Take Command of Your Career

How can you take command of your career?

How can you find your dream career in a job search market seemingly controlled by the Internet?

At the bottom of this page you'll find numerous links that I've put together discussing how to understand each step of the job search process.

The rise of the Internet over the past decade has made job searching really easy...and difficult.

It has become really easy for job searchers to fire off their resume to dozens and even thousands of recipients at once to make you feel like you've accomplished something.

The only thing you've really accomplished is to devalue your resume and to get your hopes up for no real reason.

To take command of your career means to keep control of it and not simply rely on other people to deliver on your behalf.

The Internet has made it more difficult for you to stand out from other candidates who want the same job(s) you do and to take command of your career in the process.

If it's easy for you to mass email thousands of resumes, it's easy for everyone else too so you're just joining the masses of resume spammers who also get lost in the shuffle.

Plus, the Internet is a wasteland of unverified information in many cases, certainly when it comes to job searching in general.

If you check out five different websites claiming to offer free job search advice, you might read five different suggestions that each contradict one another.

Who do you believe?

As a recruiter, as soon as I see that a job searcher has emailed their resume to me along with 20 other recruiters in the same email, I generally delete the resume without reading it.

I'll let one of those 20 other recruiters waste their time on someone who has most likely plastered their resume all over the Internet for everyone to see.

This is generally an indication that this particular job searcher is a carpet-bomber who believes in the old adage that if you throw enough you-know-what against a wall, something is bound to stick.

In other words, if you email 100 companies with your resume someone is bound to be interested enough to hire you, right?

Not necessarily.

To take command of your career and to find your dream career, you need to take command of each step in the job search process and keep control of each of them.

The reality of your quest to find your dream career is that you will inevitably end up relying on and waiting for many people to help you along the way without turning over control of the entire job search process to them.

You will rely on recruiters to actually submit your resume to a hiring manager when they say they will.

You will rely on a hiring manager to read your resume and agree to interview you.

You will rely on the phone to ring to let you know you have actually gotten the interview.

You will rely on...

To take command of your career, you need to realize a few things about your quest to find your dream career:

Understand The Job Search Process
Different companies use different hiring processes but there are typical aspects of your job search that normally remain the same. Which ones do you need help with?

Understand Why A Company Hires Someone
Why does a company hire one person over everyone else they considered for the job? Why do some people get laid off while others remain employed?

Understanding How A Recruiter Can Help Or Hurt You
Understand how a recruiter can help you (and hurt you). There can be pros and cons of using a recruiter. Do you know what they are?

Understand The Reality Of Job Searching
There is a difference between an ideal job search and the reality that you will most likely face.

Avoid These Mistakes
People make mistakes during their job searches and during their career that cost them jobs and waste their time. Here are some mistakes I've seen people make.

Is Self Employment An Option
Have you considered self employment? Not everyone likes working for someone else. Perhaps self employment is an option for you.

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