Get hired now! A 28-day program for landing the job you want.

THE NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE in July 2006 reached 7.2 million, and blacks made up 26% of that number or $1.9 million, according to the United States Department of Labor, The unemployment rate of blacks is more than double that of white Americans. Many unemployed professionals are not seeking just any nine-to-five. They're in search of an opportunity that will enhance and boost their careers. Looking for a job in your industry that suits your goals can be tougher than nails. According to authors CJ. Hayden and Frank Traditi, the average working adult will change jobs 10 times over his or her lifetime.

In their book Get Hired Now! Hayden and Traditi present readers with a system for finding a job in any field. The book contains a 28-day program for coaching yourself to job search success. Not many people can say that they enjoy job hunting. It's easy to get discouraged and lose motivation. The following excerpt from Get Hired Now! will give you the strategies (including six of the most effective approaches) you'll need to make the best use of your time and land the job you want. On the following pages, we offer strategies to help you achieve your goal.

HOW PEOPLE FIND JOBS

Finding a job is all about people. It's the people you know, people you meet, and people you locate who have information, who will inevitably help you get a job. Sending out your resume to hundreds of companies won't work; neither will sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring. You have to find and connect with the people who will ultimately pave your way to getting hired.

There are literally millions of resumes sitting on managers' desks right now that are headed for the reject pile or the wastebasket. Many companies receive from 200 to as many as 10,000 resumes a month. How will you and what you have to offer stand out in that sea of paper and e-mail?

Surveys estimate that 74% to 85% of available jobs are never even advertised. If you limit your job search activities to finding and applying for advertised positions, you're missing many more possibilities than you are finding. How can you find these unadvertised jobs?

Internet job boards are rarely much help. Whether you use them to seek out job postings or to post your resume, only 2% to 4% of job seekers find a job using one of these services.

Finding the right opportunities, getting a company to invite you in for an interview, and then having to compete with so many other candidates for the same job appears to be a daunting task. So how do job seekers find open positions and eventually get hired? Ask any successful job seeker that question and here is what you'll hear: "my network," "referrals," "a lead from someone inside the company," "word of mouth," and "contacting people."

Perhaps you already knew those answers. So why don't you have a job yet? If you're like most first-time users of the Get Hired Now! system, one or all of the reasons below will sound familiar:

* You don't know where to start, Finding the right job seems like an overwhelming task. There are either too many job listings to sort through or you can't find any opportunities that seem to fit. You take a few stabs at job hunting but you get nowhere. Interviews aren't coming your way. Nobody is calling you back so you end up feeling frustrated and do little else.

* There are too many things to do. You realize that you need to increase your network, but you think your resume isn't quite good enough, so you work on that. You know that contacting potential hiring managers is important, but it's easier to look at the help-wanted ads in the paper. You question whether all of your time spent in informational interviews will ever be worth it. You don't have a way to prioritize your job search activities and manage your time.

* It's difficult to stay motivated. You may know exactly what you need to do, but you avoid doing it. It's much easier to surf the Internet or watch television than go to an association meeting where you might meet the right person who can lead you to a great job opportunity. You've gone weeks or months with few interviews and no job offers. When you get a rejection letter or no response from companies you've contacted, you take it personally. It's easy to blame the economy, lack of job openings, or the time of year.

If any or all of these obstacles have stopped you in your tracks, then you are in good company. Job seekers rarely fail because there are no job opportunities, they fail because they don't effectively contact and follow up with the people who can lead them to jobs. This is why the Get Hired Now! system works; it provides both a structure and tool kit for taking action to find the people who know about job opportunities--and it helps eliminate the roadblocks.

COOKING UP YOUR OWN JOB SEARCH PROGRAM

We think that designing and implementing a successful job search campaign is a lot like cooking a nutritious meal. When you are cooking, you need to decide what's on the menu, shop for ingredients, and make sure your food choices combine to make a healthful diet. In the first five chapters of Get Hired Now! the editors guide you to select a regular menu of job search activities, prepare the essential ingredients for job search success, and evaluate your choices to create a balanced job-seeking approach. When your personal job search action plan is ready for consumption, you'll begin the 28-day program. We'll help you start each day with a specific list of things to do and provide plenty of daily advice for working through internal and external barriers to effective action. Figure 1-1: Completed Action Worksheet.

