TheLadders Blog

If you were taking a road trip from New York to Miami, you wouldn’t start the trip by heading northwest for the first few hours, would you?  Probably not. It doesn’t make sense and would take you away from your goal. You’d be much more strategic – planning your route, mapping out possible detours and even forecasting layover spots along the way…and heading due south.

A strategic job search is much like a roadmap for a trip.  Your career goal serves as the ultimate destination, and the strategies and tactics you employ comprise your roadmap and itinerary.

Have you considered your job search in light of an overall strategy?  Sometimes, job seekers expend precious time and energy on activities that don’t get them closer to their goal.  When I speak with job seekers, I almost always use the phrase ‘strategic job search’ as each day’s and week’s tasks should align with a larger plan. This strategic job search plan then informs the overall search process.

On January 10th, I shared seven job search tips in my presentation at The Ladders’ Job Central event at Grand Central Terminal in NYC (for more information, read Forbes columnist Jenna Goudreau’s article, “Seven Strategies To Reboot Your Job Search In 2013”). As you develop your strategy, consider these tips and how they can support you as you move closer to your career goal.

With a strategic job search plan in place, commit to working your plan and moving closer to your goal each and every day. In this competitive employment landscape, working strategically, smartly and steadily are essential to your success.

 Carol Camerino, CCMC, CTTCC                  Back to Work Strategist, Resume Writer &  Career Coach www.LookingForTheOnRamp.com

Mentoring job seekers is a common goal that StreetWise Partners and TheLadders have always had in common. On Tuesday, September 11^th, the two entities came together once again to present the ‘Train the Trainer’ session to approximately 75 mentors.

TheLadders Job Search Expert Amanda Augustine instructed the mentors on how to effectively coach their trainees. Throughout the night, the mentors learned how to overcome various obstacles including unemployment, employee gaps, and job-hopping.

Mentors broke into five different groups to execute role-playing scenarios moderated by talent specialists, career advisers, and resume writers from TheLadders in addition to seasoned mentors from StreetWise Partners, an organization that works with low-income individuals to help them overcome employment barriers and achieve economic self-sufficiency. The mentors were then charged with devising a plan that would help to build rapport, set short- and long-term goals, and manage expectations with their trainees.

For example, new mentors Jessica and Tanya were given the following scenario: Ramona, a recent college graduate, is extremely shy when it comes to networking and doesn’t feel confident enough to approach potential employers. The two mentors worked together to come up with a strategy to conquer these fears with the help of an experienced mentor, Kimberly Fernandez.

Kimberly instructed the group to present their shy mentees with small challenges, such as sending them to local organizations to retrieve business cards. “My trainee soon learned she could become more and more confident on a daily basis,” Kimberly said.

Following the interactive sessions, Amanda wrapped up the successful event and wished all the mentors good luck.  We look forward to participating in more events with StreetWise Partners and striving towards the ultimate goal of launching new careers!

Meena Rupani is a Resume Writer for TheLadders in New York City who loves to engage clients in effectively restructuring their resume to land them the perfect job. She also loves reading and spending quality time with her loving family.

When I was approached to write about the results of our latest survey on military professionals, I was a bit reluctant. After being reassured that I wasn’t expected to produce Pulitzer Prize-winning material, I said, “Why not?” As a former Marine who’s had to go job hunting since leaving the military, I’ve experienced firsthand some of the things we surveyed.

When I saw the results, I had mixed reactions. For example, I wasn’t surprised that one of the most important things to veterans looking for a job in the civilian world was workplace camaraderie.  Most people in corporate America won’t easily understand the bond military personnel share with each other. Our relationship with the people we work with is what makes what would otherwise be an unbearable situation, like being deployed to a highly volatile area, tolerable.

I was surprised to find that 50% of the people surveyed found it more difficult to find a job in the private sector. My experience was the opposite. I found it easier, perhaps due to some of the assumptions we analyzed. In my case, employers assumed I would have discipline, a strong work ethic and possess leadership skills.

While veterans are like everyone else in a many ways, there are certain unique perspectives we hold. The fact that TheLadders is honoring veterans and active military by taking an interest in what THEY are looking for in prospective employers speaks volumes. I feel extremely grateful to be a part of such an exceptional company.

Yolmi Rivera, LCpl, USMC (former)

Click here to download a PDF version of this infographic

Yolmi Rivera is the Executive Assistant to Alex Douzet, COO and Co-founder of TheLadders. When she’s not busy managing his day, she’s at home running around after her two kids, two dogs and one husband. As long as there are mangos available, she’s happy.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of participating in Mediabistro’s first-ever Career Breakfast, a Google + hangout where a small panel of HR professionals and career experts gave their insight into various aspects of the job search process. This week’s topic was “What Really Happens After You Submit Your Resume.”

