“Be Proactive in Your Job Search: Both Online and Off” plus 1 more |
| Be Proactive in Your Job Search: Both Online and Off Posted: 07 Feb 2011 11:12 AM PST January was a bit of a perplexing month for the labor market. The unemployment rate dropped to 9%, yet employers only added 36,000 jobs, a quarter of what was expected, and a mere fraction of the 200,000 plus per month needed to get us back to pre-recession levels. Bottom line, the anemic job market has a long way to go. For those of you still out there trying to fight your way back into the ranks of the employed, these numbers mean that competition is still tough. Successfully competing in the current labor market means going above and beyond, job seekers need to take risks and stretch past your comfort zone. Translation: You may have to risk making a fool of yourself. Here are some interesting and innovative ways to get yourself out there and hired: Harness the Power of the Social Network: The big three social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have become the new primary mode of communication for an entire generation. Just consider the pivotal role that Twitter has played in the current uprising in Egypt. Understanding the social network landscape and how to use it is a handy tool for job searching. Take Eric Romer for example. As a bald and out-of-work marketer, he knew of an open marketing manager position at razor company HeadBlade that was the perfect fit for him. But he had to grab the company's attention. His first step was to start a blog (cleverly named Hire Me, HeadBlade). The blog included testimonials of why he would be the perfect hire and even a video of him shaving his head using the HeadBlade product. He then connected with the company on Twitter and began tweeting about his blog. Within eight hours of launching his cyber campaign, a hiring manager at HeadBlade gave him a call and set up an interview.
Don't Just Facebook, Book Face Time: If you aren't that skilled at navigating the social networking world, you may want to consider some more aggressive one-on-one tactics. One rule of thumb I've always followed: Find the people who have the jobs you want and get to know them. From my own experiences, I can tell you that getting in front of the right people isn't always easy, but if you are willing to put in the effort, it will pay off. I have literally jumped on a plane at the last minute for an overnight trip to attend a party because of the potential contacts that might be there. I have also showed up early and waited late just to meet keynote speakers at conferences that I was interested in working with. If you want an opportunity, you have to create it.
It's no longer about the job application and the resume. It's about making human contact, whether it's online or in person. Do something different and be proactive. Remember, the best opportunities are the ones you create. Michael "Dr. Woody" Woodward, PhD is a CEC certified executive coach trained in organizational psychology. Dr. Woody is author of The YOU Plan: A 5-step Guide to Taking Charge of Your Career in the New Economy and is the founder of Human Capital Integrated (HCI), a firm focused on management and leadership development. Dr. Woody also sits on the advisory board of the Florida International University Center for Leadership. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Mining the job search sites for life science positions [Discovering Biology in a Digital World] Posted: 07 Feb 2011 09:00 AM PST Disclaimers - just so you know...
Having worked around biotechnology for several years, I thought I was pretty familiar with biotech job descriptions. I decided to test this assumption by playing with the data at SimplyHired.com. Being able to quickly search with different terms and examine trends in job postings has proved to be an enlightening experience. These kinds of searches would be really useful for anyone who is conducting a job search or considering what courses to study for a future career. What terms are used to describe biotech and life-science jobs? It's important to realize that when we search biotech and life science job data, we get different results when we use different search terms, even if the positions are roughly equivalent. Not only is this insight important for looking at data, it's important for using the right terms when we look for work. SimplyHired.com uses an algorithm that searches for the presence of a term in a job description. All job descriptions that contain a term are counted and displayed. Although we can get more results for more generic terms, our resulting numbers are too high and contain too little detail. For example, searching with the word "Biology" gives us adds for biology instructors, scientists, tutors, internships, and industry positions, among others. In the graph below, we see that the numbers for "Biological Science Technician" dwarf the numbers of available positions for biomanufacturing, biotechnicians, and biology technicians. ** If you click the links below any of the graphs, you can see the data too. If we look more closely at the job descriptions, we find many of the jobs in the "Biological Science Technician" category overlap the descriptions we would apply to biotechnicians. Looking more closely at the jobs listed under "Biological Science Technician," we see that many positions are for field or fisheries biologists and they don't really fit the training and skills of biotechnologists who would be working in a lab. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that other data at SimplyHired.com show that 66% of these jobs today, only require a bachelor's degree or less. Narrowing the search If we move away from the broad category of Biological Science Technician and narrow the search to job titles that imply lab work, such as "Biotechnician", "Biology Lab Technician," or "Biomanufacturing," we can get results that are more specific for biotechnology kinds of jobs. We also learn that multiple terms are useful since the results for "biotechnician" were different than those for "Biology Laborotory Technician," and suprisingly, the results for "Biology Laboratory Technician," were somewhat different than the results for "Biology Lab Technician." Searching by skill On the other hand, search terms that are too specific, or use titles that are more regional, or specific to a certain kind of employer, can miss applicable positions. Searching by a skill or technique can also be helpful since many jobs don't include technician in their title or description, even when they are technician types of jobs. If we use the names of commonly taught biotechnology skills, the data show us that molecular biology positions are really more common than positions in biomanufacturing. Selecting the links in the table below the graph will take you to lists of jobs in each category. I think it's particularly helpful to look the job descriptions that fit the skill names. For bioinformatics, for example, you see that most of the jobs listed under that heading are software engineering positions that require programming. This sort of information is valuable to know if this is the career path that interests you. We also see that the job descriptions in that category are very different than any of the other groups. I also did a search where I added the word "technician" after each of these terms. In every case, the numbers were at least 10 fold lower. This told me that technician is not always part of the job title. Take home lessons What are the take home lessons from these searches? 1. Do more than one search. 2. Use multiple titles for searching. 3. Search by skill or technique, too. 4. Hiring has up and downs throughout the year. Use the email alert system at SimplyHired.com to be notified when new jobs appear in the list. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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