Get help to make it happen. By using this program, you are going to add a new level of focus, strategy, and structure to your job search that will substantially increase your likelihood of success. But you can stack the odds more in your favor by adding some outside help. Here are some of the additional aids that can make your job search more effective and less stressful.

Get support for your job search. A job-search buddy is a friend or colleague who also wants help getting into action and staying on track with his or her job search. The two of you assist each other in reaching your goals by setting up a regular check-in, with each of you reporting on progress, announcing successes, and stating challenges. The buddy's job is to listen, celebrate, commiserate, and be a brainstorming partner.

Job clubs serve the same function as a job-search buddy, but for a group of people who wish to work together. You may be able to find an existing support group for job seekers through career centers, schools, industry associations, or online communities. You may also discover other support groups with a career focus (sometimes called success teams or action groups) through local periodicals, community organizations, or resource Websites. If you would like to be part of a group in which all members are using the Get Hired Now! program, you can connect with a group on our Website, www.gethirednow.com.

Some groups have a professional leader while others have each member take turns leading.

You can also hire your own personal coach or life coach--a professional who is trained in assisting people to set and achieve goals. Some coaches specialize in career transition and working with job seekers. They may call themselves career coaches, job coaches, or career consultants. Ask your friends and colleagues if they have worked with a coach to whom they could refer you, or get a list of coaches who are familiar with this program from the Get Hired Now! Website.

Keep in mind that support from a buddy, group, or coach does not have to involve in-person meetings and travel time. Many groups meet via telephone conference lines or live online chats. Your buddy or coach can also work with you by phone or e-mail.

WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T

You've learned that the first secret to finding job opportunities and eventually getting hired is to connect with the people who will help you find the job you want.

Here's the second secret: A successful job search is more like a marketing campaign than it is an actual search. The traditional picture of job seeking is that you look for open positions that have been posted somewhere and follow a formal application procedure to he considered for them. But if 74% to 85% of positions are never advertised, how effective can this be? And with thousands of job seekers applying for only those positions that are advertised, the competition can be overwhelming.

While a portion of your job search may be devoted to locating posted positions, the only way to beat the odds and the competition is to actively market yourself and locate positions before they are advertised.

Marketing yourself as a job seeker means locating the people who can offer or lead you to opportunities and telling them what you are capable of, over and over. You do have to seek them out--you can't wait for them to find you. There are many ways of telling them what you can do--in person, in writing, by phone-but you must tell them. And you have to tell them over and over. No one will remember you if they hear from you only once.

Just as any company selling a product or service works from a strategic marketing plan with proper tactics to put the plan into action, so should you. In this case, you are the product. Finding job opportunities takes a disciplined approach using strategies that are proven to work.

From GetHiredNow/by CJ. Hayden and Frank Traditi (Bay Tree Publishing). [c] 2005. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Approach NETWORKING AND REFERRAL

Networking is the process of developing relationships with people who can help lead you to job opportunities. When you attend an event of any kind, you may meet hiring managers, job-lead sources, and other valuable contacts. When you follow up with the people you meet, you begin building relationships. Your network is a community from which you find out about open positions, companies needing your expertise, and influential people who can facilitate your job search.

Referrals from people who have insight into job opportunities can flow directly from your network. You are creating a word-of-mouth system that will constantly feed information to you.

SAMPLE ACTIVITIES FOR NETWORKING AND REFERRAL-BUILDING

* Attend networking events, classes, or workshops

* Schedule lunch or coffee meetings

* Make personal calls and write letters

* Work as a volunteer or serving on committees

* Participate in an online community

* Attend sporting or cultural events

* Participate in job clubs

* Contact alumni of your school

* Contact professional associations

* Read the trade press

* Write articles in your field

* Do public speaking in your industry or community

APPROACHING CONTACTING POTENTIAL EMPLOYERS

The best way to make contact with potential employers is to place a phone call or send an e-mail, letter, or fax directly to a specific person at a place you wish to work. This approach helps you locate unadvertised job openings you would not find otherwise.

You need to direct your message to an individual--not a company, department, or job title. In your communication, you must demonstrate your ability to solve problems or create opportunities for the organization. The best contacts are executives or individual department managers. Much less effective is contacting an organization's human resources department, because someone will typically only respond to you if the company already has an advertised position.

