In my career coaching practice, I frequently work with people who are not currently employed.
This has come about for all sorts of reasons. They may have been made redundant due to a contracting industry, difficult economic conditions or a change in company direction.
They may have taken a voluntary redundancy, sometimes cashing in a payout to fund a new business.
They might have had to relocate for family reasons, away from their previous employer.
They may have been terminated. The common thread is that being unemployed is a really difficult situation.
We are conditioned to value ourselves based on our career success, which sets us up for struggle when our career isn’t going well.
And of course, we’re in a world where we need to earn money to support ourselves and our loved ones.
For those that don’t know me, I’m the Managing Partner of a Brisbane based executive recruitment company, Arete Executive. I’ve also recently launched the Arete Podcast, where I interview leading CEOs, Non Executive Directors and other leaders about their careers, key achievements, lessons learnt along the way and so on. The motivation for the podcast is to allow those who aspire to achieving similar career success, to learn from those who have walked the path before them, in order to hopefully accelerate their own careers.
I thought for this article I would summarise some of the key learnings from my early guests; those that I found most interesting and pertinent.
Why does an executive recruiter like me write a book telling people how to “uncover the hidden job market” for themselves?
For two reasons.
One, I genuinely want to serve people. I’m very aware that recruitment is not well respected as an industry. Often, when I tell people I’m a recruiter, they can’t wait to share some awful experience they’ve had.
So I want to show that many recruiters are in fact caring professionals who treat clients and candidates with respect and integrity.
I want to give you an example of this in action, so you can understand how to apply these principles for yourself.
If you search on LinkedIn for “executive search” in Australia, my profile will appear at the top of the search results.
And if you search for “career coach” in Australia, my profile will again appear at the top of the list.
Please take a moment to do this search, putting “executive search” and “Australia” into an Advanced search (located at the right of the search bar at the top of the LinkedIn page). As you’ll see, I am currently ranked No. 1 in Australia.
In my previous article, I talked about the Zero Moment of Truth concept. I said that, as a job seeker, you need to carefully manage the first impression you create, by ensuring your LinkedIn profile does an excellent job of showcasing your experience.
I also reminded you that recruiters and companies are filling a lot of roles by searching the LinkedIn database.
So before someone can read your excellent profile, you need to ensure that it gets found.
It’s the same principle of search engine optimisation (SEO) that websites use to ensure they appear on page one of Google’s search results.
The days of getting by with poor presentation skills are coming to an end for senior executives.
For many senior executives a growing part of their day-to-day role is the requirement to present to a diverse range of audiences across an array of mediums. In the past their presenting requirements might have been in monthly board meetings, or to various internal management sessions and occasionally at larger off site events.
As an executive recruiter, I interview hundreds of people every year for C-suite and senior executive roles.
Many of these candidates leave the interview feeling unhappy with their performance. It’s frustrating for them and, honestly, it’s frustrating for me to see good people drop out of contention because of a poor interview.
After nearly 15 years in recruitment I would like to think I can write a pretty good job ad. “Position the organisation, sell the job and describe what’s in it for the candidate” – It may sound easy but so many are doing it wrong.
How do I know this?
Every 6 weeks for the past 18 months Richard Triggs and I have run our “Always Stand Out” workshop somewhere. At every event we have 25 to 50 senior managers and executives (CEO’s, CFO’s, COO’s, GM’s, NED’s) keen to understand the changing marketplace, LinkedIn and how to uncover the hidden job market.
In the first two articles in this series, I advocated publishing on LinkedIn as a powerful way to increase your visibility and influence recruiters, and I provided a three-step process to develop your first article.
Here’s my process for closing the circle from publishing to job offer.
We’ll assume that you have followed the advice in the previous articles and:
developed a personal brand that’s built around your ability to create value for an employer (and we’ll also assume that your LinkedIn profile supports this branding)
written an article that is aligned with this brand value
