Chris Thoughts

Top 10 Tips for Job Hunting Under The Crisis (1)

Posted on 24. Jan, 2009 by Chris in Career 101

PART I

#10 The most ineffective – blindly send out 100+ CVs (with fewer than 5 responses)

This is by no mean the most ineffective way of conducting a job searching and most end up with pure vain. You probably have been told a hundred times in career events that “DO NOT make a one-size-fit-all CV or general answers for all your potential employers. The more you send out, the more your focus will be lost. I am not going to focus on this as lots of such information can be located at Google.

Is this way ranked #10? #10. NO WAY. Let’ s come down to #9.

#9 The most common  -  Google + job board + forum

Google is effective as a tool if you could really nail it. But 90% of those claiming to know the search wiki do not exactly know it – the mechanisms of reaching the least searched info (a.k.a the job postings few see) is understood by a handful of people only.

Test: If you are in a foreign country, where some famous downloading methods are restricted (say, BitTorrent, eMule), can you locate the a latest picture of your hometown’s 5th famous place within 5 mins?

If a job is posted on a job board, you almost can easily assume that 10,000 aspired applicants are looking at it like you do, especially for some hot roles like Investment Banking/Consulting job.Unfortunately, those big powerhouses (i.e. GS, MS, ML-acquired by BOA) are laying off workforce instead of hiring. The indirect effect also take effect on consulting job as the industry encounters a wholly meltdown.

The following chart is optional, but believe it or not, it can massively reduce your workload when conducting search.

Search Tricks
Basic Example	Finding result description
olympics beijing	pages contain word olympics and beijing
olympics or beijing	pages contain word nba or jordan
“beijing olympics”	pages contain exact phrase “beijing olympics“
jordan -nba	pages contain jordan but NOT nba(no space between “-”and nba)
define:chinese chess	formal definitions of the word chess from the internet
Calculation
300 Euros in USD	convert A currency unit into B unit
World cup 1994..2010	search within a range of numbers,results from 1994 to 2010
More Search Operators
yao ming site:www.nba.com	search for information about yao ming within NBA.com
link:www.tongji.edu.cn	find pages that link to Tongji University’s website
book Winning	show book-related information about book with the title”Winning“
books Winning	same as above
phonebook: Jordan chicago	search for every jordan’s phone numbers in chicago if there is any (useful function in the US)
rphonebook: Jack new york	search for every jack’s residential number in new york city
movie: spider-man3	information about the movie “spider-man 3“
stocks: goog	google’s current stock price and related information
cache:www.nba.com	display google’s cached version of the webpage www.nba.com. When you want the old version of a frequently updated website
info:www.yahoo.com	find information about www.yahoo.com
related:www.yahoo.com/	find similar pages with yahoo.com
interview tips in text:microsoft	search for pages mentioning interview tips where “Microsoft” appear in the text
resume tips intitle:microsoft	search for pages mentioning resume tips where “Microsoft” appear in the title
photoshop inurl:download	search for pages mentioning photoshop in which download is contained in the URL
Restrict Search to Google Groups
marketing author:donald trump	search for donald trump’s article on marketing
group:	find groups messages from the specified newsgroup
insubject:	find groups messages containing keywords in the subject
Restrict Search to Google News
china air pollution location:uk	find British articles covering China’s air pollution issue
train station chaos source:ap	find chunyun chaos articles from Associated Press’s coverage
Search Service	Search Operatotor
Web Search	allinanchor:, allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:, bphonebook:, cache:, define:, filetype:, id:, inanchor:, info:, intext:, intitle:, inurl:, link:, phonebook:,related:, rphonebook:, safesearch:, site:, stocks:
Image Search	allintitle:, allinurl:, filetype:, inurl:, intitle:, site:
Groups	allintext:, allintitle:, author:, group:, insubject:, intext:, intitle:, msgid:
Directory	allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:, ext:, filetype:, intext:, intitle:, inurl:
News	allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:, intext:, intitle:, inurl:, location:, source:
Froogle	allintext:, allintitle:, store:

End (Credit of this chart goes to: http://www.isteward.cn)

Boil The Ocean

Besides IB/MC, there are still lots of good roles opening. You will learn that health care, education, government, food services and drinking places, and IT categories have all gained jobs this year. When searching on the forum, or using Google, do your customized search. All sectors are relevant and one could never live with only one sector.

From Zero to IPO to Exit Round-up

This part is added content and hence it can be skipped. But it makes a good read and worth further research if you desire to enter a business arena.

You can find a seperate post following this link: http://www.huangg.com/2009/01/from-zero-to-ipo-to-exit-round-up

#8 The longest process – part-time/freelance work/internship first if you can get a relevant one

OK. The first job is utmost important for anyone because you are going to spend your most valuable 2-5 years with it. Jumping ship frequently does not look good and it might discount your value by a wrong transfer. If you are not really interested in the job, it is hard to believe you can maintain and ride the corporate ladder over a 2-5 years period. You will stress and think about an MBA for future rotation over the stints.

