Pure Opinion

The most common way in which people go about looking for a job these days is by going online and applying through some of the various job databases. While this may be an easy way to get a lot of applications off in one day, you might be surprised at just how unsuccessful of a technique this really is. Fewer than 10% of all new employees are hired as a result of this kind of job search and that means that you might end up wasting a whole lot of your time.

In fact, the best way to get career help these days is not by applying to random jobs that you find online, but by using your existing network of colleagues, employers, and employees to build an online social network. The easiest and most effective way of doing this is by using LinkedIn, which is sort of the Facebook of the corporate world.

Although you may have hundreds of friends and relatives (and a few people who you really don’t even know) on your Facebook friend list, only a few of those would serve any purpose on your LinkedIn list and could ever provide any career help for you. So, when you are building your career network, make sure that the people you are requesting to add to your list can actually provide some value to you down the road.

Once you have started building your network of associates or colleagues online with LinkedIn, you can then start asking them for career help. This is a very appropriate forum for asking people for work, for asking them to look out for job openings, or even for career advice on how to find your next job. You might even find that some of them are more than willing to give you an abundance of career help—from putting you in touch with their colleagues to helping you with your resume and profile.

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When you are in between jobs or even if you are at the beginning of your career, you might not think that there are a lot of places to go for help. Of course, you can always pay a recruiter to help you to find a job and you can pay someone else to work on your resume, but when you aren’t working, you rarely have this kind of money to throw around, so you should be looking for career help in a different way.

The first thing that you should do if you are looking for work right now is to establish yourself on a website such as LinkedIn. This is a social media or networking website that is devoted to people setting up networks of their corporate contacts. So instead of Facebook, which is primarily for fun, LinkedIn is designed to help you create an online network of people you know who can help you either now or down the line.

There are several advantages to using LinkedIn for career help, not least of which is that it is easy to network with people you have worked for or with in the past, people you went to school with, and other professional contacts. When you are looking for a job, these people can be invaluable to you and might know of jobs that simply aren’t open to the public.

Although a lot of job seekers spend all their time looking for jobs in online databases and sending out applications and resumes, studies show that this is not the most successful way of going about getting your next job. Especially if you are looking for career help later in your career or for a higher paying job, you will find that LinkedIn is a much easier way to make your next career move.

Technorati Tags: career blog, career help, job search websites, linkedin job search

So many people today who seek out career help from professional career advisors are those who feel like their career is stuck in thick mud. They feel like they have lost the opportunity to grow and move to higher levels of advancement in their current job, and are trying to decide if they should leave or continue on with an employer with whom they have already invested several years of their professional life.

If you are seeking such career help yourself, there are a few steps you will want to take before you do anything rash like turning in your two weeks’ notice. First, consider reviewing the job requirements for the position to which you are trying to advance. Many people are surprised to learn that they are “stuck” because they are simply not qualified to work in the next level of position available. Sometimes the next position requires a few more years of professional experience, and sometimes it requires a higher level college degree or special certifications, too.

Of course, sometimes you may find that seeking career help opens your eyes to the fact that you really are being passed over for consideration in a higher level position. While this information may be irksome to you, oftentimes simply letting upper management know that you are interested in advancing can be beneficial to you. Other times, you may find that you really do need to leave because upper management has no intention, for whatever reason, of advancing you. Keep in mind, however, that if you do decide to exit, you will not want to burn bridges. You may feel emotional about being passed over for a promotion or not even considered for it at all, but you will find that maintaining those professional relationships may prove to be useful for you later on.

Technorati Tags: career blog, career help, job search websites, linkedin job search

When you are without a job or you are thinking of making a move from your present position, one of the best things that you could do would be to start making contact with people you have worked with before, whether they were employers, employees, vendors, or colleagues. These people often have access to job information that is never put out to the general public.

Getting career help in this way is often difficult for people because they don’t want to tell people that they are out of work. However, it is important to remember that virtually everyone will be unemployed at one time or another during their lifetime and if you are looking for your dream job, then you can almost rest assured that you will go through periods of time during which you are not employed. Chasing your dream does have a downside.

But, if you are looking for an easier way to get career help without having to call or email all of your old contacts, then you should consider a resource such as LinkedIn. This is a social networking website that was created in order to make it easier for people to build a network, and it comes in particularly handy when you are looking for a job.

If you are going to use a site like LinkedIn for career help, then it is important to remember that much of your personal information will be online to those people who you befriend. So make sure that your goal is always to build the strongest and most powerful network of friends and not necessarily the largest network of people who you don’t know. You will probably find that the people who can be the most help to you in getting a job will be the people who you already know.

Technorati Tags: career blog, career help, job search websites, linkedin job search

Most people already know that if you spend time looking in your local newspaper for a job, you probably won’t have a lot of luck. Unfortunately, the same is also true for most online job databases. Many of these jobs are out of date, they have already filled, or there will be so many applicants that your application or resume will never stand a chance of being seen.

That is why more and more people are looking for alternative methods of finding career help, such as signing up with a recruiter or, better yet, using their existing network to start helping them to find a job. One way that you can do this is by signing up with LinkedIn, which is a social network much like Facebook. The only real difference between this and Facebook is that you are using it for your career purposes and not recreational purposes. In other words, your relatives and your best friends will probably not be in your network.

Once you have signed on with LinkedIn and set up your profile, you can get career help from people who are in your network, or you can use the job search function which will give you immediate access to real jobs that are posted by other members. You will also find that a number of recruiters use this tool as a way to find qualified applicants, which can only help you in the long run.

By using this program as a part of a more targeted job search technique, you should find that there is the right job out there waiting for you. It really is a matter of finding the right people to provide you with career help and to let you know when the right job comes along and put in a good word for you.

Technorati Tags: career blog, career help, job search websites, linkedin job search