How to find work when no one is hiring and there aren’t any jobs
by Jay Markunas, Career Consultant
Last night at my job club, we had Kathy Lansford-Powell from the Launch Pad Job Club {LPJC}. The LPJC is the largest job club in central Texas with over 6,000 members. Kathy began the organization in 2001 after the dot com bust. We were honored to gather some of her wisdom when she spoke on “How to find work when no one is hiring and there aren’t any jobs”.
Best Impression
Reiterating what I wrote yesterday about creating an image and that first impression, Kathy says “the one who gets the job is the one that makes the best impression”. She also gave us a lot of other practical and encouraging job tips such as:
- Statistically the last quarter of the year is the best time to get hired.
- If you take a “survival job” while you are separated from your chosen profession, then make sure the survival job is part-time. Having a job that is 8:00am - 5:00pm will bring your job search to a halt since you cannot interview during work hours.
LinkedIn
One of the best pieces of advice Kathy gave us was on LinkedIn. We already know the power of LinkedIn, The World’s Largest Professional Network. When you research companies, you can also see some amazing statistics. One neat tool is to lookup your current company - or target company - to see where employees worked at before and after they work at the target company. For example, Microsoft gets many of their employees from IBM, HP, Oracle, and Intel. After Microsoft many workers go to Google, Amazon, and Cisco Systems:
Small Businesses
Kathy’s final thoughts were on small business. To find small businesses, look at the Book of Lists put out by most metro-area business journals. The Book of Lists contain lists like “The 100 biggest non-profits” in the area, or “25 biggest semiconductor companies”.
Also look for companies on their 3rd or 4th round of funding. They are more likely to be hiring, and they have investor confidence. After you identify companies that are possibly ready to hire, you then make the connection within the company who can walk your resume to the person with the power to hire you.
