Posts Tagged ‘unemployment’

Personal Assessment Tests

I have used and recommend the MAPP tests at  ASSESSMENT.  They cost a few bucks, but the quality of the assessment is very good.  There is a way you can use that resource free, too.  Just take the test and then compare your output or results to five different job types.  Compare yourself to your preferred career first, your second favorite career second, and so on.  It will rank you in up to five categories free, and give you some good information about yourself.

Then, if you decide you want more, spend the money and get more.

Working With a Recruiter

A good recruiter can help you quickly.  Your to-do’s:

1. Have a concise resume that highlights things you did professionally
   • that made money for your employer
   • reduced cost for your employer
   • significantly saved time for your employer (labor hours)
2. Work with only ONE recruiter, and tell him that you are only working with him
3. Do NOT submit your resume to any job boards, web sites, companies, etc.  The only person other than yourself who should have a copy of your resume is your recruiter, if you choose to work with a recruiter.
4. Return your recruiters phone calls immediately.  She called you for a reason.  It pertains to your financial well-being.  Call her back ASAP.
5. Tell the truth in everything.  If you lie, you will be found out and dumped immediately.  Full disclosure is the basis upon which trust is built.
6. Be realistic about the money.  If you want to get a 20 percent raise, go try and do that yourself.  You can realistically expect to see maybe 8-10 percent if you are damn good at your job, and if you are currently employed doing what the new employer might want you to do for them.
7. Stick to the market you are in.  Do not ask your recruiter to get you a job as a neurosurgeon when you are currently a subsea engineer.

If you follow these simple, respectful, rational rules of the road, a good recruiter can probably help you reasonably fast.

How do you find a good one?  Good question.  The best way to do it is to contact your local Recruiters Association.  Ask them who won most of the 2009 awards for recruiting, get the name of the firm that won the most, then find out who in that firm won more than anyone else.

Call the firm and ask the receptionist who usually bills the most each month in the market in which you work, and talk to that recruiter.  It goes like this: “Betty, I am Jerry Davis, and I am an industrial widget engineer.  Who is the person who recruits industrial widget engineers who billed the most last year?”

Betty will help you.  She might say they all did well, and maybe so, but get one or two names from her and then ask to be transferred to one of those two people.

Identifying a Job on the Job Boards

You can get good job leads from Indeed.com.  Indeed aggregates all job postings, everywhere.  Just go to www.indeed.com, register, and select the types of work you can do and the locations.

The problem with Indeed is that its open to everyone, so you will compete with maybe hundreds of other applicants.  Plus, many of the “non-recruiter” leads are actually posted by recruiters, so you have to sift through those to get directly to the employers.

If you want some pointers on talking to employers, go listen to some of my recorded job-prospecting calls on the Recorded Phone Calls page.

How To Find A Job

You can get your own copy of How To Find A Job, free, here.

Download Step-By-Step Manual : How To Find A Job

If you need help finding a job, I can help you find a job.  Hi, I’m Jerry Davis, recruiter.  I’m a professional headhunter and I enjoy my work.  I guess that I’m pretty good at it because I have had so many different jobs in my own life.  I started working when I was nine years old, mowing yards and raking leaves in my neighborhood.  It was hard, hot work, but it paid me decent summer money.  The hardest part was pull-starting those lawnmowers.  They definitely were not built with nine-year old boys in mind.

I know how to find a job.  When I turned 12, I got a paper route and started throwing newspapers.  They came six days a week, and I had one of the largest routes in my hometown.  When I got home from school, I rolled newspapers, put them into the big canvas bags and mounted them on my bicycle.  Man those bags were heavy.  Then I peddled around for two hours and returned home around six PM each evening.  On Sundays, the papers arrived around 5 AM and my mom or dad helped me roll them and deliver them.  The Sunday papers were huge, so my parents were awesome for helping me.  In fact, they were awesome about a lot of things.

When I turned 15, I found a job with a local orthodontist making plaster molds of patients teeth.  That was a pretty neat job and it paid better than throwing newspapers.  And it was a LOT easier

When I turned sixteen, I was fortunate to find a job bagging groceries at Safeway, working for Mr. Tom Nixon, one of the hardest bosses I have ever had, and one of the best.  He was and is one of my icons, a tremendous human being who helped me learn how to respect myself.

When I graduated from high school I joined the US Army for three years, then got out and started college.  I did find a job and worked through college, 35 hours per week the last two years while earning spots on the Deans and Presidents list at Stephen F. Austin State University.   And I took 21-24 credit hours per semester while working.

I’ve had a lot of jobs.  Too many.  And I hate having to go find a job, but in fact I am looking for a job as I write this for you.  I quit my job as an engineering recruiter a month ago because the working conditions were absolutely horrible.  I felt like a slave oarsman on a slave galley, and my boss was really bad.

I recruited engineers for oil and gas companies, and a LOT of engineers lost their jobs last year.  It was the hardest year on record for placing engineers in Houston, but I managed to:

• Make Rookie of the Year
• Earn a plaque for being the top producer in the company for the third trimester of 2009.  That was impressive, especially considering it was my first year, my boss was a very abusive person and the bottom fell out of my market the day I walked in the door.

Bottom line here: If you want me to help you find a job, I can help you.  I guarantee that I can help you find a job.