Select Your Email & Voicemail Wisely

I want to discuss the choices some people make in selecting email addresses and voice mail greetings.

Select Professional Email Names
I work with a lot of people that seek new jobs or want to start businesses. They constantly amaze me with their email addresses. You must recognize the situation before I share some examples. Remember, these people want to convince potential employers that they will be good employees or potential clients that they will be good suppliers. They should select names that communicate their name in simple, professional terms.

Some people, in the effort to impress, send potential employers email names like the following: "blue_420129", "atomic_1999", "pgyankee2", "onefromcanadaeh", "dadsgirlhi", and "hotcoed". These are real email addresses I encountered while helping people find jobs. How do you think potential employers feel about hiring "dadsgirlhi" or "hotcoed"?

Voice Mail Greetings
Another common problem deals with voice mail greetings. I remember one frustrated person that had called scores of companies and no one would ever return her calls. So, I called her and listened to the following greeting "Hi You know you reached the right number if you recognize my voice. Please do not leave a message if you do not recognize my voice". I immediately understood why no one returned her calls--she told them not to unless they recognized her voice.

Job seekers need to change voice mail greetings to communicate clearly that they contacted the person they wanted. The greeting should include the person's name not just the phone number. Your voice should express warmth and welcome. Ensure that you return calls the same day, even if you leave a message after hours.

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.

Others Will Help--to a Point

I help people find jobs. I've been doing it for more than 30 years. People think I'm pretty good at it. I've helped people in 22 countries. This blog, however, is not about me. It's about other people being willing to help you achieve your goals. More to the point, this blog will focus what to do--and not to do--to keep those relationships strong.

As I said, I help people find jobs. This economy increased the number needing help. Traffic in our center rose from an average 360 a month to an average of 1,100 a month. People in my church congregation ask more assistance finding jobs. One Sunday five people stopped me in the hall asking for assistance. I felt completely overwhelmed. I wanted to run away and hide.

What they asked me to do, and what they were willing to do, impacted my desire to render assistance. So, I would like to share some simple rules for asking others to help.

1. Ask for small assistance at first
2. Ensure that they know you are doing more than them
3. Follow-through on the help they give you

Ask for small assistance at first so others don't feel overwhelmed. Many times people unnerve helpers by asking too much up front. Let me share two examples,

• One person asked me to help him find a job. He wanted me to do everything from finding the job openings for him (he didn't have Internet), call the people to see if they were interested (he feared rejection), and drive him to the interviews (he didn't have the car and felt the bus ride was too long). He gave me no incentive at all to provide assistance. He didn't want assistance. He wanted someone to do it all for him.
• A colleague asked me to help her husband find a job. I found a company looking for someone with exactly his skills. I emailed him the information and called him to give him details. His response was to request that I review and edit his his cover letter and resume. Neither one reflected the "insider" information I had provided. It was his stock resume and cover letter. No action had been taken on what I gave him. Just another request. A black hole of requests loomed before me dissolving my interest in helping. So, ask for small assistance at first, and always thank the person for what they did. Don't automatically ask for more.

Ensure they know you are doing more than them to avoid reluctance and irritation. A small-business owner recently requested assistance from members of Marketing Success Institute. He wanted to create a marketing survey on a possible new venture. The group spent about 60 minutes helping him create survey questions, refine them, and edit them. He did all the typing. He did the initial editing. He created the survey, using Survey Monkey, before the meeting ended. He tested it. He refined it again, and retested it. He sent a thank you to every person who helped him create it. Everyone felt good about accomplishing something good. They felt better, because he only asked them to do something small, but everyone recognized that he did most of the work.

Follow-through on the help they give you so they realize they didn't waste time. One person who asked my assistance getting a job did it perfectly. He started small by asking me to spend 3 minutes checking his on-line profile. I spent about 5 minutes and emailed him some suggestions. He thanked me immediately upon receiving the email. The next day he sent me the new text and asked if he had captured my suggestions. He had. His action stimulated me giving him additional suggestions on his profile. He acted upon them and sent me the results. His small requests, followed by prompt action, kept me interested in helping him.

We can't achieve our goals, in today's world, without the help of others. Others are willing to help--to a point. Abuse their willingness, and lose their help. Show sensitivity by following these three guidelines, others increase their desire to help.

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.

Recommiting to Sharing with Others

I have not contributed to this post for almost a year. I wondered whether the world needed another blog. I questioned the value of my contributions. I adamantly believe in my message. I merely doubted that anyone wanted to hear it. So, I didn't contribute anything else to this space.

I reconsidered my opinion lately. I still don't think that I am unique or something special. However, the world has been through a very tough time the last few months. People seek solutions through politics, business, the media, and many other places. Many don't find their solutions.

I have presented to hundreds of groups during these difficult economic times. Attendance at my presentations continues to increase. People seem to like what they hear (according to their evaluations). They ask me for more information. They ask me for more handouts. They ask to meet with me. I don't have time to meet individuallly with every person who wants my help.

I do, however, have time to share the information with others. I have time to respond to comments on this blog. So, I commit to add something new to this blog each week. I will respond to your comments. I will try to help you achieve your goals whether they are to get a new job, improve your business, manage your finances, or whatever goal you set.

Goals reallly do work. I know they do. So, let's create a few thousand success stories together.