Job Search Advice, Resume Writing Tips from a Career Consultant

If your head hurts, your muscles ache and the thought of sending out one more resume sends you in a state of panic you might be suffering from job search flu. While we are offered a million ways to live a healthy life-style, few remedies are provided to cure an ailing job search. Check out these symptoms and remedies:

• Job Search Couch Potato - Perhaps this should be called a desk potato or screen potato. This job seeker waits for the job to come to him. Oh he applies on line, posting to job boards and blasting to recruiters (we do advocate these!) and complains because he has no hits. Like a stately royal, the couch potato waits for others to approach him. Then he gets depressed.
  
  Remedy- Use every method of communication. Get on the phone and get out of the house! The more folks who see you and hear you, the quicker will be your recovery... a job offer. The very computer upon which you're reading this should simply be one tool. Don't hide behind it!
  
  
• Drive Though Job Seeker - Much like walking through the snow barefoot, expecting a fast hire is a sure way to catch the job search flu. Job seekers, especially those who normally control their teams and make business decisions, have a difficult time when they realize that decision makers not only determine who gets hired but when 2nd interviews occur and when/if you find out that you're no longer under consideration. To be blunt, job offers are not like to come at your convenience!
  
  Remedy- Never stop searching and wait for any company to make a decision on you. Take charge of your job search and move on! The healthy job seeker knows that the more irons he has in the fire, the better chance a job offer will come... and come more quickly. We can't control the speed at which a company decides upon us but we can control the momentum and persistence of our search.

And you thought only autos had blue book values! If you've ever wondered why some folks stay employed it could be their blue book values. They have skills that employers desperately need. Did you not quite finish that degree? This may be the time!

There has always been an argument for not remaining professionally stagnant. Economies have been in boom/bust almost every decade, complete with tough job markets caused by numerous factors.

While new jobs have been created, a disproportionate number have either being relocated offshore or are low wage, hourly opportunities in service industries. Thus while the observation that there are no jobs isn't quite accurate, the fact that there are far more good candidates competing for them is a reality. Here are more realities:

• If you have held the same position for years without updating your knowledge and education or enhancing your skills, should you become expendable to your employer, you could also appear antiquated to the outside market. In more mature employees, one's inability to be contemporary is a sentence to crash and burn.
  
• If you've changed jobs too often, you will lack credibility in the experience you've gained and will not fare as well as others because of your inability to leverage those weaker credentials.
  
• If you are unwilling to relocate or commute, especially in the higher-paying jobs, you could remain unemployed for years.
  
• If you remain unemployed for too long, you will raise the red flag of rejected goods and ultimately devalue the very credentials that you worked so hard to secure.
  
• If you don't plan to recareer well in-advance, you may not be able to take the time or make the investment required to become a sought - after candidate in The New Economy.

Get certified, volunteer to take on extra duties that will sell well and know what's going on around you. If you develop job search skills and regularly update your knowledge of the job market, you will maneuver far better should you have to eventually make a change.