TheLadders Blog

Let’s just put in out there, the job search isn’t an easy one.

The questions one has during the search are endless. Should my resume be multiple pages long? How soon after applying should I follow up? How do I follow up? How do I go about finding job postings at a particular company? I’m fearful I may price myself right out of the running – how much should I ask for?

So while many of us have personal trainers or financial advisors, we really don’t have a place to turn for expert advice around the job search. That is, until now. TheLadders Signature program is a proven 6-month program that gives you one-to-one advice from one of our certified professional career coaches (CPCC).

I turned to one of the best Career Advisors here at TheLadders, John Scottaline. What qualifies John? Well, in addition to being a certified career professional, John has placed 5 $100K+ job seekers into new roles in the past 5 months (as this is a 6 month program, I would say John is doing extremely well). Here are some of John’s best tips:

Don’t be shy – network.

Networking is one of the BEST ways to find out about jobs. Whether it is through industry and professional events, alumni organizations or your local PTA, there are many contacts to be made. By going to events and meeting people, this gives you the ability to learn about a position not yet posted or ones you may have overlooked. It can also help you get your foot in the door and help you land an interview. So get out there and start filling up your contact list!

Your resume is your first round of interviewing.

John says that there are many common resume mistakes, like including an objective statement rather than an executive summary – not having a title, providing too much information or in some cases not enough. Having a professionally written resume is definitely an avenue to consider.

Some best practices include having a brief description of the each company you’ve worked for with size and scope of the business. Each title should have a few sentences of responsibilities and, after the brief description, it’s best to select the right achievements to add in bullet points.

Salary negotiations – know what your worth!

Many job seekers are afraid their previous or current salary will hurt their current negotiation. John’s advice: “Know what your worth!” Doing a little research on salaries of people with your skillset and experience is the way to start and there are many tools out there to use. Don’t just factor in salary. This should be inclusive of bonus, vacation time, 401K, medical benefits, etc. Then take that knowledge with your compensation goal and do a check to see if they are in line with one another. Finally, you must ask yourself what you are willing to compromise, such as less vacation for a larger base salary.

If you want to learn more about how TheLadders can help you advance your career, visit our Signature site.

Janelle Taylor is Marketing Manager, Consumer Services at TheLadders.com. Her great love for marketing knows no bounds—similar to her love for books and March Madness.

We’ve all heard the old adage that when your work is your passion, you’ll never work another day in your life.

I find this to be true.

With my creative drive, I discovered very early on that there was no other career for me than one in the marketing world. And as someone who is passionate about what I do day in and day out, I can quickly recognize when I see others who have the same fire about their job.

I see that in my Signature team members.

Now I know you’ve heard of TheLadders Signature program, right? It’s our (hopefully soon-to-be) famous (that’s my big goal!) systematic 6-month job search program tailored for each one of our clients. Yes, I said it, tailored and we guarantee you a job offer!

Can you feel my excitement through your screen?

Our certified Career Advisors work with job seekers from identification of their job goals, to resume re-write, to offer negotiation and even through onboarding into their new role. Wow! Knowing how hard the job search can be, this program provides a partner to ride along with you for this sometimes-wayward journey. That, to me, is double wow!

This leads me back to our Signature team. Quite simply, they are awesome. When one of our clients receives a job offer, you would swear the customers Career Advisor also got an offer. Our Career Advisors are vested in the success of our clients and they, along with the entire Signature team, receive great joy when someone is placed.

What were some of TheLadders Signature team placements in the past few weeks, you ask? Well, some of the placements include roles such as:

• Vice President of Sales in Texas
• Strategic Account Executive in California
• Solutions Design Architect in Illinois
• Project Manager in New York
• Vice President of Marketing in Boston
• Chief Operating Officer in Colorado

What fantastic work our team has achieved thus far and we are only at the beginning (famous, famous, famous; if I see it, I can achieve it)!

A job has the ability to change someone’s life. If we can get someone into their dream role—which at the end of the day benefits not only our job seekers, but also their families—we’ve done a great thing!

So to that end, I must go back to work and continue making this program (yes, you already guessed it) FAMOUS!

Janelle Taylor is Marketing Manager, Consumer Services at TheLadders.com. Her great love for marketing knows no bounds—similar to her love for books and March Madness.

The time has finally arrived for TheLadders to help every career-driven professional looking for their next big opportunity! We’ve done so much for the $100K+ salaried workforce of America for the past eight years. Now we can’t wait to help everyone find work they love and a career they can be proud of. That’s what we mean when we say “Your career is our job!”

To celebrate our expansion to helping all professionals, we’re planning two days of work and play filled with career advice, resume tips and more from the best in the business plus great prizes and fun games to brighten your work day. If you’re in the downtown Manhattan area, pop by for your lunch break for a chance to meet our team and find out more about all these exciting changes at TheLadders!

