Top 10 Tips From My First 25 Years as Job Hunter’s Consultant & Strategist

By Tom Kellum
I’m the nation’s first and only job hunter’s consultant & strategist.  My specialty is accelerated job-getting techniques.   Here are my tips and pointers from my first 25 years as a job hunter’s consultant.
This info is for all job hunters.

1. Defense is more important than offense, because the hiring process is more about elimination than selection.
2. Screeners look first at job titles, industry experience, age, education, credentials etc., and that is why resumes fail to generate interviews 99% of the time.
3. Never allow anyone who can’t hire you to decide your fate.
4. Always target the person you would report to, or the person they report to.
5. The most effective way to influence the person who can hire you is by letting them know what you can do to help them reach their business financial goals faster.
6. If you market your capabilities first, most hiring executives will be less likely to eliminate you because of where you happen to have acquired them.
7. Companies don’t hire. People do.
8. Far better to make an overt offer to be of service than a thinly-veiled attempt to sell your services.
9. In everything you do and say as a job hunter, do so in a manner so that you come across as someone with a high level of integrity. Therefore, always understate, give details to add credibility, and always put things into an understandable context. \
10. Never brag on yourself. Use a third party to do that. (“if you talk to people who know me, they’d tell you __”)

OTHER TIPS

• Attribute your success to hard work and luck.
• Better to come across as a workhorse than a superstar.
• Do not rely as heavily on your accomplishments as on the value of your capabilities. Your accomplishments were in a different environment and thus may not be perceived as being relevant to the prospective employer.
• Executive job hunting should be approached as a marketing problem, not a resume distribution problem.
• As in any marketing, people are more interested in the benefits and advantages than they are in the features of your education, experience, or special credentials.
• Never assume interviewers will automatically see the advantages and benefits of your qualifications. It’s up to you to make sure they know them.
• Do not try to be all things or even very many things, to all people. Better to come across as a specialist than a generalist.
• Communicate in plain English, free of jargon.
• The most important promise you can make, and the one that has proven to be the one that prompts more job offers than any other is: “I’ll do the job exactly the way you want it done.”

About Author:  Tom Kellum is the Nation’s First and Only Job Hunter’s Consultant & Strategist.  He can be reached at 713-575-8367
“Quietly Making Career Dreams Come True Faster Since 1987”