After the interview, be sure to send a thank-you note to the interviewer. Many people forget to do such a courteous thing so it sets you apart from other applicants.

Where To Start

Many people who are recently laid off may have no idea what they want to do next, they just know it wasn’t what they were doing before. Something important that may help to prevent a repeat of a bad job is to discover what it is that you didn’t like about the job before. Some things to consider that would turn a career search in a different direction would include:

• The Working Environment: Is the hustle of a restaurant too much or is an enclosed office-style environment too mundane?
• The People: Some careers draw certain people, such as a high population of women in early education positions or higher population of men in certain engineering functions. Finding the type of people and personalities you are more compatible with can be important to long term job satisfaction.
• The Type of Work: Skills are what qualify someone for a job but if your interests don’t match the necessary skills or even your existing skills, it can change the dynamic of the type of job you are looking for. If you like helping people but can’t stand the sterile nursing environment you are trained for, counseling or teaching may be a better fit.

Speaking with a professional career counselor can help you to determine what type of position may be the best fit. These professionals typically have access to tools that can help to narrow down the type of work that can fit your personality, skills and interests. A career counselor is often available through unemployment services, temporary work placement agencies, local community colleges and some recruiters also offer career assessment services.

What to Do Next

If you realize you would really like an entire career overhaul, it is important to consider the feasibility of how you want to make it happen. If your new choice requires additional education or other technical skills that need to be acquired from a college or university, getting started as soon as possible with the process can be important to avoid missed admissions deadlines. While traditional full-time programs are generally available, there are many alternative part-time, remote access or internet-only programs that will allow you to get the skills necessary while potentially maintaining your home life with a part time position.

Getting a Career Choice Strategy

Many jobs require at a minimum a daily plan of what you are going to do. Others are entirely centered around creating a business plan or strategy for future development. Creating a career choice strategy is very similar and should be the first place to start when considering a career change. Making the right choice when it comes to switching up your career begins with figuring out what it is you don’t like about your current work, or what it is about another position that draws you toward it. Actually sitting down and taking a look at job attributes may help to narrow the selection pool. Consider dividing up major career groups similar to the following job attribute list:

• Careers that involve helping people: nursing, education, medical positions, childcare, counseling, legal assistance, social work
• Careers that involve science and technology: engineering, architecture, information technology, computer related positions
• Creative careers: freelance writing, graphic arts, floral design
• Careers that are hands-on: contracting, plumbing, landscaping, automotive mechanics
• Home business careers: real estate sales, catering, consulting

While this is in no way a complete list, it should give you an idea of what career types fall into categories you prefer. Many people have a wide range of jobs they think they would like but can’t really get a handle on what it is they like about the job. Making the right career change choice really should be an opportunity to evaluate what you like and dislike about your current position and then look at alternatives that may be better options. Sorting out these thoughts and preferences are the absolute keys towards heading down the right career path.

Getting Help Making the Right Choice

If you realize you are entirely flustered about your career decision and would like assistance, there are many resources available. The internet offers many sites that can provide a career interest survey. The survey typically involves answering questions that will help connect your personal interests with a career choice. Career counselors are also typically available through local community colleges, the unemployment office and temporary placement agencies.

Making the right choice can be frustrating if you don’t know where to start. Creating a strategy or plan for selecting your new career choice can help to ensure you have evaluated the many available career options. Additionally, if you are overwhelmed, there are multiple resources available to assist you with making the right choice for a new career.

Little Known Job Search Locations

Many people who have left their position abruptly or have been laid off tend to not be prepared for turning over every stone, rock or boulder that may be in the way of their job search. Newly available positions are typically front and center on multiple job search engines but these positions can draw dozens if not hundreds of resumes that are typically sorted with software before they ever reach the hands of a qualified person to review your skills. By looking in areas that someone with your skills might not intrinsically search, you may find that your experience is suited to multiple industries or career types and will set you apart from the competition. For example, someone who has worked as a buyer, marketing administrator or analyst for a manufacturer may consider looking at organizations such as hospitals or colleges and universities. These groups still need the skill sets of procurement agents and business analysts and they often have comparatively good benefits packages to major manufacturers. The same is true for information technology positions. Non-profit organizations also have requirements that any standard business would need and could be a great fit for both your personal interests and your career skills. Using your existing skills to break in to a new industry can be difficult but it can also be lucrative or at the least, effective in finding you a new position that you truly enjoy. If you have always thought about teaching, many school districts have non-teaching related positions where your existing skills can be utilized while you are exposed to the actual profession. Substitute teaching can also lead to long-term teaching opportunities and does not necessarily require direct teaching experience.

What Else Is There?

