the placement of sales, engineering, manufacturing and R&D professionals in industry, he has developed powerful techniques that help companies hire the best and help the best get hired.

A distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, he is a lifelong student of leadership, people and the principles of success. While serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Chemical Corps, he also earned a Master of Science degree in Organic Chemistry from The Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Long Island University.

Visit or contact Skip at his book website, http://www.headhunterhiringsecrets.com

Skip Freeman

Skip Freeman

This powerful Google function, used in conjunction with LinkedIn, allows you to search all public profiles within the entire LinkedIn database!

There are really only two limitations to using the Google X-Ray function: (1) If a person has marked his or her LinkedIn profile as “private,” Google won’t find them; and (2) The person has to have put the key words you are looking for in their profile. So, for example, if you are looking for a “Georgia Tech” grad, the person has to have used “Georgia Tech” in building his or her profile. If they used “Georgia Institute of Technology,” for example, then you won’t find them unless you do a second search using those key words. (Other Boolean operators such as OR and NOT don’t work as well in the X-ray command, either, so you’re wise to stick with the AND operator as you will see below.)

THE X-RAY: APPLICATION

• Go to www.google.com
• Copy and Paste the following search string into Google:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Chemical engineer” AND “Georgia Tech” AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers

What is in bold is REQUIRED, as it forces Google to look only at profiles. If you don’t put this in the Google search string exactly as shown, you will have returned to you all kinds of things that have absolutely NOTHING to do with PEOPLE (such as questions, answers to questions, information from news groups, polls, etc.)

The items in quotation marks and regular typeface, i.e., not in BOLD, within the search string above are your variables.

Examples (as of this writing):

• If I use the above search string, I find one person who is a “chemical engineer” at “Georgia Pacific” from “Georgia Tech” who has a public profile on LinkedIn who used those particular words in their profile.

• If I change “Georgia Tech” to “Georgia Institute of Technology”, I now have two people.

• If I want to find all Georgia Tech grads at Georgia Pacific, I would take out “chemical engineer” and use the following:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Georgia Tech” AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers

• With this search string I NOW get 116 people.
• If I change “Georgia Tech” to “Georgia Institute of Technology”, I get 221 people. Certainly some of these people might be the same people if they used both sets of key words in their profile. (NOTE – Some of these people may have been at Georgia Pacific in the past, so I can’t differentiate between current employees and former employees.)
• If I want to find ALL names at Georgia Pacific, I can try to find hiring managers, people to network with, et al., I would use:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers

• When I do that, I get 9,320 people. WOW! That is a lot and I should be able to find good people with whom to network.

However, that also may be too many to manage, so if I go back and put in a qualifying key word such as “sales” I get 2,940 people. Here is that particular string:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (sales AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers

Use qualifiers within the parentheses to narrow or widen your search.

SO NOW, HOW DO YOU GET IN TOUCH WITH THESE PEOPLE?

• Call the company and ask for them.
• Look them up on LinkedIn, and if they are not in your network, send them an inmail.
• Use one of the following databases to try to find them (If they aren’t in one of these six databases, they aren’t going to be easily found): www.zabasearch.com; www.whitepages.com; www.switchboard.com; www.pipl.com; http://people.yahoo.com; www.argali.com

__________________________________________________

Skip Freeman, President and CEO, The HTW Group (Hire to Win) Executive Search, and author of “Headhunter” Hiring Secrets: The Rules of the Hiring Game Have Changed . . . Forever! (http://www.headhunterhiringsecrets.com), has successfully completed more than 300 executive search assignments in just seven years for over forty companies. Specializing in the placement of sales, engineering, manufacturing and R&D professionals in industry, he has developed powerful techniques that help companies hire the best and help the best get hired.

A distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, he is a lifelong student of leadership, people and the principles of success. While serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Chemical Corps, he also earned a Master of Science degree in Organic Chemistry from The Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Long Island University.

Skip Freeman

Skip Freeman

Great news! All your prospecting and presenting activities have paid off and you’ve landed a telephone interview with a prospective employer. This is an opportunity, correct? Well, yes and no. Actually, you’ve simply made it to “step one” in the hiring process. The more important “step two” is landing the all important face-to-face interview, which really is the principal goal of the telephone interview, i.e., getting before a hiring manager.

