Job Hunting, Guerrilla Warfare Tactics: Part II

Sooo, I’m job hunting again after yet another staff reduction and change in corporate plans. I went back and read Job Hunting, Guerrilla Warfare Tactics: Part I and decided to include an update.

1. I’ve spent a lot of time recently on LinkedIn and found some great items.

   1. Groups:

      1. There are discussion groups for most industries which include members from all over LinkedIn.  A good place to find someone and maybe start a discussion without having to upgrade your account. $25.00 a month is a lot of money when you’re unemployed.

      2. The groups usually have a job board. If there aren’t any jobs listed you can check back. I also created a job listing with my resume. It’s not a job but I’ve seen others do it.  One of those, “I didn’t see where it said I couldn’t do it”.

      3. Groups are a great way to keep up with stuff going on in the industry.

      4. You can follow discussions and get email updates daily, weekly etc.

2. Profile Update:

   It seems almost every time I look at my profile I see something I need to add or change.  If you are on LinkedIn and haven’t looked at it in a while, you may want to update it.

3. Connections:

   I spend time every couple of days looking at my contacts and the contacts of my contacts. People are always adding new connections and you may find someone you know that you didn’t think about. I haven’t thought of a reason why having too many contacts would be a bad thing.

4. Applications:

   I didn’t see the use of most of these in the past but I spent some time today and gave it some more thought.

   1. Events: I signed up for the Events tool which shows me events people in my connections have created. Nothing exciting that I can do yet but there could be in the future.

   2. WordPress: I’ve had a WordPress account for a few months but stopped using it. I revived it and removed personal blogs and I’m starting to add industry and job hunting blogs such as the one you’re reading. Not everyone will read your blog but I randomly click on someone’s profile and now and then a blog. If someone clicks on your blog and see’s something they like it could lead to a contact or, dare I say, a job. It only takes one.

   3. BlogLink: Basically this finds blogs from your connections and puts them in one place for you to read. Again, you never know what you  might find.

5. Some other things I’ve found helpful.
   1. MajicJack:

      I signed up for Vonage to keep my minutes down on my cell and a week later a good friend mentioned that she uses MagicJack. Same principle but I found MJ much easier to setup and use and it’s $20.00 a year instead of $30.00 a month.

      1. Pros’:

         1. No cost phone calls anywhere in the US without having to watch your minutes

         2. A second contact number with voice mail that sends you an email with the message attached. So now I get an email on my iPhone with the attached VM and can respond if I want.

         3. MJ includes a free toolbar for your Outlook and other contact managers. This I love. I select my contact and click the number in the toolbar I want to call and it starts dialing. AND the BEST PART, I don’t have to enter all my contacts into the MJ interface.

         4. I can take this phone anywhere I can get an internet connection.

      2. Con’s:

         1. Using the audio over my computer directly seemed less than good for those I was talking to. I ended up purchasing a cheap cordless phone that plugs into the MJ unit and then a headset and I’m good to go.

         2. Vonage does have a better visual voice mail system and you can go online and see every call and details.  MJ has the calls on the computer interface which works. I don’t have much use for either at this point honestly.

         3. If you use the Outlook toolbar it won’t show you who is calling in.  It just shows a number.  Again, not an issue for me at this point.  Would be nice if there was a sync option.

   1. Ghost Calls:

   I just made that term up. Basically, when all else fails and I need some information I’ll jump on my MagicJack and call the company and play the ignorance card. “Hi, I’m looking for whoever is in charge of hiring…” or whatever. They don’t know who you are so you aren’t loosing anything and most of the time I get a name and title.

   Note: Make sure when you get a name you confirm the spelling and gender of the person.  I found a Lou and a George for two separate companies. Thankfully the person giving me the information in both cases told me these were both women. What I do is repeat the full name after I confirm the spelling and say “OK. Mr. George Smith; Director of Marketing. Is that correct?” And they’ll tell you if it’s not.

That’s it for now. Hope that helps someone.

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