Between the Trapezes - On Job Search! | August 2021
Between the Trapezes

Help for when you’re between two career certainties
August 2021

In many places in the US, it’s "state fair time". Which means it's time to try out unusual food combinations, and downright weird and wonderful edibles. Bacon ice cream? Tamales stuffed inside your burger? Fries covered with cheese?

You are also likely seeing back-to-school ads in your locale, and are getting school supplies for your kids and grandkids. And if you're a teacher, your classroom prep has already begun, with students to follow any day now (whether in person or online).

Labor Day seems to mark a new mini season -- "Oh no, summer's over!" In this "season", companies and organizations that took a break from hiring over the summer, start looking for new talent. Are you ready?

And it’s an end-of-summer promotion -- meaning the services in my store, will see price increases right after Labor Day, first time in over a year. A 20-30 minute conversation with me about how I might help your stuck search with any of those services, is free. Email me (address is below) about setting up a time to talk ASAP -- before everyone else does!

Joanne
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Happy end-of-summer!
Joanne Meehl
Resume expert who hopes you never need to actually use your resume. "The Resume Queen"®
LinkedIn profile creator if you want yours to be an employer magnet.
Networking guru who coaches you in elegant (not needy, gimme gimme) networking, finding hidden leads.
Interview prep that puts you at ease matching what they need and describing why they need you.

BA, MS, IJCDC
Photos in this Between the Trapezes courtesy of Shutterstock.com
unless it's flowers or memes, which are by Joanne

Your Career Is The Treasury of Your Life ©
Are you a NEW or recent college grad in job search who's STUCK in your search? 
Contact Joanne (email is at the bottom of this page). She wants to hear from you first (parents, we will talk later!), so that YOU and she can talk about what is working and not working in your job search. It will actually be a fun conversation! (New: do your TikTok resume with Joanne!)
There Are No Unicorn Job Sites. Sorry.
Once again, (some) job hunters are hailing a new job board. "Go there and put in the title you want!", some have said breathlessly. Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Ah, the job search holy grail: that mythical, magical, unicorn site that finds exactly that elusive Job You Want AND that does your search for you.

To test it out, I created a profile at this latest wonderful site for a random career choice - Marketing Operations - and chose New England and the Midwest US for my locations. I waited for the jobs to roll in.

And they did: jobs in New Jersey and the NYC metro area. NYC and New Jersey are east, but they're not in New England. And certainly not in the midwest.

The jobs themselves were very hit or miss: Some sounded like a match for the marketing operations title I'd entered, but in reality were not, once I read them. They were marketing specialist (entry level) titles and some VP titles. Good tries, but nowhere close to what I'd indicated would be a good fit. So I never even got to the "apply for me and work it for me" stage with the site.

After a couple of weeks and several such postings sent to me, I unsubscribed to any more emails. They were just piling up and staying unopened because earlier ones just weren't a match and random checks of other mails showed that those, too, were not a match.

Perhaps others have had better luck. It was certainly no magic portal during my experimenting with it.

And I have to ask: Just what are they doing with that info you're giving them, including your LinkedIn contacts? I could not find where they say anything about that. Be careful.

You know what? After a few other scattered articles about this "amazing" job site, I never saw anything about it again. And no client has ever landed a job by using it.

My suggestion is to enter "reviews of" with any site's URL, into Google, for any site like this, to learn what others have REALLY found.

Sure, apply for jobs online, but make that a very small piece (<15%) of what you do, or you'll be spinning your wheels for a long, long time.

No job board can replace intelligent "let's talk shop, let's-help-each-other" networking. Just in the last five of my clients to land, 4 of the 5 landed their great next job through networking.

That's how it really works. There just aren't any magical unicorns.

Updated for 2021 from an earlier blog entry of Joanne’s
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This month’s Tip from Joanne:

The telephone: a forgotten handy tool

With email, texting, Zoom, social media, automated email programs, WhatsApp, Messenger and more, it is easy to forget the good ol' telephone as a job search tool. It works!

Calling your target contact -- or even a hiring manager -- is still a way of reaching someone directly.

First, make sure your phone is charged. And your headset is charged.

I suggest calling their office at 7am or 8am, before their day starts getting super busy.

And have your comments ready: If you are going to ask for an appointment, have your reason for asking and some times in mind.


Thought of the Month

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.


Lucius Annaeus Seneca (aka Seneca), Roman philosopher
Joanne Meehl Career Services LLC | Zoom or 612.440.6765 (by appt) | Joanne@TheJobSearchQueen.com