What do you need to know to find a job in this economy? To take the temperature of the current job climate, we asked top professionals situated in different segments of the job-search universe: an executive coach, two executive recruiters and a VP of HR at a major media company.

 

Belinda Plutz

“Answering a job posting isn’t enough. You have to network in simultaneously. Answer the posting, get in the queue. But reaching out to someone there who also carries you in seems to be one of the things that works. I think you need to have 65% of what they’re looking for before it's worthwhile to answer a listing.

“You really can’t make a major career transition by answering a posting for which you do not have 65% of the qualifications. People say to me, ‘I want to change my resume because I want to make a career transition.’ But if you don’t have the goods, you’re not going to get anywhere.

“A big piece of advice these days is, if you’re working or not working, stop reading about how bad the job market is. It doesn’t help. It is paralyzing.  People are getting jobs.  Some people are even getting rehired into the companies that laid them off — unfortunately, sometimes it’s as a freelancer.

“But you shouldn’t temp at a low level if you’ve been at a high level. People with management-level experience say to me, ‘If I just get a foot in the door…’ But you’re going to get a foot in the door at the wrong level, and that doesn’t seem to work either.  You think, ‘I just want to show them what I’m doing,’ but if what you’re doing is not what you really have expertise in doing, it can be problematic. People go in at an administrative level when they really were at a more senior level, and then they can’t move out of that.

“I’m urging people not to wait for the axe to fall to start job-hunting. I had a client this morning who said, ‘Maybe I’ll get a package.’ And I said to him, ‘How much is this package going to be?’ And at most it might be 10 weeks if he’s lucky. If you’re not working, it’s much harder even to make a lateral salary move. If you’re working, they’re less likely to offer you less than what you’re earning.

“People should be more strategic long-term. We’re all in short-term mode. People are working so much harder these days, more hours, more responsibilities — it’s very difficult to carve out the time to do the exploration for a new job, but I think you just have to try to do it.
 
“It’s critically important to maintain connections with former bosses and colleagues. You need to have people who know about you, who can be references, who can be connections, especially people who were critical to your previous work success.”

Belinda Plutz is a full-time coach/mentor who has been helping others take control of their careers since 1989 as a principal of her firm Career Mentors, Inc. (careermentors@comcast.net |212-947-3180)

 

Jessica Eve Goldfarb

“The climate now is very conservative. People are gearing back up with the change in the economy, but there’s a hesitancy to hire the wrong person, at almost any level. Budgets are tight, people don’t want to make mistakes.

“So the number one thing any job-seeker needs to do is to present herself in the best possible light for the role she’s applying for.  So that means that it’s not OK, as it might have been in the past, to send out form letters and form resumes. It really means having to customize your approach to any company with the needs of that company. It means researching the company, researching the people in the company — fortunately, that’s easier to do these days. It means trying to figure out what the role is and anticipate what the company needs from that role outside of what’s written in the job description. If you know the direction the company is moving in and you do some research and find this is what’s going on with this company at this moment in time, then you might know that along with having all the skills written in the job description, you also have some insight that you can communicate in an initial contact with them. You almost don’t need more than this.

“The other thing I would recommend to anyone looking for work at this moment in time is that it takes an incredible amount of persistence and patience. It’s not about the job-seekers. It’s not about the fact that they aren’t good enough for this company or that company. You’ve got to get that kind of personal insecurity out of it. If you’re looking for a job, you’re going to face a lot of rejection in this climate, but you’ve got to be persistent and use your network as effectively as possible, to keep getting to the next step of how to get in to talk to the right person about a job.

“With this many people out of work and this many people looking to fill any one position, it’s exceptionally difficult, and you have to be able to hold on long enough for the right thing.

“We have candidates who are consulting. In service roles, including things like marketing and communications, there is a lot of project work. Part of that is because the people who are buying those services in this conservative environment are not opening up their budgets for large programs. They aren’t going to take on an entire revamping of the corporate image and a new advertising campaign and a real PR push — they’re going to take it in segments. And they’re only releasing to their marketing and communications vendors the work on a project-by-project basis.

“It makes it harder for those companies, because they’re used to going in and getting to know their clients. Now they‘re doing things that are more transactional, that don’t have the scope of work that they’re accustomed to. These marketing and communications firms can only hire people on a consulting basis because they don’t have the commitment from the client for the larger project. That’s a reality, and it rolls out into being a trial for the full-time job. If the client rolls out the project to the next stage, then as a consultant you’re in a better position because you already know the client, you already know the project, you know how to take it to the next stage.

