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We’ve been talking a lot lately about the “1-in-5” job applicant that you have to be in order to land a job. Where did this number come from? It comes from the fact that there are five (close to 6, now) job seekers for every open position, based on U.S. department of labor statistics.

We use this number to encourage people! Just look at the last job fair we went to at the Scottish Rite convention hall in Sacramento. About 1,000 people attended:

• 1-in-5 were wearing shorts and flip-flops
• 4-in-5 were dressed too casually
• 2-in-5 didn’t bring a resume
• 0-in-5 had a personal business card
• 3-in-5 didn’t bother introducing themselves
• 4-in-5 didn’t initiate a handshake
• 2-in-5 acted like the job fair was a circuit race and didn’t speak to anyone
• 2-in-5 wandered around aimlessly with friends

Look, anyone showing up to a job fair in shorts, t-shirt, and fip-flops should have their EDD benefits pulled (and sent to the rest of us), because clearly they aren’t actively looking for work!

As you can see, it is a simple matter to get noticed at a job fair:

• Go alone
• Dress formally
• Print your own business cards or have them made at VistaPrint for free
• Have plenty of resumes and carry them in a professional binder
• Walk up to each booth with purpose and introduce yourself with a firm handshake, your full name, and direct eye contact
• Ask for a card if it isn’t offered

That’s about it! It baffles me why the typical job seeker doesn’t do these things, but it isn’t my problem—and in fact it is to YOUR benefit that you’ll stand out so easily.

How to decide? Your choice of resume formats is critical to your job search. In most cases, your work history will determine if you should emphasize your job history or transferrable skills.

Often, the same job is posted in different places. This video explains the preferred “channels” that hiring managers use, and how to find them.

Roughly one job opening for every five unemployed people has been a fairly stable statistic from the government over the past few months.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds, at least not for the individual job seeker. As a policy-maker, this is a scary macroeconomic situation that confounds policy…but we’re not concerned about that. What we’re concerned with is helping you get a job.

In order to get an interview opportunity in a 1:5 situation, you need two things: 1) Having your job application materials in the top 20% of candidates; 2) Lots of patience and perseverance.

Being a  ”Top 20%” job applicant isn’t as hard as it sounds. The fact that you’re even reading this blog probably puts in the top 50%, simply because you care. Janis and I were at a fair where a guy walked up to us, his young daughter in hand, and told us he’d been unemployed for a number of months. We asked about his resume, and he said, “I don’t like resumes.” Really.

 Assuming you are targeting a position that you are well-qualified for (and you must do this! ), following the tips you read here and elsewhere on the Web can bring you into the top 20% and get you interviews…over a period of time.

If you don’t have the time to waste, you need to do much better than that. Definitely get a professional resume (even as an English major I can’t imagine doing my own–just too “close” to it for perspective), and tailor your cover letter to each position. Also consider the stand-out options which are quite easy to do–thank you notes after an interview (still very rare!), a decent photo placed in the upper corner of your cover letter, and business cards.

If you’re near Sacramento, I’d love to help you out with creating a video profile you can include in your job application. As these are brand-new to the job market, a video profile is effective not only in getting your application noticed, but often encourages the hiring manager to leapfrog the phone screen and bring the video candidate directly in for a face-to-face interview. 

If you’re interested in this, you can either sign up for a workshop on this site, or get the full service (1 hour appointment, which includes scripting and teleprompter), at our studio on Watt avenue.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure you are well-prepared and persistent. Try to think of the job market as a challenge rather than an obstacle. You simply have to figure out how to be a more appealing candidate than your peers (who are also human and won’t have perfect scores in every regard), and this will lead to success.

Here’s a video explaining a great way to get your application noticed by writing a custom cover letter. Instead of starting with a blank sheet of paper, you write the cover letter as a direct, targeted response to the perceived needs of the hiring manager. This will help you get over writer’s block plus avoid the fine line between self-promoting arrogance and expressionless fluff.

I’ve been there. You forget over the weekend to fill out your twice-monthly (is this the week, or next week?), and you rush to get your EDD form in the mail. Only problem is that there are lots of checkboxes, and if you get any of them wrong, you’ll get a letter the next Thursday or Friday instead of a check.

So do this instead: carefully fill out your next EDD form and hold it up to the light with a piece of paper on front of it. Trace the boxes that you’ve checked, and then cut them out with a razor blade. You’ll get your very own, personalize EDD form-checker that looks like this:

Obviously you’ll want to be careful in how you use this, and who knows, maybe EDD will move the questions around at some random week. But it helped me out for some time, to make the EDD check a bit more reliable for me. Hope it can help you too.

Janis and I have been recommending Indeed.com for some time as a daily go-to site for job listings. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this breed of aggregator sites, they are a sort of Google for job listings, so you enter your position title and location (zip code works well), and get jobs from many sources. These days this is an invaluable service, it saves time (and excuses) for not doing a comprehensive job search every morning. 

