10 Little Things You Can Do To Move The Needle In Your Job Search

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Hunting for a job is no fun. It's a lot of hoops to jump through, and it can be demoralizing at times. Hit a roadblock? Here are ten little things you can do to move the needle in your job search.

1. Be nice to people. I'm not referring to just interviewers and recruiters, by the way. Be friendly. Say "Hello." Say "Thank you." Facilitate professional and personal introductions. People tend to help out nice people, and if you're on the market, and you made a positive impression, you may be front of mind when they hear about a job opportunity or are looking to fill one of their own. Jerks get referred less often than nice people.
    

2. Let recruiters know you're available on LinkedIn. There's a little box on LinkedIn on your profile page where you can tell recruiters combing the system that you're open to hearing about jobs, and how they can reach you. Why not make it clear you're looking? Here's the link.
    

3. Take quick and easy training. Applying to jobs that require Salesforce CRM experience, and you don't have it? Or maybe you need to buff up on your project management skills. Go to LinkedIn Learning, Lynda, or any of the other online training portals and take a seminar. Then add the class to your resume – it'll show up as a keyword (and a skill in your toolbox).
    

4. Circulating your resume? Send or upload a version made in Microsoft Word. Most Applicant Tracking Systems (employer databases) are optimized for Word since it's the most common word processing platform in the business world. A resume saved in Google Docs or Apple Pages formats and uploaded into an ATS might not keep its formatting. And an unattractively formatted – or just plain jumbled – resume may get ignored by a recruiter, regardless of the cause.
    

5. Contact your college's career placement center. So what if you graduated 20 years ago? Most colleges allow their alumni to utilize the campus career services office. In addition to providing access to job postings and career fairs, advisors can provide career coaching and facilitate connections to employers with whom they've built relationships. Remember, your college wants you gainfully employed – it's good for the school's reputation, well-placed alumni can provide students with internship and career opportunities, and a happy, income-earning alumni often become willing donors.
    

6. Be generous with "thank you" notes. It's a no-brainer to send "thank you" notes after a job interview – or at least it should be. This simple act of post-interview gratitude can propel your candidacy forward. And remember to show gratitude to anyone who does you any sort of favor in your job search.
    

7. Ask your former employer if they could use some help. Assuming you left a prior job on good terms and would be interested in going back, call your old manager. The combination of a low unemployment rate and an innate familiarity with your ex-employer's culture and workflows could position you as a desirable candidate.
    

8. Call a headhunter who has placed you with an employer in the past. You may not be on their radar. But if they were successful in placing you before, they may be willing and able to consider you for a new job.
    

9. Use a professional-sounding email address on your resume. It really doesn't matter whether your address ends with gmail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com, or aol.com (I get that question a lot, by the way – people are worried about age discrimination based upon having an old ISP. Don't sweat it, unless we're talking about having CompuServe as your carrier. It's more dangerous to put your college graduation date on your resume if it's more than ten years ago). What does matter is not coming across as not being serious about the job search – avoid tags like partygirl23@gmail.com, sexydude71@aol.com, or ihatedogs@bellsouth.net.
    

10. Use your cell phone number on your resume. Be reachable, quickly. A missed call, or delaying a return call, could cost you the job. Side note: Have your voicemail set up with a greeting that says your name somewhere in the message, so that recruiters know they've reached the right number.
     

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Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

I'm Graduating From College With A Low GPA. How Can I Get A Good Job?

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You're about to graduate from college and join the workforce – congratulations!

Unfortunately, your overall grade point average is less than stellar. And this could hurt you in your job hunt as employers compare you to other recent graduates who performed substantially better academically.

How do you mitigate a low GPA, and still look great on a resume or in an interview? Here are 6 strategies you can use to beat the low grade blues.

1. Analyze the numbers behind the GPA to identify positive patterns. I personally started college quite poorly, garnering low grades my first and second years. I got my act together my Junior and Senior years, earning a substantially higher grade point average during that period;  I was able to calculate a cumulative GPA for that period of time reflecting both solid academic performance and substantial improvement. I included both GPAs on my resume, side-by-side. You can also slice-and-dice your GPA by major, minor, business classes, and so forth to identify potential strengths.
    

2. If you took difficult classes, spell these out on your resume. A curriculum heavy in hard sciences (i.e., organic chemistry or molecular biology) can be especially brutal on a GPA. Recruiters and interviewers are usually aware of this, and may be willing to cut you a bit of slack (or empathy). Create a section directly under your degree detailing "Notable Coursework" to detail these difficult classes.
    

3. Get some professional experience. An internship or a part time/summer job providing real-world work can effectively mitigate a bad GPA. By getting real world experience, you validate that you are in fact employable, and you hopefully learned some valuable technical or business skills in the process to highlight on your resume and in interviews. Hiring managers like to see transferable work experience, as it reduces the learning curve and risk. Plus, you gather professional references who can speak to potential employers about your value and work ethic.
    

4. Volunteer with a nonprofit organization. Not only does this provide many of the same benefits of professional experience as listed above, volunteerism also demonstrates an inclination toward making the world a better place. And yes, you can add volunteer work to a resume.
    

5. Identify and address external factors which played a role in bringing your GPA down. Perhaps, while taking a full class load, you had to manage the family business. Or maybe you were a single parent. Or you had to serve as primary caretaker for your mother who was fighting terminal cancer. Or you had to earn and pay your own tuition. Life happens. You can provide important context on factors such as these to an employer in your cover letter or in an interview.
    

