Highly Effective Job Search

That is a question that many job hunters ask on their first day in job search. For the majority, the answer is “no, don’t bother with tweeting.” But wait, don’t log off yet.

Let’s put it in context and look more carefully. In case you haven’t tried it yet, Twitter is a micro-blog that publishes messages that are shorter and more frequent that ordinary blogs.  Those “Tweets” are sent to your readers’ phones and computers, kinda like an instant message.

For job hunters, the central question with both blogs and micro-blogs is this: Who will read them?

With Twitter, you need to collect “followers” who volunteer to read your Tweets. It seems to me that you’re not likely to collect a whole lot of Hiring Managers inside of your targeted companies. Or even a whole lot of employees in those companies.

With a full-blown blog, the problem is exactly the same. If you know how to publicize your blog so it can be found among the millions of competing offerings, it could be a career and job hunting asset. If it is read by the right people. And if your content is useful to readers in your profession or industry.

The “if’s” are significant.

Unless you already have a following on Twitter or a successful blog, my suggestion is to forgo these approaches. There are many more productive areas where you can invest your job hunting time. Writing even micro-blogs is a time consuming process.

But reading blogs and Tweets is another matter.

For someone in job search, following Twitter feeds related to targeted companies can be useful. You can go to Twitter.com, search for the information you want by using keywords and sign up.

The same is true of full-scale blogs. Following the blogs of industry or professional experts can be useful for job hunters. Technorati.com is an easy place to go shopping for useful blogs. But writing a blog is useful only for the few who are strong writers and willing to learn the game of competing for readership.

What if you follow a number of Twitter feeds and some of the authors volunteer to follow yours? Well, if they’re the right people, it might be useful to tweet back now and then. For some people, Twitter can have some value as a social networking site.

But please, please don’t get too wrapped up in this stuff. The majority of job hunters still find jobs by talking real time to people they know and getting introductions from those “first generation” contacts to people at targeted employers. Blogs and micro-blogs can be useful tools. But blogs – and all the rest of the Internet – can also be the job hunter’s biggest time waster.

It’s not too soon to think about how to negotiate compensation for your next job. Even though most people have some “no-offer” interviews, watch out. Offers can strike at any time. So it’s best to be prepared.

In case you’d like to start working on it, I’ll give you the short five-point version right here.

1. Know the “going rate” for the kind of job you want in the geographic area you’re targeting. You’ll probably need to work on this. Free, accurate compensation surveys are rare. And the higher your comp, the rarer they are.

The best way to get compensation benchmarks is to ask around while networking: “What’s the range Amalgamated has paid for that kind of job in the past?” “What about their competition, what do they usually pay?”

If you can get a recruiter who specializes in your field to talk to you, that’s outstanding. But if you can’t get numbers, you can at least be informed on which organizations are generous and which are stingy with comp.

2. Don’t discuss specific salary numbers with Hiring Managers early on. (If you haven’t heard that one yet, you must be new to career transition.)

3. Negotiate only after an offer is on the table, and before you accept. Yeah, I know that seems obvious, but I’ve seen a lot of people get carried away and believe they could do otherwise. Jumping the gun on this can cost you the offer.

4. Beyond compensation, there is a whole list of other things that can potentially be negotiated on the way into a new job. In some cases, this even includes the job description and title.

5. Remember that offers can be withdrawn, so be judicious about what to negotiate. Propose and discuss, but don’t push it too hard. On the other hand, if the offer is so weak that you would turn it down, maybe you’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose

If you already knew those five points, you’re off to a good start. If not, you should probably go and read some books on it. There’s some suggestions right here on my website, and Jack Chapman has a pretty good one too.