New Look! New Blogs!

I am thrilled to announce a change in my blog. (Can't you see my thrill by the picture on the left)

First, you will notice the new look. We wanted to update it and make it more exciting. Also, since this blog is about achieving goals, I introduced a subliminal suggestion in the background--picture goals. The background picture will change regularly to different places that people like to go. I love Hawaii. I visited Hawaii six times--and someone else paid the price each time. We shared how to do that in our blog on February 13, 2010.

Second, we are please to announce that Larry Stevenson now offers three blogs for your inspection.

Larry on Careers will examine the goal of improving your career. It will focus on selecting the right career, finding a job, gaining new skills, and receiving bigger raises and better promotions. We will post it on Fridays. We hope you will follow it also.

Larry on Business will explore the goal of growing your business. It will focus on business planning, sales and marketing, accounting and finance, legal, human resource management, exit strategies and more. We will post in Wednesdays. We hope you small- and home-based business owners will enjoy it.

GoalsGuyLarry will continue to explore personal and family goals. We will focus more on vacations, purchases, personal development, marital communications, and such. We will post it only once a month on the last Friday of each month. We hope everyone who wants to improve their lives and families will continue to enjoy it.

So, each week we will explore how to achieve career, business, and family goals. Choose one or all three to follow. Also, please invite your friends to follow also.

Accelerate Your Job Search

Recently (April 19, 2011), I shared a post about influencing 3 vital behaviors to make change. The thought came from the book Influencer by Kerry Patterson and the group at VitalSmarts. I mentioned that several colleagues and I studied what 3 behaviors were vital to accelerating a job search.

We identified 3 key actions that we thought would help people find jobs faster and at higher salaries. We tested our findings with two dozen professionals earning salaries of $80-150,000. More than half found a new job at their desired salary within five weeks. Some of them had been looking for more than 18 months. Next, we tested our theories with 12 people looking for low-salary jobs. A couple had criminal records, a couple had disabilities. Ten of the twelve found jobs in less than three weeks!

Let me share the three vital actions that will accelerate your jobs search, or the job search of someone you know.

1. Call 10 people a day: Do not limit calls to hiring authorities or advertised job openings. Call friends, colleagues, associates, and others who may have information about companies that would benefit from your skills. Ask questions to explore their needs, projects, goals, and challenges. Once you have enough information, prepare your approach to the decision maker to schedule the appointment. Ten to fifteen of your phone calls will be to follow-up on meetings and interviews.
   
2. Schedule 10 meetings/interviews a week: Meetings or interviews provide useful forums to gather additional information about a company's needs, priorities, or projects. They also allow you to impress both the hiring authority and their team.
   
3. Follow-up four times: Follow-up is not the time to ask if the hiring authority has made a decision. That only irritates them. Instead follow-up provides additional opportunities convince them you can do the job the want done, can fit into their team, and will provide a good return on investment. One should send a thank you card the same day as the interview. Three phone calls spaced every 4 working days allows you to fix the things you said poorly, say the things you wish you had said, and compensate for requirements you did fulfill.

There three vital actions accelerate your job search. You will find a job faster and at a higher salary if complete them each week. We've proven it.

New and Improved LDSJobs.org

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently updated their web site www.LDSJobs.org. Be warned, the update is in beta testing (which they proclaim on every page). Like all new web sites, there are problems. Unfortunately, the biggest problem is not in the web site itself, but in the registration process, which is separate from the site, but the intergral access portal.

Be patient with the bugs. This web site is going to be well-worth the perserverance.

First, the site provides a life-time career planning service free of charge. Unlike some of the other big boards it focuses not only on finding jobs and developing careers, it provides a structured forum for people who want to enroll in education or vocational training and for people who want to start or improve a business.

Second, it helps people not only identify long-term and short-term career goals, but it helps them create action steps with deadlines. Simple "click when completed" features allow people to hide completed action and revisit them as desired.

Third, the website use a very simple search feature to search for job postings, companies, schools, small business, and community programs. The searches identify job postings unique to the LDSJobs site, but also aggregates jobs from more than 3,000 major companies throughout the English speaking world. In addition, each job posting includes a link to LinkedIn (the popular business networking system). I found one job at a major employer--and 7,416 contacts on LinkedIn for that company.

Fourth, people looking for jobs may complete a "Candidate Profile" that includes work history, eduction, skills, interests, 30 second introductions, and what they call Power Statements. Companies may then view the candidate's proficel once it is 90% complete. I saw one company identify 25 potential candidates, send an email message (easily done within the web site) to several, and favorite another candidate. One candidate said that he received 2 job offers in one weekend using this system--IN 2 WEEKS.

Fifth, the web site is packed with articles on how to survive unemployment, present your skills impressively, write resumes, improve businesses, evaluate vocational training, and much more.

The web site isn't perfect. As I stated earlier it has troubles with the registrations system. The site also times out too quickly. Especially if you are writing goals, power statements or your work history. The site also has difficulties with people who want to do two things at once (such as look for a job and enroll in vocational training.

The developers say that many of these problems will be fixed shortly. They fix some things each day, and do a major upgrade on the 15th of each month. In addition, they are already translating the site in Spanish and Portuguese. The translated sites should be available by January 1.

As I said, this is a site that can help so many people. The Church of Jesus Christ offers the site free of charge to anybody who wants to use it. You won't have to deal with unwanted pop-up ads or obnoxious banners. The church subsidizes all the costs with no eye to generating revenue.

Give the site a few weeks to work out some of the bugs. Then, try LDSJobsd.org. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Please let me hear your experiences, reactions, or suggestions.