Recently I’ve been impressed by SimplyHired.com, which adds a few unique features. First, it seems to have a deeper range of job listings. I’m going to be running some analytics this week prior to our July 9th workshop to present to our students. Secondly, I really like the trend graphing tools, which can instructive in finding key words to add to your resume.

Finally, it has has a really slick integration with LinkedIn.com. You actually give it your LinkedIn credentials:

Once this is done, you can simply click on the “In” icon on a job listing and it will show you people within the company that you have a potential connection to utilize.  This saves a step or too, to say the least!

Now you may be wondering, what do I do with this information? Well let me tell you one guerilla tactic. DON”T apply for the position. Instead, reach out to your connection through LinkedIn. If they can provide internal information about the job position, you may be able to gather more intelligence, or at the minimum do the obvious thing–apply for the position using the company’s own applicant tracking system.

Interesting stuff for sure. Let me know if you’ve got something to share about SimplyHired.

TheLadders.com is a nationwide job board specializing in a “community of senior–level professionals searching only $100K+ jobs.” This is an interesting concept if it applies to you, but does it work? More importantly, does it give you opportunities that you won’t find elsewhere?

In my experience, no. I started a search in April of 2008 with TheLadders, looking for a senior-level IT Project Management job. This position was in $115K-$140K range,well within the scope of their listings, and I was a well-qualified candidate with 15+ years experience and a highly-valued PMP certification.

By December of 2008, I had not had a single referral from TheLadders, at least not unless I had talked to someone without asking where they found me (which did happen occasionally). I pulled the plug on my membership and moved on…(as it turns out, to starting my own business, VideoProfile.tv).

One the of the explanations I would offer is that most “100K jobs” are rather like Canadian cities–they hug the southern border rather tightly. Those $110K project management job quickly became $90K jobs as soon as companies and recruiters saw how many project managers were on the bench and willing to accept less. My theory is that candidates on TheLadders may be seen as pretentious or demanding since the pay scales have been in constant flux.

But more to the point, there are a lot of free job boards out there with more activity. These days it is so simple for managers/HR/recruiters to use filtering tools to find executive-level staff that TheLadders doesn’t really offer anything unique.

What is great about TheLadders is CEO Marc Cenedella’s daily email. He is obviously a great person, very knowledgeable and supportive. He writes some of the best regular job seeker advice out there, and this is a personal touch that is totally missing from the big job boards. You may want to sign up on TheLadders for their free version, which won’t let you apply to job but will get you access to the email.

[See my comment below]

It’s a shame to have to un-recommend a job board, but for $30/month I personally wasn’t getting the value I needed to see. If you do decide to try it, make sure you track where your contacts are being made and pull the plug as you see fit.

Also, if there are any great success stories from TheLadders, let me know.

Lets face it, even an employment agency is a business. You do have to search for a reputable agent, use one that is well established and that you know you can trust. Go online with the BBB.org, review the comments others have made.

Make an appointment with them, and you must be upfront on what your requirements are as well. Do not give them the impression that you are desperate, (yes) you do need a job. But, give yourself some worth in your search. You are looking for something specific, and only in a certain geographic area. Give them your salary range. Do not just jump at the first thing that they offer, yes they need to fill the lower paying jobs. But, let someone else take that one! Hold out for something a little better.

Stay in contact with them, let them know that you are serious. You will probably need to call them twice a week. Of course, you do not want to be a pest but, if they are aware that you are on top of your job search as well, they will be more apt to remember you and be much more responsive to your needs.

Your recruiter can be your friend, you just have to set some boundaries and be very specific on your needs.

There’s no doubt about it – the reason for going to a job fair is to interact one-on-one with employers (and recruiters). And its an exciting thing, to have the chance to actually talk to people instead of filling out endless online forms with no response.

That’s why it never fails – several dozen or up to several hundred job seekers line up outside the fair, in some cases hours before it opens. The throng swamps the check-in desk, sweeps quickly around the floor, and one-by-one begin lining up at booths to talk to employers. These days some fairs may only have a few “actual” employers, so these unfortunate staff people will shake the hands of hundreds of people (bring some Purell!).

I’ve got a tip for you, and it comes from Joe ____ (hi Joe!). Joe is the most well-travelled job seeker in Northern California. He lives near Stockton and never misses an event, at least not one I’ve been to. Anywhere from Roseville to Freemont to San Francisco, Joe is there.

In the last couple months, I noticed that Joe was arriving later and later. In fact, these days Joe sometimes even helps us pack up our gear at the end of a long day.

Now, if you can’t tell by now, we know Joe pretty well.  Most fair attendees arrive in the first couple hours, and in the last hour hardly anyone shows up. And yet, exhibitors are obligated to stick it out until the management gets a little lax in the last 30 minutes or so  (I’ve seen some companies clear out almost an hour before the end).

Here’s the secret: you want to get to the job fair about an hour before close. It will be less stressful, and the parking will be easy. You’ll have no competition, and in fact you’ll be the last person that employers might remember. It’s a small detail to make yourself remembered.

Just like Joe.