Jobless Execs: It’s Time to Dump the Old School

** To Find Work, You Must Go Digital, Recruiting Expert Says

- Colleen Aylward, president of recruiting firm Devon James (www.devonjames.com), says:

The nation’s unemployment rate may be inching downward, but the out-of-work figures have remained in the 9.0 to 9.2 percent range since April 2011, according to Bureau of Labor statistics.

An estimated 32,000 job seekers found work in October, but that still leaves 13.9 million reported unemployed, which means a lot of people are competing for the same job.

So how do you stand out in that crowd?

“It used to be that executives could network their way onto the CEO’s schedule, maybe on the golf course or a chance meeting at lunch or a ball game,” says Colleen Aylward, a recruitment strategy expert and author of, From Bedlam to Boardroom: How to Get a Derailed Executive Career Back on Track! (www.devonjames.net/the-book). ”It’s now up to you to gather your data, polish it up and position it where people will find you -- and that’s one of the biggest shocks in the executive job seeker’s world right now.”

It’s a message that unemployed execs in their later years may not want to hear, but it’s one they need to get their collective arms around as the economy tries to rebound. The old-school train has left the station -- permanently -- and if 40- and 50-something prospects want to compete for top-flight executive positions it’ll mean breaking old habits and exiting their comfort zones.

Two words: digital brand.

Aylward says it’s time to become an authority on-line and to create a virtual network of business connections so that you can easily be found.

“Just when they thought their golden years entitled them to being ‘served’ by recruiters, members of that older generation now have to do homework and market themselves,” says Aylward, who interviewed thousands of jobless executives over 20 years.“They don’t want to hear it, or believe it, but it’s reality.”

According to surveys, 89 percent of employers use a form of social media to identify job candidates, with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter the most popular. LinkedIn, with its more than 135 million members, dominates the competition, with 86 percent usage compared to just 50 percent for Facebook and 45 percent for Twitter.

Sounds like a good place to start.

After embracing social media (even building a personal website), Aylward has these tips:

Streamline your strengths with specific examples. It’s not the interviewer’s job to figure out what your strengths might be; it’s the candidate’s job. The days of clever cover letters opening doors are gone. Those resumes and on-line profiles better be stronger than ever and packed with data and specific accomplishments.

Don’t waste time with external executive recruiters. They don’t find jobs for people. You need to get in front of the internal corporate recruiters who are searching for you online. So help them do their job by researching companies online yourself, as well as locating jobs yourself, introducing yourself to a prospective employer and conversing directly with hiring managers – online.

It’s all about them, not you. Get out of the mindset that matching yourself for a job or interviewing for a job is about you. It’s all about what you can do for them. That means defining your strengths and determining specific areas where you can solve their business problems. And be prepared to demonstrate that you have kept up with technology, industry changes and how the economy has affected them.

“Embrace change,” Aylward says. “You are still very valuable and worth money for a long time, but you need to make yourself visible -- and viable -- to those who need your expertise.”

I Hate My Job, What Can I Do About It

- Melissa Evans, founder of The Broshe Group (www.broshegroup.com), says:

The late comedian George Carlin once said, “Do you hate your job? Sorry to hear that. There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar!”

As a consultant on employee engagement to major healthcare companies, Melissa Evans understands that feeling well. Her solution to it, however, is a little “uncorporate.”

“It’s a fact that most people don’t like their jobs,” said Evans, also author of Sole to Soul: How to Identify Your Soul Purpose and Monetize It (www.soletosoulbook.com). “According to a recent survey published by Time Magazine, fewer than half of American workers – 45 percent – are satisfied with their jobs. This is the lowest percentage since 1987. Gallup reported that this phenomenon also hurt businesses in a significant way. Companies with large numbers of dissatisfied workers experience greater absenteeism and lower productivity. These workers create a turnover rate of 51 percent. Can you imagine working at a company, or trying to run one, that loses half its staff every year?”

That turnover isn’t just from firing or layoffs. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people who quit their jobs from June 2010 through October 2010 was actually larger than the number of people who lost their jobs. Gallup says all these disengaged employees cost the U.S. economy upwards of $370 billion annually. Evans believes that one key way to turn this around is for employees to look inward before they look outward.

Her solution is for workers to get in tune with potential careers and job choices that plug into their passions as a person. She suggests people ask themselves the following questions:

What do you want? – In an economy that is dicey at best, it seems like it’s a luxury to only consider the jobs you really want, even if they are in a field in which you may have to start over from the bottom. However, consider the alternative: bouncing from bad job to bad job, hoping the next one will be better than the last, when the real problem may be that you just aren’t doing anything you’re passionate about.

How do you want to feel? – There is a vast difference between getting up in the morning excited about the day and waking up in the morning with a knot in the pit of your belly, anxious about having to go back to a workplace you can’t stand anymore.

Why should you change course? – If what you’ve been doing hasn’t worked so far, logic dictates you change what you’re doing. My best advice is to find something that drives your spirit and your intellect and pursue that, before it becomes too late for you to fulfill your dreams.]

“The first thing most people do when they don’t like their job is to look for another one,” she said. “While that’s valid, I have to question the wisdom of running from a bad job as opposed to pursuing a good one. The problem is, most dissatisfied employees identify a good job as one that simply pays a little more and is not where they currently work. A good job, a good career, is far more than that.”