Your Career Is The Treasury of Your Life - news! | May 2019
Your Career Treasury
newsletter

"Your career is the treasury of your life" - Joanne Meehl

May means everything is green and blooming again, graduations, Mother’s Day, outdoor sports, church activities, opening the cabin for the season, mowing the lawn again, and the launch of summer with Memorial Day. And because of this burst of activity, it’s often tougher to reach those key people in your network.

What can you do to stay on their minds?

This newsletter will give you some ideas that work, and offer links to other info.
Let us know how you do!
Joanne Meehl
Resume expert who hopes you never need to actually use your resume. "The Resume Queen" ®
LinkedIn profile creator if you want yours to be an employer magnet.
Networking guru who coaches you in elegant (not needy, gimme gimme) networking, finding hidden leads.
Interview prep that puts you at ease matching what they need and describing why they need you.

BA, MS, IJCDC and Forbes Coaches Council Member

Don’t Get Forgotten By Your Contacts!
Even during busy times of the year, stay on their minds
When I speak to those contacts who take the time to network with job hunters, they are always amazed and saddened that they “never hear from the candidate again”.

They assume you’ve landed and no longer need help.

Or worse, they think you were just wasting their time.

These are people ready to help you but they are busy –  so don’t let them forget you! These are your hard-won contacts; don’t lose them.

To stay in touch with contacts you’ve made, here’s an idea I’ve recommended to job seekers at CEO level to those who are entry level: regularly send an email update . Every 3-4 weeks is plenty: it will keep you on their minds yet it won’t be too much. 

This little “ping” every few weeks reminds them of you and your talents,  and lets them know you’re still looking. That way, they’re more likely to think of you when they’re with  their network, or when they hear about that opening that you fit. So you’re more likely to hear from them again.

Keep it short, simple and upbeat , and always offering to help them , so that they open it. There  are e-newsletter software programs out there for this kind of thing (I use Constant Contact), but they are often screened out by many email programs. Posting on LinkedIn can work, IF all your contacts are in your LinkedIn network AND if those same contacts read their LinkedIn feed – highly unlikely. For those reasons, my clients in job search report that using regular email is actually best.

Use phrases such as:
  • "Since I last wrote, I’ve enjoyed talking with several people in leadership roles, and they tell me they..."
  • "I’d love to talk with people in Marketing at ABC Corporation...who do you know there?"
  • "I’m looking to talk with people at companies with ____ problems, my favorite to solve. Who would you suggest I speak with?"
  • "I have a healthy, wide network...who are you looking to meet? Perhaps I can make an introduction for you."

Doing this for individual emails would be very time-consuming. To reach as many people as possible each time, gather your contacts’ email addresses into a spreadsheet that will be your “update email” database. In your email, put all email addresses into the blind copy (“bcc”) area of the email header so as to keep them private, visible only to you.

An upbeat message each time means they will be thinking of you  between your emails 
and they will connect you with others -
which is exactly what you want!

____________________________



Mpls Skyline Sm
Don’t miss this!

Joanne will be at Face2Face in Maple Grove this Thursday,
May 2nd, for the last hour of the meeting.

And she’ll be offering a free Resume Clinic in Minnetonka (Ridgedale) on Monday the 6th.

For all details about location, times, registration (Face2Face), please go here . See you then!
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This month’s Tip from Joanne:
Use color in your resume
I use color in resumes. It’s allowed! I recommend you do the same, just to be ever so different.

I use it for headings, titles, company names, similar. My default color is a sedate corporate blue but any darker color will work. A client used a dark burgundy for her resume, another used a dark green . Avoid red or neon colors, which don’t show up well on the screen or when printed.

Less is more so don’t go overboard.

An idea for you: find out the "official" colors for the company you’re applying to, and put your headings on your resume in that color. It won’t get you the job all by itself, but it’s a subtle way of connecting yourself to the company while adding some liveliness to the document.
Thought for the Month

New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.  
- Lau Tzu, Chinese philosopher and writer
See the article where I’m one of the coaches quoted about becoming a coach, on Forbes.com
Joanne Meehl Career Services LLC | 612.216.3855 | Joanne@TheJobSearchQueen.com