There’s a lot of advice floating around about standing out from the crowd during the application process. I’ve always believed, and my fellow panelists agree, that the best ways are the simplest. First, be qualified. The fanciest song and dance routine won’t get you anywhere if you can’t do the job. Second, have an easy-to-read resume that quickly conveys your experience and skills. A study done at TheLadders revealed that your resume has about six seconds to make a good first impression.

Whether you submit your resume through an advanced applicant tracking system or directly to a human being, the goal is the same. You want to submit a resume that lays out why you’re right for the job. It should be clear and clean: as free of bells and whistles as possible. A great resume won’t guarantee you a job, but a solid, well-timed, customized resume will likely get you an interview, and that’s the first step.

According to the responses I received, our audience got real value from the conversation. I love the opportunity to give insight from the recruiter/hiring manager side. I look forward to participating in many more of these events and helping more job seekers navigate the often frightening and confusing realm of the job search.

David Gaspin is the Manager, Talent Acquisition at TheLadders. When he’s not busy hiring amazing people for TheLadders, he keeps busy by trying to sound important – whether to his team, job seekers, or (for a real challenge) his 5-year old son.

As any of our career experts will tell you, having a great personal brand and a clear and concise elevator pitch to deliver your professional value is key. Get your pitch right and it could be just what you need to unlock networking opportunities that could lead to your dream job.

We’ve teamed up for a co-promotion with AMC’s new series the The Pitch to announce our first Twitter contest! Share your super-brief elevator pitch on Twitter using the hashtag #mypitch and you could win a 3-month Premium membership on TheLadders.

How to Enter

1. Follow @TheLadders on Twitter
2. Learn more about crafting your elevator pitch from our selected articles.
3. Tweet your personal elevator pitch with the hashtag #mypitch
4. If your #mypitch tweet is a winner, we’ll DM you with info on how to redeem your free membership.

Now onto the technicalities: The contest, beginning on Sunday, May 6 at 12:00:01am ET and ending Wednesday May 16 at 12:00:00am ET, is open to legal residents of the United States. Winners will be notified on or around Thursday, May 24. Contestants must be at least 18 years old and have a registered Twitter account. For full details, see contest terms and conditions.

That’s enough from me—now I want to hear from you! See you on Twitter.

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

TheLadders Enterprise team was on the move this week. We headed down to National Harbor, Maryland, for the SHRM Talent Management Expo. This wonderful Expo gives us the opportunity to meet with today’s most influential HR professionals—not to mention, get some very cool swag! We were able to showcase our various product offerings, including “Recruitable,” our new mobile app that connects recruiters on TheLadders to fresh candidates instantly.

There was also a buzz around TheLadders Passport, where we treat recruiters to a free posting and offer them limited search access. Since we always try to go above and beyond here at TheLadders, anyone who signed up for Passport at the Expo was also entered into a drawing to win $500. As recruiters came to our booth, they’d ask, “How do you get me closer to the finish line?” For those of you who weren’t at the booth, they weren’t talking about a track meet. They were reading our signage.

“TheLadders starts recruiters closer to the finish.” In other words, TheLadders delivers accurate, qualified, interested candidates with almost no effort on the part of the recruiter. We put you in a position to discover the best candidates right at the beginning of your search. If you missed this expo, make sure to visit us at the SHRM 2012 Annual Conference & Exposition, where we will be providing more solutions to get you closer to the finish line!

Eliverta Nika is an Enterprise Marketing Associate at TheLadders, and she absolutely loves getting out and meeting our recruiter customers at events like SHRM.

When our VP of Public Relations, Lisa Hagendorf, first asked me if I wanted to work with AMC’s The Pitch, I broke out in a cold sweat. It wasn’t the show’s fault — it was that simple phrase: The Pitch.

See, before I started my successful career here at TheLadders, I was an agency guy. I’ve worked at some of the biggest and best advertising agencies — Ogilvy, Euro RSCG, Draft and McGarryBowen. Throughout my agency days, I’ve worked on over 50 pitches. They can be exhilarating and they are always exhausting. Late nights. Bad take-out dinners. Intense discussions. Strategies. Concepts. More intense discussions. New strategies. New concepts. Arguments. Sometimes there was crying. Too many calls home, saying you’re still working. Finally, we’d finalize the concepts and send them off to production. There would be a light at the end of the tunnel.

But wait! Emergency meeting!

The new Executive Creative Director took a shower and now has a new strategy and creative idea. Swearing. Lots of swearing.

As soon as I became a Creative Director, I vowed to respect my teams and make sure I understood how they felt. But that goes out the door after a few late nights and the pressure you feel to win. No other professional business gets close to the insanity and pressure of “the pitch.” You have to be willing to put everything you have into it. No one wins because they brought in work they could do in one day. They might have done the work in one day but that’s because they only had a day to do it.