“And if they open up a campaign as we roll further out into the renormalized economy, then once that campaign is secure and the client has agreed to a longer-term commitment and a retainer relationship, then you can be hired on staff.

“As a recruiter, I have more jobs on my desk now than I’ve had in the last year. But what you’ll find is that everything takes longer and everybody is more conservative — risk-averse — in the hiring process. It requires a very large commitment of time. If the client gets a sense that you’re not 100% committed to making the move or wanting to be in that company, they will shy away.

“Dig in, use your network, get to the people you need to get to, tell them why you would be good for their company.”

Jessica Goldfarb is the managing director of Roz Goldfarb Associates, a recruitment firm that specializes in branding, design and marketing communications and digital media. She serves as its counsel and director of business development, as well as recruitment consultant for branding specialists. She came to RGA after six years experience as an attorney and specialist in employment law and technology policy. She has served on the Board of Directors and the Career Development Committee of NYWICI. (www.rgarecruiting.com/rga/ | 212-475-0099)

 

Kate Hartnick Elliott

“I think that you need to look carefully at the job for which you’re applying and carefully think about what skills and experience you bring to the table for that job and answer that question in advance.

“You need to be a solution finder. You should have looked over the company very carefully, you should try to have understood what their challenges are, you should have thought about the job description as they have given it to you in relation to those challenges. If possible, you should write your letter or conduct your phone interview using as many metrics as you can showing you’ve solved similar problems in the past and case studies and stories buttressing that point. Case studies prove that you’re not just playing back their words.

“There was definitely hiring again in 2010. I would say that in March 2009, the situation started improving, and it’s been improving steadily since. With that being said, there are still a lot of people out of work, but it is improving. I am seeing hiring within the areas of e-commerce, digital marketing, and online media, more than other areas.

“This year’s job-seekers need to be very cognizant of the target company’s time. They should know that the companies are likely getting hundreds and hundreds of resumes. Actions such as calling to see if the company received a resume, which was seen as proactive in the past, is now going to be perceived as not respectful of the time of somebody who’s trying to run and grow a business while being deluged with resumes.”

Kate Hartnick Elliott is president of Hartnick Consulting, a boutique executive search firm that focuses on the e-commerce, marketing, media, and nonprofit arenas. A longtime member of NYWICI, she has served on the Boards of NYWICI and the NYWICI Foundation, and was editor-in-chief of NYWICI's Matrix Times in 2005. (www.hartnicksearch.com | 212-489-6077)
 

Scherri Roberts

“Competition is fierce because of all the people on the market, all the talented people who were affected by the changes in our economy last year, and beginning in 2008. But the stigma about approaching the job market because you are unemployed has disappeared because so many people have been affected. So I think that people should have a comfort level about interviewing.

“I think that what you have done with your time off is important, so you should be prepared to talk about that. I’ve talked to some people who maybe weren’t able to find a job that paid what they wanted it to pay, or maybe they did something free for a nonprofit organization, a volunteer organization, internships — anything that shows you were productive with your time. Or even if you did something that was a personal interest, that was personally interesting to you, you should be prepared to talk about that as well. That can also explain a gap in a person’s resume. Taking a class, travel — anything that shows you used the time productively.

“And for those who are looking to maintain a job, those are certainly things to boast about. You can talk about just how you added value to the organization, how you stayed focused in a time of really great chaos, how you kept your team focused and together, how you did more with fewer people. There are a lot of stories that can be positive that can be told about the year we just exited.

“Having a positive story shows resiliency. If you can tie it to your career focus, all the better.

“I talked with a woman who used her time to intern at a web-based organization, and she didn’t have any web experience in her background, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really great that you went out and you did that.’

“Right now, I don’t see the downsizing that we’ve seen as an industry in the past year or two. I don’t see the level of shedding of staff. I don’t see a whole lot of growth, but I do see replacement of open positions. So I think there aren’t as many freezes as there were in 2009.”

Scherri Roberts was appointed vice president/director of human resources for Hearst Magazines in February 2007. She was previously the director of human resources at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
 
Roberts returned to Hearst Magazines after serving as its director of human resources from 2001 to 2004 and as executive director of human resources from 2004 to 2006. Prior to Hearst, Roberts worked at Phase2Media as director of human resources from 2000 to 2001. She previously held the position of director of human resources at the Children’s Television Workshop from 1997 to 2000, providing HR generalist services for the domestic TV, film & video division; products & international TV; legal & business affairs; finance; and Noggin, a joint venture with Nickelodeon. Roberts has also held positions in human resources and marketing management at Cigna Corporation, Zeneca Inc. and Bell Atlantic Corporation.