employment

What is influence and how does it pertain to your job search? If you are looking for ways to stand apart from the over crowded human capital pool, consider your abilities to influence others. In today’s job market, winning that coveted interview leading to a job requires the job seeker to become a target marketer.

But even with the best research, including desired companies and hiring managers, job seekers must be able to influence people in order to capture the interview leading to that desired position.

What is Influence?

In his interview for Guy Kawasaki’s fantastic must read “Reality Check”, Dr. Robert Cialdini PhD, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, and one of the world’s leading experts on persuasion, compliance, and negotiation defines influence:

“Influence means creating change in some way. Change can be in an attitude, it can be in a perception, or a behavior. But in all instances, we can’t lay claim to influence until we can demonstrate we have changed someone.”

Influence a “Science” for All

According to Dr. Cialdini the good news about influence is that it is no longer just for certain “gifted” individuals. Instead Cialdini insists:

“For centuries, the ability to be influential and persuasive has been thought of as an art, but there’s also a science to it. And if it’s scientific, it can be taught. It can be learned. So we all have the potential to become more influential.”

Influence Your Job Search

With the trend for job search turning to proactive target marketing and social media tools within an employment campaign, the natural progression for a job seeker is influence. How to influence hiring managers and persuade companies to give you a interview is the ultimate goal.

If you want to understand the importance of being influential in your job search, come back for my next installment in the series: “Job Seekers: Utilize 6 Ingredients of Influence.”

The Web 2.0 Revolution, blogging, and social media tools like Linkedin and Twitter allow all of us to become our own marketing machine, brand identity, and valuable resource. The following are 10 New Year’s Resolutions and steps any job seeker can take to begin to differentiate themselves and stand apart from the rest of their competition.

10 New Year’s Career Resolutions for Job Seekers

1. Direction: You can not begin a job search with passion and intention if you do not know what you truly want to do. Without direction there is no forward progress. Assessment testing, research, and networking can help bring clarity.

2. Declare Your Intentions: Let the world know that you are open to new opportunities and you are actively seeking new opportunities. One of the biggest mistakes we see people make in their job search is to not declare their availability for new opportunities.

3. Clarify Your Message: Simply put if you are looking for a position in engineering, then make the focus of your message in your linkedin profile, on your blog, or on any other social media site your abilities as an engineer. Do NOT make the mistake of listing a “consulting” job or a job in a completely different field because you fear a gap in employment. Nothing hurts your ability to find new opportunities than the wrong message.

4. The Job of Finding a Job: Take the job of finding a job as serious as a job. Structure your day at home like a work day in an office setting. Create a routine, schedule and instill discipline in your day. Listing and creating structure provides a job seeker with the frame work to move forward. Without this structure, days float into weeks which can turn into months without results.

5. Research: You can’t find what you don’t understand. In order to find the job you desire it is necessary to research your industry of interest, the job market, the companies, and the hiring managers involved in your search. Compiling lists through your research becomes the “intelligence” that moves employment efforts forward; without research your efforts will stall.

6. Obsolete Methodology: Resumes are not a strategy or proactive method of finding a job. Resumes are simply a listing of your accomplishments meant as a “calling card” snapshot of your value to the potential employer. If you simply rely upon sending resumes, your efforts in finding a job will be nearly impossible in today’s job market.

7. Linkedin Profiles: Linkedin is the most important tool for job seekers today-yet very few truly understand how to utilize Linkedin. Your profile on linkedin is MORE IMPORTANT than your resume. It should be written so that anyone can understand you are open for new opportunities, you have value to give, and you have current skill sets that bring value. Updating your Linkedin profile must be a manditory once per week activity.

8. Blogging: Blogging is the most powerful marketing tool, broadcasting tool, and branding tool a job seeker can utilize. A blog is the centerpiece of any employment campaign designed to deliver your message of value to strategically targeted hiring managers, companies, and industry associations.

9. Understand the New Trend: Due to Web 2.0 social media tools now is the most amazing time in human history for communication, connectivity, networking, collaboration, and branding “you.” Tools such as Linkedin.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, and blogs support a global conversation. We now have the ability, as individuals, to create our message of value and deliver it to a global, national. local, or niche level. The mass media no longer controls the flow of information. We all have a chance to brand and deliver our message; simply put, this is the biggest development in job search in the last 50+ years. The tipping point for change is not far away.

10. First Adopter Rule: Is what you are doing now in trying to find a job working? If it is not then consider adopting social media tools, blogging, and employment campaigning as your new strategy in finding the right job for you.

What do you want to be when you grow up? That is a question that I asked myself many times–in my adulthood. Throughout my adult worklife, I held onto the notion that I understood the focus and direction in my business development career. I thought I understood my sales career path,  I thought I was following the correct course of action, and yet I felt unsettled.

What was wrong with me? Nothing was wrong with me but something was definitely wrong with my thinking.  I was not on a career path that held my passionate interests and I was unwilling to admit that fact. I was holding on to my “business legacy” aka my past experience in the business world as my valuable assets in finding my next job.

Job Seekers Doing the Same Old Thing

You have made your wish lists, educated yourself, and done the following:

1.Target companies
2. Target industries
3. Target hiring managers
4. Target job titles
5. You have hired a resume service
6. Paid a business coach for interview practice
7. You joined every networking group you could find
8. You updated your wardrobe
9. You allowed yourself the expense of a trip to the hairstylist or beauty spa
10. You opened a Linkedin account
11. You connected with people on Twitter
12. You created a Facebook page
13. You educated yourself at various workshops and seminars
14. You marketed yourself to the hidden job market
15. Tapped into every networking resource from family & friends to former co-workers

Yet Something is Wrong

Yet something is missing. You feel a bit lost. You are not completing tasks in a timely manner. You feel challenged when staying organized. Your campaign to find a job feels a bit disjointed. You even find yourself making excuses not to do work that must be done to find a new job. You are falling victim to the same mistake I made for years in my business career.

Job Seeker’s Step 1: Your Direction

The very first #1 step that every job seeker must understand is a simple yet sometimes frightening personal question:  What is it I want to do with my life? Step 1 for any employment campaign is to identify what you wish to do, what industry you wish to focus upon, what jobs are available in your chosen field, and where those jobs exist.

Without executing Step 1 in a job search, you will fail to be inspired. Your motivation to complete the necessary work in research, marketing yourself, and reaching out to find that new job will never happen. In essence your job search will remain in neutral or worse yet frozen in fear. Without a purpose and direction, the employment campaign is nearly impossible to execute to successfully find a new job.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released their Employment Situation Summary for the month of November 2008 a few days ago. Unfortunately, It’s no surprise that employment declined in nearly all major industries, although health care continued to add jobs to the tune of 34,000 in November. This healthy industry has added 369,000 jobs in the last twelve months.

I wanted to get an idea of who these jobs are going to, so for kicks I did a Linkedin job search on the Hospital and Health Care industry within 25 miles of my zip code in the San Francisco Bay Area. Up popped 29 openings for a wide assortment of job functions. My sampling included requests for:

• Managers in finance departments
• Directors of Web
• Director of Information Architecture
• Leadership development
• Operations analysts
• Benefits analysts
• Project managers
• Product managers
• Controller
• Database marketing director
• Communications director

How to leverage this information:

1. Acknowledge that your job skills are transferable to another industry.
2. Work on positioning your expertise to provide value to companies that are adding jobs.
3. Read bNet to learn the nuances of the health care or other growing industry for your job function.
4. Research health care companies in your local area.
5. Develop a proactive strategy for reaching out to them, whether or not they are openly hiring.