How do you know what are the most important elements of your job search?
One way to determine the answer to that question is to look at the people who do the hiring. What are they looking for? How do they spend their time?
Not surprisingly the first thing that comes to most people’s minds is the tried and true resume. “Oh, you’re looking for a job? Send me your resume.”
In today’s fast-paced job market, your resume is more than simply a telling of your past work history. It’s essentially you in a nutshell. Your job objective, your past achievements and accomplishments. It’s not just “Worked at ABC Company.” It’s what did you accomplish there? Showcase what you’ve done.
Of course, the savvy job seeker also knows that, to be truly effective, it may be necessary to tweak your resume to match a specific job opening. At the same time, you may have one basic, core resume as well as many versions of the same.
The second thing that the people on the other side of the desk turn to is LinkedIn. Yes, Virginia, looking for a job today can be vastly different from when you first entered the workforce and LinkedIn is a major part of that. Recruiters claim that they spend hours a day looking at LinkedIn and that more than 90 percent of all the positions that they fill involve LinkedIn in some way, shape or form.
Interestingly, in today’s successful job searches, the job seeker’s resume and LinkedIn page are closely tied together. And, while there may be differences between the two, they should closely complement – and never contradict – one another.
Sure there are other elements of the job search that are important (i.e. networking, and interviewing skills and preparation, etc.) but resumes and LinkedIn are tools that hiring professionals turn to first when seeking to fill positions and find candidates. Over and above that, these are tools over which you have near total control. Use them to your advantage.
As they say, the ball is in your court.
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