Your first port of call should be any professional institute or association you belong to. In addition to publishing job advertisements in their own journals, many of them operate some form of register of available appointments. Competition for such vacancies may well be relatively low, since employers may try this service either before or instead of either placing an advertisement in the press or notifying agencies, encouraged by the fact that the professional society's register usually costs them either nothing at all or at least significantly less than the commercial alternatives.
Since such services are operated in different ways by different professional organizations, you are advised to ring up and check the situation out. While you are on the phone, do not forget to ask about any additional help which may be available, such as job clubs, seminars or counseling. If you are unemployed, you may also be able to get your subscription waived until you find a new job.
It's not What You Read
Another fertile, but under-utilized, source of job leads is the business press. You should, of course, be keeping a general eye on what is going on in the business world anyway. If you do not, you can easily come unstuck at an interview when the conversation turns to prospects in a given sector, a current or recent takeover battle, and movements in stock market indices or the trends in foreign exchange rates.
However, it is not just what you read, but the way that you read it. A company in your industry has just announced results which show that it has moved into a growth phase. That means that they may, sooner or later, need to make some additional hiring's. Get in now, before they actually go out on to the job market.
Do not confine yourself to the news items. Look, too, at the announcements of new appointments. An incoming managing director, or head of function, often wants to be a new broom. This could be another opportunity to throw your hat into the ring in advance of jobs being put out on to the open market. Remember also to check the company the new appointee has just left. While the recruitment of a replacement will probably be under way, an appointment may not yet have been made. If the company is beginning to have doubts about the quality of the candidates for the position, your intervention could be perfectly timed.
Try to read, or at least perform a focused skim on, as wide a range of publications as possible. In addition to the Financial Times and the business pages of other broadsheets, the Investors Chronicle carries a wealth of useful company news. You should also monitor the trade press in your sector and keep an eye on professional journals for announcements of members appointed to new Jobs.
If you are worried about the cost of doing this, you can usually find the FT, The Economist and some of the other relevant publications in your local library. To save time, you can combine this general reading with your review of the job advertisements.
In fact, you can gain a double benefit from your perusal of the appointments pages if you take a tip from John Woodger of Right Associates. He tells outplacement candidates to read the job advertisements in the same way that they would read a novel. The fact that a company is seeking a new MD, or appointing a director to head up finance, production or sales, points to the fact that it may be going through a process of change, and that could mean opportunities for you. Sometimes the nature of the change is actually spelt out in the text by way of references to, for example, expansion, restructuring or an export drive.
Do not confine yourself to advertisements for jobs in your own functional discipline. Scan those in other areas, too, looking for indications of growth or change that could spell job opportunities elsewhere in the organizations in question.
Once you have identified a lead, the best way to exploit it is naturally to try to network your way in. Failing that, a well-targeted speculative application is definitely worth a try, as the following case clearly shows.
Jenny had worked her way up to a senior position in a fairly large housing association. When management restructuring resulted in the loss of her job, she was initially despondent at the lack of advertised opportunities in her discipline. However, she did notice a newly established housing association advertising vacancies in various other functions. She wrote to them, high-lighting her experience and achievements, and asking if there might be any foreseeable openings for her as the organization developed. Realizing that an as yet small association might not be able to afford someone like herself on a full-time basis, she also suggested that they might like to consider employing her for a couple of days a week initially, which of course would have enabled her to continue looking for alternative opportunities.
Her letter resulted in an interview at which she obviously created a good impression. So much so, in fact, that although the organization could not yet justify a position solely in her former function, they actually created a full-time job for her by combining this function with another one which, likewise, would only occupy two or three days a week, given the size of the association. As a result, the new job which Jenny found herself is actually much broader and far more interesting than her old one.
Naturally, this approach cannot be expected to result in an immediate job lead every time, even when you do - like Jenny -largely make your own luck. There will, however, be some cases in which you may have planted a seed that will germinate in a few months' time - especially if you diarize a follow up - while in others you should at least be able to add some new names to your network.
Getting into Print
In addition to reading what other people have written, how about getting your own name into print? A lot of senior people get approached by journalists wanting to obtain an expert view on some business topic. Their desire to give an article authority by quoting your name naturally raises your profile, which does your career prospects no harm at all. As one executive search consultant put it, "The people most likely to be called by headhunters are those who are already highly visible within their industry."
While such requests may tail off if you are out of work, there is nothing to stop you - assuming that you have been sufficiently wise and well organized to keep the journalists' names and phone numbers - from contacting them with a view to getting further press coverage by giving your views on either the business or discipline in which you are an expert, or some interesting aspects of the process of finding a new job.
In the absence of such contacts, another way of getting into print, and therefore raising your profile, is by writing articles yourself. So long as you know your subject, you do not need the literary talents of a Booker Prize-winner. While you may find it difficult to break into the national newspapers, trade magazines and professional journals are often receptive to relevant material. You are in any case likely to derive greater benefit from putting your name in front of people in your particular sector.
If you go back to your asset register, and take a look at your experience and achievements, you should be able to come up with plenty of potential topics. Alternatively, you could write about the experience of hunting for a new job, but if you do this be sure to handle the subject in a positive or humorous way, rather than whingeing. Keep in mind the fact that while the immediate objective of writing articles is to raise your visibility, the ultimate purpose is to get a job. It is not a matter of attracting attention at all costs, but rather of being seen in the desired light.