6. If you were simply a lousy student, admit it. When an employer asks about your GPA, don't equivocate, don't avoid the topic, and don't get defensive. Own it. Explain that you were not a great student, you didn't put in the effort needed to get the good grades, and were fortunate to learn better study skills a bit too late in your college career. Then you can move on to the next topic, and highlight everything you did right.

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Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

The Joys of Salary Negotiation

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After you've sent a resume to a company, somebody in human resources will call you up to screen you for fit. They will invariably ask you what you will are looking for in terms of salary.

This is where it gets tricky. It's a game of chicken – salary discussions, especially at the beginning of the process, are especially difficult because the first party to give away their position loses their leverage to negotiate.

Your goal here is not necessarily aligned to the company's goal in terms of compensation. Assuming the position is a good match for both parties, here's where your interests diverge.

Your goal: To get the best salary offer you can.

The company's goal: To get the best candidate into the position in the most cost-effective manner possible. Less money is better.

The actual figure you agree upon is the reality.

Before getting into negotiation strategy, let's discuss a few facts about how corporate salaries are determined (by the way, this is a simplification, so I'm certain the compensation professionals out will have information to add):

1. Companies - especially larger ones - usually have salary bands in which employees need to fit. For a particular position, there is an assigned salary range. For example, the company may have determined that they are willing to pay between $15 and $20 per hour for an administrative assistant. They don't want to have too large of a salary discrepancy between several individuals doing the same type of job, but they also want a bit of wiggle room to offer more money if necessary for the right candidate.
    
2. Salaries are usually driven by market data. A company will subscribe to (and often provide information for) compensation studies tracking what the market will pay for a particular job. This data take into consideration several factors - skill sets, nature of the market, geography, and what competitors are willing to pay.
    
3. A company selectes a compensation philosophy. This goes back to the market data described above. After looking at the data, executives make a decision about their compensation philosophy as to how it relates to their own company. A company looking to aggressively hire high-performing talent or that competes in a fast-changing market like technology tends to extend offers at the higher end of the range. Other companies may look to hire at the general market salaries, tending toward the average.
    
4. Companies often have less flexibility on salaries for recent graduates and entry-level hires. This applies to your newly minted MBA just as much as it does to your nephew who recently received their bachelor's degree. Companies often have a concrete salary structure for these recent grads, with adjustments up and down for work location and the ranking for the school from which they graduated. In other words, a graduate with an Ivy league degree can often fetch more than the local state school.
    
5. There's a lot more to consider in the offer than just salary. Benefits matter. A lot. Companies often pay a great deal of money to provide a competitive benefits package. You know that health insurance the company's offering? Not every employer subsidizes the same amount to cover that, often leaving you - the employee - to pay a larger share of your premiums or co-pays.  There are other benefits, too - dental insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition reimbursement, vacation time, holidays, company car, 401(k) matches and so on - into which companies can pay dearly. A richer benefits package leaving more take-home money in the employee's pocket may give an employer a real incentive to offer a lower base salary, while still enabling an employee to make ends meet.
    
6. Variable compensation matters, too. I'm referring to bonuses, profit sharing, commissions, and long-term incentives. Not every job offers an incentive beyond the base salary. A bonus is real money, and a company's philosophy may direct them to offer a lower base salary in exchange for a desirable bonus target.

Here are some considerations when negotiating salary:

• It's to your advantage to avoid giving a specific expected salary figure – until it's essential.  It's not always possible to hold off on showing your hand. A recruiter may push you to give a specific number to ensure that you fit within their salary structure. But if you can hold off without coming across as confrontation, it's worth trying. The best scenario is to see if the job itself is a good marriage before locking down a specific number. You'll keep your leverage.
   
• Sometimes ignorance can work in your favor. This isn't always true, but in certain cases it absolutely can. If you're a recent graduate (or been at the same company for a very long time) and an employer is asking you what you are looking for in terms of salary, it's okay to say, "I don't have a specific figure in mind, I am looking for a compensation package that is in line for a recent graduate with an MBA from my university." A similar approach also works well if you know you've been underpaid against the market, you can say something like, "I'm looking for a salary that is in line with my experience and education."
   
• The employer may push hard to find out your salary expectations. In which case, you may wish to consider taking a slightly different approach with your answer - "In my current position I have been earning $x, I am looking for a salary that will take into consideration the accomplishments and experiences I gained in my present role." You're not telling the employer that you're asking for a specific figure - you're giving an idea of where you've been.
   
• Sometimes it doesn't matter what you want. See #4 above - the company may pay everyone the same salary for a certain job. In which case, you have the option of taking or leaving the offer.
   
• Ask about the benefits. A rich benefits package has real cash value. Consider all the non-salary components of the offer as part of the total compensation.
   
• A sign-on bonus may make up any difference. The company may really want to get you on board, but their salary bands (or some other reason) may prevent them from offering a higher salary. Or perhaps you are walking away from a bonus at your current job. A sign-on bonus might help close the gap during that first year.
   
• Be sincere in your negotiations. Tell the corporate recruiter that you really want to make this work and that company x is clearly your first choice (assuming this is true). Perhaps you are willing to meet somewhere in the middle of what was offered and what you asked for. The more you can make the recruiter feel that this is a partnership designed to meet a common goal, the better.
   
• The choice is ultimately yours. You don't have to accept the job at the salary offered just because the company offers you the position. If you've negotiated in good faith, then you should be able to walk away from an offer with no hard feelings. Which leads me to one last point...
   
• Avoid getting into the negotiations for counter-offers with your current employer. It's not recommended - find out why here.

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Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.