Resume Lingerie and 10 Other Guerrilla Job Search Strategies - Executive Career Brandâ„¢

Resume Lingerie and 10 Other Guerrilla Job Search Strategies Are you having a tough time landing an executive job? Maybe it’s time to consider shaking things up and innovating an unconventional search campaign to position yourself above the crowd. Yesterday I took an eye-opening Reach Personal Branding teleseminar, “Job Search Secrets Revealed”, featuring Guerrilla Job Search Gurus Kevin Donlin and David Perry of Guerrilla Job Hunting. David and Kevin guarantee that, because most people don’t use guerrilla tactics, you’ll blow the competition away. 1.   You must have clarity. Know what job you seek and where you can get that job. Zero in on a job title and/or the 2 or 3 skills you need for the job you want. Pick 10 to 20 companies where you’d like to work. Don’t be concerned if you don’t know anyone at these companies. You’re going to work on that. Now you know your target audience. You’ll need to research and uncover what their issues and problems are, then develop and pitch your unique value proposition. 2.   Get a subscription to ZoomInfo’s FreshContacts. They boast a database of 45 million professionals at 5 million companies. Start compiling a list of key decision makers at each of the companies on your list. 3.   Zig when everyone else is zagging. With the average job search today taking 28.5 weeks (the highest since they started keeping data in 1948), you can’t do what everyone else is doing. Realize that in job search, youre in the middle of a sales and marketing campaign. 4.   Resume Lingerie or Guerrilla Resume. Create a resume that captures attention and, just like lingerie, is designed to tease them into whats possible â€" a one-page, highly-charged, full-color branded resume. On the lefthand side, place 3 or 5 (always an odd number) logos of current/past employers, universities attended, snapshots of awards, etc. People are drawn to graphics. They prefer to look at pictures instead of read words. They buy based on emotions. 5.   Use your recommendations to sell yourself. Put 1 or 2 snips of quotes in your resume. (Note: I do this frequently with my clients’ resumes and it’s a powerful, brand-reinforcing strategy!) 6.   Add a P.S. to your cover letter â€" they always get read. Two ideas for the P.S.: Write Call me today to learn why my [insert person’s title] said [insert quote and include year person said it].” Insert your most provocative bullet point. 7.   Send your resume and cover letter by regular mail, not email. Two reasons: Too much email gets caught in spam filters. Your email may never reach hiring decision makers and recruiters. Direct mail is having a resurgence because most people only use email. This gives you a competitive advantage. 8.   Clean up and brand up your ZoomInfo and profiles. What do hiring managers, HR professionals, and recruiters do to fill a job? They go to ZoomInfo and to run a search. Using the following two innovations, David and Kevin got 2 people into jobs in 7 weeks in Detroit,   where unemployment is 2 to 3 times higher than the rest of the nation: 9.   The Coffee Cup Caper. Send your resume and cover letter in a package along with an empty Starbucks coffee cup with a note saying, Can we meet for coffee, Id love to discuss your [title of position] job. Add the P.S. I will call you very soon to follow up. How soon you may be surprised. Send your package by overnight mail. You’ll be able to determine when it will arrive, so that you can place a call to the recipient within an hour or so of their receipt. 10.   The Trojan Thank You Letter. Instead of sending your resume and cover letter in a standard envelope, use a smaller, thank you note-sized one, with the card reading “Thank you for reviewing my resume and cover letter”. The envelope will suggest an invitation or thank you note. Both are mail people love to receive. You’re practically guaranteed the recipient will open it and read it. 11.   Now is the time to be proactive and go for it. The hiring decisions that will be made in January are being contemplated now. Other job seekers are sitting back during the holiday and waiting. And hiring decision makers arent as busy now as they will be in January. Check out Kevin and David’s initiative Put America Back to Work. Theyre offering to speak to any group of 50 or more people about their guerrilla job search secrets and waive their customary $5,000 speaking fee. What do you think of their aggressive strategies? Related posts over at my Executive Resume Branding blog: 6 Essential Strategies To Land Your Next Great C-Level Executive Job How to Target and Network into Hidden C-Level Executive Jobs   00 0