So, if you really aspire towards a specific industry, for example, finance. You may shoot for a part-time/internship with a BB or a boutique shop to gain solid understanding before hunting for a full-time role. Life is good, you might get a direct hire at the end of your internship period.

The ways to grab an internship is vastly different from that of seeking a full-time position, and it means different things as well. Let’s look at the The “Myth”, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,

The “Myth”

Q1: When is a good timing for application? (apply to both FT role & internship)

NOW! NEVER apply late, and DO apply RIGHT AFTER the release date of the information. You might argue that some firm evaluate resume only after the cut-off date, but most firms do not. They do it on a rolling basis.You can step in the shoes of the HR, if your mailbox were filled with hundreds, and sometimes thousands of resumes, would you still look at the rest if qualified interns/full-time candidates are spotted. The answer is a firm NO. In addition, that indicated you are prepared, you are passionate for the opening of the opportunity and indirectly shows your study of the firm. Those firm applying online application might do it the other way around as the backdoor is relatively easy to source by date, by location and whatsoever. In one word, if you really mean it, PLEASE be the early bird.

Q2: My CV looks great, and I come from a target school. But, why I am not selected even for the first round?

First & Simple answer: there are too many people sharing your background. Second, refer to question one. Third, assume you are an HR and rethink answer one. Here raises a few issues, A. have you customized your CV/cover letter title to stand out of the dozen of “your background” candidates? B. have you done your research and tailor-made the application package? C. Did you miss anything, for example, some supporting materials to make the life of your HR easier? If file “x” is missing, no one (except a few) will bother to call back and chase you for that. HR is human being ; we are all human being. Forth, how many openings are available in such a market place? Some internal interviews (i.e. from eFinancialCareers) might serve to give you some information as to how many roles are available for a specific function. If the region or the dept are not hiring, you can just cross it off.

Other relevant tricks on job hunting will be extended across the following sessions.

I would skip the up sides and down sides of FT role and only focus on the internship as you are smart enough to tell the myth and vice versa.

The “Good”

Of course, first thing, as an intern, you are flexible.  You can opt to pull a 24/7 week (if possible), work for multiple companies in a set period or later resign to do anything that interest you (probably test a start-up? I will post start up with bootstrapping method later in another post). As an intern, life is hard too but your pay might be massively cut for the same value contributed to the company. It doesn’t matter -  if only you could get the value you believe is beneficial in a lifetime. But be certain that you should work hard, I mean super hard to get what you can get during the short period as you still have to compromise with the “Bad & the Ugly” I mentioned hereafter.

The “Bad & the Ugly”

As an intern, your firm would treat you differently as you might not be working for them in the future. That way you may be hidden from the real value (you are forbidden to do any client facing job) or touch company confidentiality. Here is the trick – work hard, gain trust from your colleagues & your boss, and let them deliver significant work load to you, even you as an intern. It is just for the time being anyway.

In retrospect, when I was an intern, a vivid story might tell how important it would be for you to work hard and add real value. Somehow you might be the last to leave the office and work over time everyday, and work a 7-day week. Once a VP said to me, “Chris, your help was immediate, if you were restricted to some important document or mechanism of what we do, let me know.” Then I every time I completed a task, I would be expected to hear the story behind the deal and learn tremendously from that point on.

I truly believe everybody is equal and we won’t score differently on any kind of aptitude test. School paper results are liar. It just helps to source a selcted group of safter candidates. Provided that you work hard and gain the hard plus soft skills as in my latter mentiioned parts, you will be rewarded equal value, the value more superior than what a FT hire could get. So please pull in 200% efforts.

The next thing is your pay. It doesn’t really matter if you can afford your life in the city, and at the same time (a more important factor here) the payroll is at least enough to cover all your necessary networking activity costs in the city. I will blog more about it in the future as this is another vast topic.

I spent quite a few words explain the “Bad & the Ugly” but it all points to the final “Goods” you can get. Besides all above, my version of a very important mindset for any successful people would be, and always be, try to look at the UP sides even if you are stressed, you are being laid off, you are severely indebted. Everything has its UP sides, if you can realize and keep the positive mindset, good things would come.

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Declaimer: I am neither an HR nor a career advisor. What I say is my own stuff and not affiliated with any of the companies I worked or am working for. All the thoughts on this site are mine. My company and its affiliated and personnel are not affiliated with this blog in any way. If you appreciate and would like to forward the content, please kindly link back to the original source.

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1. Top 10 Tips for Job Hunting Under The Crisis
2. Top 10 Tips for Job Hunting Under The Crisis (2)
3. From Zero to IPO to Exit Round-up
4. Top 10 Tips for Job Hunting Under The Crisis (3)
5. Thoughts from Twitter Search
6. From Blogging to Evangelizing (2)