It’s different now.
Laid-off? Sure, it happens.
Downsized? You bet!
Sick of your boss? Oh yeah!
Fired? Sorry, but it happens every day.
Want more money? Damn skippy.
We tend to take our foot off the gas pedal when we are working and life is good. We stop updating the resume and LinkedIn profiles. We get out of touch with what’s trending in the world. We allow our skills to atrophy. We think that our job needs us more than we need our jobs – because there is no way they could function without us, right?
We buy new homes, cars, clothes and jewelry as if things will never ever change. We get a little cocky.
If that’s not your story then this is – you worked someplace for a long time and “Booyah!” they announced a reduction in workforce aka layoffs. Now you are forced to rethink your career and try to get a new job among all that competition in the job market today.
Or maybe you are just tired and want to do something new.
Whatever the case, the job market has changed in the last 5 years. Now you have the rise in social recruiting to contend with and increased competition from new graduates – because of the recession people really did go back to school to gain an advantage. This means that now more than ever there are a lot more people going after the same jobs.
If you are re-entering the job search it’s important to know the resume is not dead at all; you definitely need one – an updated visually attractive resume that will get you noticed. That’s going to be your biggest weapon and ally in finding gainful employment.
You also need help with your social media persona because now over 80% of all employers look for you on social media and if you aren’t searchable, they become suspicious. 95% of all employers and recruiters use LinkedIn to verify resumes. So you should get on LinkedIn.
Recently, I did some crowdsourcing – crowdsourcing is when you ask the “crowd” that you are connected to – in this case I asked my Facebook and Twitter connections (mostly HR and recruiters) this question. “What percentage of resumes would you say are bad?” and the response was “65 to 95%” (the lowest was 65 and the highest 95).I believe those numbers because most of the ones I get are bad and all of them can be improved.
I look at it like your mobile phone – each year a new phone comes out which is better than the previous version. Your resume is the same way it needs to be update annually.
Here’s a free tip: If you wrote your resume yourself, it’s probably bad.
Networking is key to finding a new job but if your resume is subpar then you find that your friends will have a hard time recommending you because of your poor resume - it looks bad on them too. So get it your credentials together.
The game has changed and it’s gone social now – so are you ready for the new age in social recruitment?