As I watched The Pitch, I felt the pain and excitement of the teams. A part of me wanted in. The competition showcased is really addictive and brought up old competitive feelings. The rush.

And it’s on AMC. Who doesn’t love AMC right now? They’re the most Emmy-recognized network on basic cable. Many of you know it as home to your favorite shows, including Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Killing and The Walking Dead.

TheLadders is happy to collaborate with The Pitch. How do we fit in? We’re experts on the elevator pitch, one of the key aspects of career advancement, and an essential part of a strong personal brand. The Pitch reached out to us because they know we can help professionals give the perfect Elevator Pitch and move their careers forward.

Learn more about perfecting your elevator pitch ›

Todd Hoza is Director of Creative & UX at TheLadders. When he’s not busy helping build the brand from the inside out, he’s taking credit for all the great work his talented team creates.

If you are looking for innovative ideas for driving revenue for your organization, a regional user group is the perfect format. You get an opportunity to get answers to the top questions on your mind and network with other experts in the field to find out about their methods.

This week TheLadders is hosting the first Marketo Regional User Group in New York. More than 20 marketing professionals from several companies are joining for a discussion about their experience with the solution. The topics include lead scoring and qualification process, nurturing programs and using Sales Insight tools to maximize the impact on the top line.

TheLadders just recently launched the solution while rolling out marketing campaign functionality, lead scoring and nurturing programs. Our biggest challenge was to tie all the data environments together to make Marketo tools effective so we reached out to the CRM team to create the infrastructure. Everything needs to work in synchronicity with each other. Currently our focus is partnering with Sales Leadership to refine our scoring logic, build process and drive adoption. With Marketo, it’s easy to set up reporting and the marketing team can execute campaigns with less manual effort enabling us to be more strategic, and focus on driving higher marketing and sales ROI.

Marketo Highlights

• Allows the marketing team to pass highly qualified, prioritized leads to the sales force at the right time
• Enables marketing to measure effectiveness of its campaigns in real time
• Gives sales team better visibility into marketing programs and to get tips and talking points on customer behavior
• Launched the solution in five weeks, immediately pushed several key campaigns to help achieve corporate KPIs and set records on site visits and all-time site engagement

We’re confident the Marketo Regional User Group will be a success, and we’re excited to share with the attendees—and learn from them—so we can all reach our customers more effectively.

Inga Romanoff is Director, Enterprise Marketing for TheLadders and the Marketo Regional User Group Leader in New York City with over ten years of marketing experience in the U.S., Russia, Europe and Asia PAC. Inga is responsible for strategic initiatives in developing the B2B platform at TheLadders.

USA TODAY, the widest-circulated newspaper in the country, cited TheLadders in the Money section cover’s popular Snapshots® on March 7, 2012. Stemming from one of TheLadders Candidate Insights questions — “Does your next job have to be a promotion?” – the story will reach more than 1.7 million readers.

A big thanks to USA TODAY and TheLadders Product and Marketing teams for revealing this important and innovative information about Job Seekers.

Lisa Hagendorf is the Director of Public Relations for TheLadders where she is a huge ambassador of the brand in the office. At the gym. And on the street. She just can’t stop talking about TheLadders. Ever.

Ask a customer service representative if s/he likes his/her job. Chances are that the answer will be some form of “no” (and may contain expletives). Here at TheLadders, that’s not the case. Our Job Search Support Center is staffed with highly qualified, extremely helpful, pleasant people. We’ve known our team to be top-tier for years, but as of yesterday we can now call TheLadders customer service team “award-winning!”

The Stevie Awards have named TheLadders Job Search Support Center as the recipient of their prestigious Contact Center of the Year award*. Helping support and engage our customers during a time when they need it most is gratifying work and we’re thrilled to be recognized by industry peers for our hard work and devotion.

Our Job Search Advisors are unmatched in their energy, intelligence, and dedication and I’m grateful to have such a talented team to lead every day. Having started at TheLadders as a customer service agent (we were called Community Associates way back then), I can speak firsthand to how much we’ve learned and grown over the past several years. Much of what we’ve become is a result of our forward-thinking leadership – industry trailblazer Anita Samojednik (VP, Customer Operations) has brought us to new levels of innovation and we are delighted to bring this award home to her. Anita and the entire management team work tirelessly to make sure that we are listening to our customers and improving our services for them.

Here’s to all the new and exciting things we have in the works for our customers in 2012!

*(Up to 100 Seats)

Niccos Andrade is Manager, Operations and has been with TheLadders since 2007, in the Job Search Support Center. When he’s not working on ways to the best customer experience for our members, he’s working on his backhand on the tennis court.