Indianapolis, IN (PRWeb) February 20, 2007 -- Imagine being on the verge of college graduation and trying to stand out to employers during an overcrowded campus career fair. Now imagine waiting for 45 minutes in a campus career center just to get 10 minutes worth of job search advice from a dismissive grad student. These scenarios are all too familiar--and all too frustrating--for students on the brink of their transition from the classroom to the workplace.
Students facing situations like these are often stuck in passive job searches that lead nowhere. In fact, national employment statistics report the job search for new professionals takes approximately six to eight months, according to the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
This time could be cut in half with a little aggressiveness on behalf of the job seeker, according to David Noble, a professor at the University of Indianapolis and author of Gallery of Best Resumes, Fourth Edition. He believes the culprit in a long, unsuccessful job search is often the tendency of job seekers to passively rely on their resume to do all of their work for them.
"If you want to be singled out because of your resume, it should be somewhere between spectacular and award-winning," says Noble. This is typically an unlikely feat for many people entering the work world and writing their resumes for the first time.
Fortunately, a resume doesn't have to be spectacular to land interviews. It just needs to be used with a combination of proactive strategies that will keep a job seeker's name in the minds' of employers. Noble says these proactive strategies can include any of the following techniques.
• Talking to relatives, friends and acquaintances about helping you meet people who can hire you before a job is available.
• Contacting employers directly using the yellow pages, the Internet, or business directories to identify types of organizations that could use a person with your skills.
• Creating phone scripts to speak with the person most likely to hire someone with your background and skills.
• Walking into a business to talk directly to the person who is most likely to hire someone like you.
• Using a schedule to keep track of appointments and callbacks.
• Working at least 25 hours a week to search for a job.
"When you're this active in a job search, your resume complements your efforts at being known to a prospective employer before the person receives it. For this reason, you can rely less on your resume to get someone's attention," says Noble.
Nevertheless, that doesn't mean a lackluster resume will do. Noble warns, "If your resume is mediocre or conspicuously flawed, it will work against you and may undo all your good efforts in searching for a job."
Gallery of Best Resumes, Fourth Edition, is available from the publisher (
www.jist.com or 1.800.648.JIST). For a free media copy or to speak with the author, contact Natalie Ostrom.
JIST, America's Career Publisher, is the leading publisher of job search, career, occupational information, life skills and character education books, workbooks, assessments, videos and software.
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