In Case You Missed It: Identify Your Ideal Job Targets

While you were eating a delicious ham sandwich (or salad for you vegetarians) and watching a hilarious YouTube video that ends like most YouTube videos, with someone landing awkwardly, you were missing out on some important career information presented by your friends at Vault.com and SixFigureStart.   That’s the bad news.  The good news is that next week, you will have another chance to advance your job search with another life changing (am I being overdramatic?) webinar – this time, it’s for free.

But before we get into that, let’s discuss what you missed this week.  Caroline Ceniza-Levine, who presented How the Hiring Process Really Works last week, was once again on hand to help individuals identify their ideal job target.  It’s not as simple as you think.  According to Ms. Ceniza-Levine, simply saying that you want to work in the finance industry is not enough, considering how broad a field that is.  There are actually three important elements to choosing an ideal career topic – industry, function and geography.  So, in truth, while you may have a finance background, your fascination with the media industry and your desire to stay in New York filters your requirements, making your ideal job target a financial services position at a media company in New York City.

Your ideal job target does not have anything to do with the salary, the company culture and the stock options that are available.  Those are personally driven criteria that you can filter out after you have decided what you want to be when you grow up.  It’s the market driven decisions that matter, as recruiters come up with job postings that are easily searchable based on your job target.

So, why is this important?  According to Caroline, identifying your ideal target is the first step in a successful job search and directly impacts other steps, like the creation of a resume, the research you conduct on sites like Vault.com or the networking opportunities you will seek out.  Caroline discusses how the job target directly impacts the other five steps in the job search and discusses several ways to come up with your job target, from creating a prototype based on the profiles of other successful business people to following a number of different industry trends.  Caroline details a number of different exercises which will bring job seekers closer to their goals and offers up a number of resources that will help in the process.

Caroline also answered questions, including:

– How long does it have to be before you have identified your career target?

– How do you schedule time for a job search when you are already employed and working 40, 50 or 60 hours a week?

– Is it possible to conduct simultaneous job searches for two different career targets?

– How do you deal with career changer (media to accounting, profit to non-profit)  interview without looking scattered?

There is a lot of information available in this webinar and for $27, it can still be downloaded by going to http://www.vault.com/SixFigureStart.html.

And that brings us to next week, when you can ask any question of Vault’s career services experts and find out the secrets to the job search from those who have actually done the hiring.  The webinar, scheduled during your lunch break (YouTube can wait) on Friday, April 30, 2010, from 12-1 p.m., is free of charge.  What’s better than free?  Last time the seminar was free, job seekers learned the top 5 strengths needed for the interview; tips on references; the four things you need to get the job; information on salary negotiation and a special cheat trick you need to know for getting your resume to the next stage; and more.  To register, go to the same site at http://www.vault.com/SixFigureStart.html.

There are jobs out there.  Don’t lose out.