An article by Fred E. Coon
Chairman, CEO Stewart, Cooper & Coon contains Coon's list of top ten job seeker mistakes. The first item on his list is the frequently made mistake of mailing unsolicited resumes.
Mailing Unsolicited Resumes
Unsolicited Resumes are garbage, scrap paper, wasted effort and job-search (junk), according to Jack Chapman, author of "Negotiating your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute." Frank Traditi, Career Strategist and author of "Get Hired NOW!?" feels the same way. He says that people "treat their job search like a direct mail advertising campaign. They expect great response from blindly sending out hundreds of Resumes. They wait by the phone and it never rings. They sit at their computer and never get a response."
Another mistake is focusing on vacancies. Some experts suggest finding companies you want to work for and starting with these whether there are obvious vacanies or not.
2. Looking for "Vacancies"
Many jobs are not advertised. Harvard's Mark Granovetter found that 43.4 percent of jobs are created for the applicant, often at the time of the interview. Traditi agrees. "It's no wonder that job seekers spend many months on their job search, or become so frustrated that they give up looking for work. They are looking in all the wrong places," he says.
Another failure on Coon's list is not being prepared.
7. Not Preparing for Interviews
Prospective job seekers always tell me that as long as I get them in front of the decision-maker they will take it from there. Most people think the purpose of an interview is to "interview." Wrong. The purpose is to eliminate your competition. If you don't know how to do this, then you will not be successful in securing the position or money that you want. You can never be over-practiced or over-prepared for an interview.
Other job seeker mistakes on the list include losing ones motivation, taking about money too early and not asking for help. There are some great tips here. This would be a good article to bookmark.
