[Series] How To Get A Job, Section #1 - INTRODUCTION

You must have noticed how the number of companies devoted to job listings, both on and off-line, are multiplying like a plague. But very few of them realize that the job hunt starts way before you ever open a newspaper or log on to your favorite search site. It begins with your current job. And that means today!

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It begins with maximizing your potential in your current job and then providing you with the guidance and advice you need to move onwards and upwards.

You see, just as you only build a house brick by brick, so each working day you are progressing your career in some way, adding to your experience, moving towards your annual goals, monthly quota or shift targets. It all adds up to whether you can do your job, are good at it, or are great at it. You either build a townhouse or a mansion. It just depends on the number of bricks you lay. It also helps to put your best-looking ones in full view – a quick self-marketing analogy for you, which will become apparent in the section of CVs.

Note: Preparation for your next job starts TODAY – in your present one.

But before I jump the gun, let me backtrack to re-emphasize that it is your current job you need to focus on as preparation for your next job. Because without proof of success in what you do now, the harder will be your task of finding a newer, better one later. Conversely, if you excel at it, the stronger and quicker you will swing up the corporate ladder.

Finding another job is an inevitable juncture in everyone's career. So, as an introduction to the many ways, I can help you fulfill your career potential, this report series covers the fundamentals of successful job hunting.

The employment market is growing ever more fluid and competition is growing progressively fiercer. To win through – and to win quickly – you will need all the help you can get.

Let me ask you… do you think you would win more at the bookies if you had the inside word from the horse trainers? Would you clean up at the poker table if you had an accomplice telling you what cards everyone else had? Of course, you would. And that's the competitive advantage you get with this series. Together we'll swing the odds in your favor. Together, you will hold all the trump cards.

Playing the game is far more fun when you know you can win.

As the number of 'visible' job seekers drops, wage offers tend to rise, there were fewer to pick out of the dole queues. Simple supply and demand. This encourages those already in jobs to jump ship. So unless you're a fresh-faced graduate, who typically have their own specially reserved territory to fight over, you will usually have to compete against more people looking to switch jobs than those looking to get re-employed.

There are advantages and disadvantages in this, depending on which group you currently belong to – employed or unemployed.

If you're employed, you can more afford to bide your time, waiting for the right job to crop up. You can apply with full confidence that if you don't get it, it's probably no great shakes. You are still getting paid and can wait for the next offer. That takes off a huge amount of pressure and boosts your confidence enormously. This confidence can't help but show through in an interview and that is a big plus in any interviewer's notebook.

When you're unemployed, though, the urgency is more real. Every interview counts. To get turned down after all your efforts and all your raised hopes can be tremendously depressing. You have to be tougher, more focused, more determined and more resilient. Ironically, the gravity of the situation focuses the mind wonderfully. And that can bring quick success.

When you're unemployed, you have the advantage of being a full-time, "professional" job hunter.

Moreover, you get all the time you need to research your target company, practice your interview technique, rehearse your answers and review your performance between interviews. You make job-hunting your full-time job. And that makes you more of a professional at it than the others. So do not despair. You do, in fact, have the upper hand in many respects.

This series will reveal many valuable tactics that will help you in your quest. But don't expect prescriptions. Don't expect a tick list to follow which will inevitably bring about the job you really crave. Everybody's situation is different and every application unique in some respect. The key is to take the principals on board and apply them to your situation and to your job applications.

Throughout the series of jobs that constituted my "career", I saw many sides of the employment market. I worked in an array of organizations from the fair to the diabolical. And I went through more redundancies in a single year than most people go through in a lifetime. I've been employed, self-employed, part-time, full time, contract, home and abroad. I've contacted just about every recruitment agency in nearly a dozen counties, read every job page in existence in those areas, sent off hundreds of CVs, been in scores of interviews and taken almost every assessment test there is.

Not an experience I would want to repeat, but most valuable when it comes to understanding the reality of life on the job-hunting front line. Couple that with my business studies, years of experience and my current work, and what you are going to get here is more job hunting insights you can shake a stick at. All of which will give you a distinct competitive advantage in the career marketplace.

Keywords throughout this will be "informed and prepared" – the two most powerful weapons you can carry with you. These should be the two main reasons why you are reading this – to get pre-informed about job hunting and to thoroughly prepare yourself for the task ahead. Keep these two words in mind throughout and you'll find the final experience a whole lot more palatable.

The many ideas and techniques divulged in this report are done via a bit of a history lesson–my own history. I hope in this way you can more empathize with the typical trials of the job hunter and so relate to the practical sources of the ideas for success.

Depending on the level you are currently at, some of the points made here may be a little old hat to you. But this report is intended to help all grades of job hunters. Even so, however skilled you might be right now, you may still find fresh ideas to enhance your current strategy. So let's begin at the beginning.

Happy hunting.