It is also important not to overlook the benefits which can arise out of the actual process of putting an article together, before you even see your name in print. Researching material for your literary gems provides yet another opportunity to do further valuable networking, quite possibly opening the door to some contacts you would not otherwise have made.
Furthermore, the money you ultimately receive for your work will, of course, be welcome. The rates of payment for business writing will never make you a millionaire, but every little helps.
Since you will naturally not want to waste time which could be used more profitably on other job hunting activities, you will be well advised to contact the editor of your target publication before you even start assembling ideas or conducting research, let alone putting pen to paper - or, rather, fingers to keyboard (word processed output is essential). Submit a brief synopsis and ask whether your proposed article will be of interest. It will need both to be relevant to the target audience and to have a fresh slant. Some kind of topical tie-in will be an added bonus. If you get the thumbs up, be sure you check the required word count. There is no point producing a piece twice as long as the journal in question ever publishes.
More detailed advice can be found in the Writers' & Artists' Year-book (A & C Black), a copy of which will probably be in your reference library. It also includes listings of newspapers and magazines with details of the kind of material they seek, together with the name of the editor, and the publication's address and telephone number.
If you do not feel up to producing full-length articles, or if you lack the time to do so, you could still consider the letters pages of trade or professional journals. They are widely read and, although people do not always pay great attention to the names of the writers, they are more likely to do so if you are controversial. You may even set a train of letters in process on a subject and, in consequence, put yourself in touch with supporters - or even opponents - of your views who could be useful to you, either as network contacts or, if your luck is really in, direct job sources.
Yet another way of being seen is to place your own advertisement. Some newspapers and journals actually run a 'Situations Wanted' section. Generally speaking, this approach is not to be recommended; the only beneficiary being the publication in question which cheerfully pockets the charge for the insertion. The only circumstances in which it might be worth considering are to advertise your availability for contract or part-time work, or to publicise the fact that you have specialized skills or abilities which very few people possess. In these cases use trade, professional or local publications which are targeted directly at the audience you wish to reach and which also cost far less to advertise in than national newspapers.
Appearing in Public
Another way of raising your visibility, and demonstrating your expertise in your chosen field or business sector, is to speak at conferences and seminars. In addition to bringing yourself to the attention of the audience in question, and perhaps having the opportunity to meet key people afterwards, you may well obtain further publicity from the reporting of such events which often appears in some detail in relevant trade publications.
If you do not feel confident enough to address gatherings of Nuremburg rally proportions, you can start by giving talks at events like local meetings of your professional society. Your audience may be smaller, but it is likely to contain a high percentage of potentially useful people and you will often have the opportunity 'after the show* to speak to a good proportion of them.
Professional societies, trade associations and the like provide further opportunities to raise your visibility if you can get yourself on to their committees or if you accept some honorary office. You normally have to take this step while you are still in employment, and it may involve a certain amount of voluntary work, but you do not get anything for nothing.
Another way of meeting people is by attending conferences, exhibitions, and the various meetings of trade and professional groups. Participating in workshops on a whole range of subjects can keep you stimulated as well as enabling you to make new contacts, while alumni associations, especially of MBA classes and the like, can be a particularly useful way of meeting influential people.
However, since merely being present does not put you in the limelight in the way that being a speaker does, it is essential that you take the initiative to introduce yourself to as many potentially useful individuals as possible. If you already know one or more people at the gathering in question, you can improve your hit rate by getting them to make a few introductions for you.
Exhibitions provide unlimited opportunities to talk as you wander from stand to stand, but at events where much of the time is spent in a lecture theatre listening to speakers you have to make optimum use of openings provided by tea and coffee breaks to do your chatting up. Some extremely useful introductions have even been made in the loo, which just goes to show that you should never miss a single opportunity.
When it Pays to Volunteer
Professional and trade organizations are not the only ones in which it may be worth taking on an unpaid office. A school's board of governors, sports clubs, and charitable or leisure groups all provide opportunities for you to become known and to meet other people. In many cases the individuals with whom you come into contact may either be prominent in business themselves, or be capable of providing you with referrals which enable you to do some useful networking. Some executive search firms actually encourage their consultants to get involved in such organizations as a means of extending their networks, so you could even end up rubbing shoulders with a headhunter.
In fact, you do not always have to wait for a suitable committee place or honorary office to become available. Just volunteering your services to a charity can produce surprisingly good results. Peter, a training manager whose job had been made redundant, became a volunteer with the local branch of an organization providing a counseling service to members of the public in his locality. Within his first few weeks he met three fellow volunteers who all had extensive networks of contacts within the local business community and who were in a position to make useful introductions for him.
In addition to these specific benefits, voluntary work also provides opportunities for enjoyable social contact and gives the unemployed job hunter a feeling of doing something worthwhile. The importance of these factors in terms of their effect on confidence and morale should not be underestimated. It all goes to show how helping the community can, in return, help you in your efforts to find a new job.
A final Tip
It has been said that any publicity is good publicity. That may be true in show business, but it most certainly does not apply in job hunting. You are wasting your time raising your visibility if you fail to get the right message across. Just as in all the other approaches to finding a new position, you must prepare yourself thoroughly before you meet people, so that you never waste any opportunity that arises to promote yourself.
It is all too easy in quasi social situations to have a pleasant chat that gets you precisely nowhere or, worse still, to create a negative impression by the way that you present your current situation. If you want to make the most of the openings you create, be sure to follow the advice of Derek Edwards, managing director of Sanders and Sidney: 'Be seen positively', "Many a permanent job has been found through contract work."