CareerCab — Monday, September 19th

10:00 am at South Street Seaport, New York, NY

Grab your resume and get ready for a chance to meet TheLadders Founder & CEO Marc Cenedella and get a one-on-one on-the-go career advice session in our CareerCab.

Our team of certified professional resumewriters and career advisors will be standing by to give you free job search tips, resume critiques and quick career counseling.

Would you like to get some career advice from Marc?

Email CareerCab@theladders.com to send us your resume.

CareerCarnival — Tuesday, September 20th

10:00 am at South Street Seaport, New York, NY

Come play fun games with TheLadders Team and win great prizes! The excitement includes Wastebasketball, Spin the Prize Wheel, Tie Tying Races, Professional Ping Pong and Whack the Copy Machine Piñata!

You can win great prizes like an iPad, Amazon Gift Cards, Starbucks Gift Cards, iTunes Gift Cards, tote bags and lots of other awesome swag. You can even get free career advice from our certified experts.

Would you like to join in on the fun?

Email CareerCarnival@theladders.com for more info.

Kate Addicott is lead consumer copywriter & current voice behind @TheLadders. When not tweeting, Kate creates content to engage new members. (At exactly 140 characters, the preceding bio is Twitter ready.)

In April, TheLadders sponsored the annual Career Thought Leaders Conference & Symposium at the beautiful Hyatt Regency Baltimore. The city’s iconic Inner Harbor provided the perfect backdrop for more than 100 of the top minds in resume writing, career coaching, and job-search consulting to share key knowledge about how to help job seekers win by constructing arguably the most critical weapon in their arsenal: the resume.

The funny thing about a resume is that every candidate knows they need one, yet few understand or are willing to acknowledge its tremendous influence. A resume isn’t just a list of your previous employers to be haphazardly submitted to every recruiter and job portal available – it’s a highly sophisticated tool that leverages the power of words to create perception and target you for the perfect opportunity. And it’s not easy to write!

Just like any other aspect of doing business, you get out of your resume only what you invest. The amount of time and (the conference’s attendees would hope) money you spend on your job search directly correlates to your success. We frequently hear elated job seekers on TheLadders gushing about how overjoyed they are with their professionally written resumes. “Who is that person?” and, “I never realized I did all that!” are common refrains that illustrate a newfound confidence. So why do candidates understand the importance of the resume only after having it evaluated and written by a qualified professional? They don’t have the data.

So what can an analytical, numbers-obsessed guy like me do to help a group of card-carrying wordsmiths understand how best to present that value? Share statistics, of course.

I was honored to partner with event co-host Wendy Enelow (a training consultant for all of TheLadders’ Executive Resume Writers who is widely recognized as the national thought leader in resume writing)  to deliver the conference’s keynote address, “The State of the Union: What Recruiters and Hiring Managers Want.” My speech provoked some buzz (and some tweets) thanks to eyebrow-raising stats gathered in a survey of recruiters who use TheLadders to source talent.

According to the data, 43% of recruiters declaring that a weak resume is a job seeker’s biggest mistake, and they know one when they see one – recruiters receive an average of 52 resumes per $100K+ job listing.  That’s 52 resumes from Monster, 52 resumes from Dice, 52 resumes from CareerBuilder, and on down the line, for any one job. I explained that only 21% of all resumes are considered “Very Good” by recruiters, and that those resumes garner 50% more recruiter contacts than their average or below average counterparts.

Of course, recruiters aren’t the only gatekeeper between candidates and their next job. There is now applicant tracking software that scans resumes for keyword matches before they move through the ranks of agency recruiters, corporate recruiters, HR managers, and hiring managers. Those hiring professionals are increasingly selecting candidates based on first impressions, as a remarkable 68% of US companies have no standardized definition of a quality hire.

How do you combat that? With a quality resume. Our analysts at TheLadders have reviewed and critiqued more than 575,000 of executive resumes, and our staff of writers (many of whom were among the thought leaders assembled in Baltimore) has rewritten more than 60,000 of them. Those resumes typically earn a score of around 4 on our 10-point scale before they are rewritten, but leap to an 8 or better after a professional rewrite.

So what does it all mean? Judging by the conference attendees’ frantic note-taking, it means that executive candidates must be reminded that it’s not enough to rely on your ability to sell yourself. A weak resume fails to differentiate you from your equally qualified peers, and simply believing that your resume accurately represents your value doesn’t make it so. Recruiters want those Grade-A resumes that score an 8 or higher, and sure enough, they perform much better. The increased confidence that comes with a professionally written resume is statistically proven to be accompanied by increased performance, and increased engagement from recruiters and hiring managers.

Ware Sykes is Vice President Consumer Services and Head of Resume Services at TheLadders.com