This week, I spoke with employment expert Nick Corcodilos, an experienced recruiter and author of the weekly, "Ask The Headhunter Newsletter" (www.asktheheadhunter.com). If you ever wanted to sit down and pick a headhunter's brain (pardon that visual), this interview will give you 3 "insider" tips to help you find a new job faster. Kevin: A lot of folks are struggling in this job market. What's your advice to help the...

If you're reading this, you're probably using the Internet in your job hunt. And that's good. The Internet can be a hugely effective job-search tool … if use it right. If you misuse it, the Internet can chew up huge chunks of your time and leave you no closer to getting hired. So, here are four ways to use the Internet smarter and find a job faster, updated for October 2004: 1. Create your own job openings Beca...

You can learn a lot about how to do something right by first learning what NOT to do.Take resumes, for example.I review about 200-300 a month, and most have at least 2-3 mistakes. Yet, all those hundreds of mistakes can be grouped into just a handful of categories, which you would do well to avoid.Read on and learn how to write a better resume by avoiding the mistakes of others, some of them unintentionally hilarious ...Mis...

OK. You're a savvy job hunter.You already know that networking is how as many as 70-80% of people get hired. And you've been calling and emailing your list of contacts for the past month or so, to ask for job leads.But what if you need to call back a second or third time, to follow up andget new employment leads? How can you avoid turning off the people you need most in your job search -- your network of contacts?Here are 3...

Back in the 1990s, when I worked for other people, one of my clients was a little company from Tennessee called Federal Express. Since its founding in 1973, FedEx has grown from literally a "fly-by-night" 14-plane operation into a multi-billion dollar corporation.And ... what does this have to do with your job search?Well, success leaves clues, as the gurus say.And one of the reasons for the great success of FedEx can be tr...

What if I told you that 80% of what you're doing every day in your job search is a total waste of time? Well, it's true, according to the Pareto Principle.Let me explain ...Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who found that 20% of the Italian people owned 80% of that country's wealth. But what's fascinating about his discovery, also called the 82/20 Rule, is that its implications go far beyond economics.Exa...

Let’s face it: there’s a lot of misinformation about resumes and cover letters. That’s probably because most folks only have to write them every couple years. So it’s hard to separate the good advice from the bad when it comes to writing these critical documents. But after writing and editing nearly 5,000 resumes and cover letters since 1996, I’ve seen the same myths trip up job seekers week after week. And it’s time to deb...

From my client files this month, here are three success stories from people who got hired fast, with takeaway lessons you can use to jumpstart your job search today.Case #1: Kathy from Minnesota got hired over 150 applicants for a position as a business analyst. How? Her resume positioned her as someone who could deliver results. Kathy writes: "A lot of the feedback I got about the resume surrounded the fact that all of my...

Want to get hired faster? You can almost always shave days, weeks -- even months -- off your job search if you stop following the herd.In my 8 years of helping people find work, I've watched too many job seekers take too long to get hired because they do the same things as everyone else. This is especially true for recent college grads. So start doing a few things differently in your job search. And start getting called for...

What if you could train your brain to pull job leads almost out of thin air, and see employment opportunities where before there were none? Well, you can. The secret is found in your brain’s Reticular Activation System, or RAS. Here’s the story … Our minds can focus on only one or two things at a time. If we paid attention to every bit of input coming in through our eyes, ears and sense of touch, our brains wou...