SAMPLE ACTIVITIES FOR CONTACTING POTENTIAL EMPLOYERS

* Place warm calls to people you've met or to whom you've been referred

* Place cold calls to people you don't know

* Send personal letters

* Schedule informational interviews

* Send job proposals that describe how you can help the organization

* Research potential employers to tailor your approach

* Make and write follow-up calls and letters

APPROACH INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEWING

Informational interviewing is like what journalists do to get information for articles they are writing. You learn more about a company or industry in a non-threatening setting You set up meetings like these not to interview for a job but rather to explore your interview subject's industry, company, and opinions on the marketplace while mapping out your next career move.

A word of caution about informational interviewing: Don't bait and switch the person with whom you are meeting and try to turn the encounter into a job interview, If your interview subject expresses interest in your qualifications and abilities, however, the door will be open for future discussions about working at the organization.

SAMPLE ACTIVITIES FOR INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEWING

* Research industries, jobs, and employers

* Place warm calls, cold calls, and write personal letters to set up meetings

* Schedule meetings with people in any of these categories:

** top executives

** line managers

** salespeople 

** clients and vendors of potential employers

** recruiters and employment agencies, alumni of your school

* Contact professional associations

* Make and write follow-up calls and letters

APPROACH EMPLOYING RECRUITERS & AGENCIES

The key fact about working with recruiters and agencies is to remember that they work for the hiring company, not you. They make their money by filling positions at the organizations that hire them, not by placing you somewhere.

Recruiters for executive, professional, and technical positions tend to work with the upper end of job responsibilities and salaries and can be quite selective of whom they present to their client companies. There are typically one to three other candidates the recruiter recommends who are interviewing for the same job.

Employment agencies work with a wider range of positions and salary levels. They are not as selective about whom they present to their clients because they spend less time on any one search. But they still insist that candidates possess the specific skills the employer specifies for the position. Many agencies use a temporary-to-permanent model wherein an employee is first placed with a client company as a temporary employee at an hourly rate with little or no benefits. Then if the employee performs at or above expectations, an offer for permanent employment might be extended.

SAMPLE ACTIVITIES FOR EMPLOYING RECRUITERS & AGENCIES

* Register with selected agencies

* Contact specialized recruiters

* Send letters that describe your specific qualifications

* Educate recruiters about your skills

* Follow up consistently

APPROACH SEARCHING SPECIALIZED JOB LISTINGS

Job listing services and Internet job boards offer a wide array of information about open positions. You'll find positions listed with individual employers; state, county, or provincial employment departments; professional associations and networking groups; job fairs; career centers; and many other resources that serve specific communities.

The Internet is bursting with job listings and your time spent here needs to be managed appropriately. Most postings have a short shelf life and may attract hundreds of applicants. We recommend avoiding the big job boards and only frequenting sites that specialize in your industry, job field, or local community.

SAMPLE ACTIVITIES FOR SEARCHING SPECIALIZED JOB LISTINGS

* Review postings of advertised jobs

* Post resume on job boards

* Register with government-sponsored services

* Visit career centers, association offices, and other community resources

* Attend job fairs

* Apply for advertised positions

* Use listings as a data source for researching industries or companies

APPROACH USING HELP-WANTED ADS

This is usually the first place job seekers look for opportunities in their field of expertise. Unfortunately, many people stop there. Discouraged by the lack of ads that meet their requirements, they start thinking finding a job will be impossible. But those help-wanted ads don't tell the whole story behind the job market. Many companies never advertise open positions because they get plenty of applicants referred by people who already work at the company as well as through the managers' personal networks.

Instead of applying for the positions you see advertised, you will have more success using the classified sections of newspapers and trade publications as research tools to help guide you to organizations and industries that might be hiring but aren't advertising the job you want.

As a general rule, we don't recommend applying for any positions listed in major metropolitan newspapers. However, it is possible to find positions worth your time to apply for advertised in the want ads of smaller or more targeted publications.

SAMPLE ACTIVITIES FOR USING HELP-WANTED ADS

* Review help-wanted ads in selected publications

* Apply for advertised positions

* Propose a position that isn't advertised

* Approach similar companies who aren't advertising