While it’s certainly understandable that you will be excited about getting the telephone interview, heads up! Oftentimes, though certainly not always, the telephone interview is actually a trap. Let me explain.

Despite what many of today’s job seekers think and believe, the hiring process is not one of inclusion. Rather, it is one of exclusion. That is, hiring managers and companies are not looking for candidates to include in the hiring pool; they are looking for ways to eliminate as many candidates as possible from that pool, up front, so that they can sooner get to the candidate(s) they ultimately will hire.

This is especially true if you are applying for a position with a large company. Normally, with these companies, the initial telephone interview will be conducted by a professional “screener,” not the actual hiring manager. Sometimes a third party may be hired by the company to screen candidates, or the screener may simply be someone from the company’s Human Resources Department. Virtually all of these screeners are trained to sound upbeat, enthusiastic and friendly, all attitudes designed to immediately put candidates at ease. That way, candidates will be more likely to accidentally “spill the beans” with various faux pas, thereby making it easier—and quicker!—for the screener to eliminate them.

After participating in one of these telephone interviews, rare indeed is the candidate who is not absolutely convinced that he or she nailed the interview. They think that the job is practically theirs! Nothing could be further from the truth. Remember, no one is ever hired as the result of a telephone interview.

So, how should you prepare for a telephone interview to keep from falling into this trap? Below are some recommendations for properly preparing for and conducting a telephone interview:

• Research the company and the position. Learn the company’s “hot buttons” and then sell them on what you know they need, i.e., tell the how you can either “make ‘em money” or “save ‘em money,” or ideally, how to do both of these things.

• Review news release and other public information about the company, as well as quarterly and annual reports. Pay particular attention to such communications as the CEO letter to stockholders. Learn about any new product releases, facilities expansions, etc.

• Learn in advance who will be conducting the telephone interview, if you can. Check for that person’s LinkedIn profile and/or ZoomInfo profile. “Google” the person to learn as much about them as you can.

• Do NOT, under any circumstances, bring up compensation, benefits or vacation! If you are asked your current salary or the salary you expect from the position being applied for, state something along these lines: “Susan, the most important goal is the opportunity. If I am the right person for this job from your perspective, and indeed, if the company is the right company for me, then I am confident that the salary will be more than fair.” And leave it at that!

• Write down any questions you plan to ask during the telephone interview.

• Use positive phrasing during the interview, such as “I know” rather than “I think.”

• Never, never, never speak negatively of anyone or anything—a former boss, co-worker or company.

• Always emphasize why you want to go to work for the company, NOT why you desire to leave your present company.

• Do not try to evade any question. If you don’t know the answer to any particular question, simply say so, and then say you’ll get the answer and call back.

• If things sound good to you, then say so! Don’t try to play “poker.” Remember, the interviewer can’t see you, so verbalize your reactions/feelings.

• If something doesn’t sound good to you, do NOT confront (and therefore alienate) the interviewer.

• “Close” at the end of the interview, using a statement such as this: “Jim, I really appreciate your time today, and I am genuinely excited about and interested in this opportunity. Based upon our conversation, is there anything else that will keep us from moving on to the next step?”

• Avoid mention of anything personal, such as marital status, sexual orientation, state of your (or your family’s) health, etc.

If you will keep these telephone interview “do’s” and “don’t’s” in mind, you will be in far better position to indeed “nail” the telephone interview than 90 percent of your “competition,” i.e., other job seekers. Most of them will continue to “wing it” during the telephone interview and increase the chances of making major faux pas, and as a result, the majority of them will be excluded from further consideration, quickly and finally. Believe that.

_______________________________________________

Skip Freeman, “headhunter” and author of “Headhunter” Hiring Secrets: The Rules of the Hiring Game Have Changed . . . Forever!, has successfully completed more than 300 executive search assignments in just seven years. Specializing in the placement of sales, engineering, manufacturing and R&D professionals in industry, he has developed powerful techniques that help companies hire the best and help the best get hired.

A distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, he is a lifelong student of leadership, people and the principles of success. While serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Chemical Corps, he also earned a Master of Science degree in Organic Chemistry from The Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Long Island University.

Visit or contact Skip at his book website, http://www.headhunterhiringsecrets.com