The internet is home to many search engines completely dedicated to job postings. However, many of these postings don’t change from week to the next. This is largely because some companies are looking to maintain a continuous pool of resumes or job candidates and are not necessarily actively recruiting. It is important to weed these jobs out and not place much focus on these positions. By getting involved with a professional recruiter who works specifically with your job type, you may have access to jobs a company chooses not to post through the typical internet channels. If you find yourself searching for a job and continuously hitting dead ends, it is likely it is time to start a different approach. Looking outside of your typical industry or considering other areas where your skills might apply could open many doors to your job search process. By considering new organization groups

Tip #1: Find out more about the company

Although this might seem tedious at first, we're talking about these companies that seem most interesting to you. When you embark on a job search you will be looking at hundreds of companies in the hopes to find one that is a fit. As you find ones that are interesting to you find out as much as you can. Go to their websites and you might even make a call to their receptionist with a few questions. Set up an information interview with someone who can tell you more about the company. This is one of the keys to getting the inside information. Find out who is the head of the department that would be the best fit for you and send them a resume and cover letter. Instead of sending it blind, explain in your cover letter why you would be a fit for the company the next time they have a job opening.

Tip #2: Know what you want

When you start looking for a new job the best career advice is to know what you want. Have some idea of the company environment you want to work within and the type of position you would want. Your next job could lead into a lucrative career opportunity.

Tip #3: Take advantage of social networking

There are hundreds of sites on the Internet that were created for people looking for jobs to be connected with employers looking for people. Networking sites like LinkedIn are specifically for people looking for jobs and those seeking to employ them. Get to know the environment, post your resume and skills and participate in the network.

Tip #4: Don't let the recession talk you out of it

The world is full of speculation about what the economic crisis is going to do to people. When you are focused on what you want you will find the career or job that you want most. Many companies are downsizing their top executives so they can hire those who will come in at less salary. Finding a new job can take a little time but if you polish your resume and talk to lots of people it can be done. The most important aspect is to let employers know why you would be an asset to their company.

Because even though I've used the word "attraction" in this post's title, and I'm convinced that we can do a lot to attract the kinds of people and situations we want in our lives, there are more effective ways of attracting what we want than simply repeating, "I welcome the abundance of perfect job offers" to yourself in the mirror every morning.

You need to know what value you provide to an employer, envision your ideal job and take steps to make yourself attractive to your ideal organization.

Stacey Hall and Jan Brogniez's book, Attracting Perfect Customers: The Power of Strategic Synchronicity, is one I turn to weekly as I develop and grow my own business. I have a business, and the business depends on customers. Every business owner has to figure out where those customers are going to come from.

The tactic of running around, chasing after customers wasn't working too well for me. Imagine that. When I read this book, which was introduced to me by coach extraordinaire, Molly Gordon, I began to think about attracting perfect customers. I created something called a strategic attraction plan. And this changed my business entirely.

OK, so what does this have to do with you and your perfect job?

Everything. You can create a strategic attraction plan to attract perfect customers, a perfect job, mate, perfect vendors, business partners, or whoever. It's not magic, but is a fresh way to look at marketing or job seeking.

The book has all the details, but here are a few highlights:

• You are most attractive when you are like a lighthouse, standing still with a very focused beam of light, than when you are running up and down the beach, shining your light everywhere, trying to attract the attention of all the boats in the harbor.

This metaphor is about knowing who you are – in the case of being a job seeker, knowing your value proposition – and not trying to be what you think everyone else wants you to be. Focus is attractive, diffuseness is not. Paring the process down quite a bit, your strategic attraction plan is the result of:

• Envisioning your perfect employer (it helps to have already worked for one that was awfully good), writing down their qualities and attributes
• Writing down what you choose your perfect employer to expect you to do
• Writing down what you need to improve to attract your perfect employer
• Working to improve what you decided you need to improve
• Reviewing the plan each day, to keep it alive

Creating a strategic attraction plan for a job search requires that you know yourself well, that you can imagine an ideal environment for you, and that you understand what you can do to make yourself more attractive to your perfect employer.

Just getting to the point of writing the plan takes a lot of thought and exploration! But it helps you become the lighthouse, someone your ideal employer will recognize as a great fit for their needs. Having a plan also positions you to recognize opportunities as they come along. Long-hoped-for synchronicity often ensues.

If you've done reading on personal branding, you recognize how closely tied the strategic attraction plan is to developing your personal brand. (Check out the 1997 Tom Peters article that started it all for more information). Dan Schawbel, among many others, is at the forefront of personal branding evangelism today.

I'd love to hear: What are you doing to attract your ideal job?

When it comes to looking for a new job, the days of searching the help wanted ads in newspapers has long passed. There is even a generation or two in the workforce who has never turned to a classified ad looking for a job. The internet as a primary job search tool has grown more and more mainstream but it can also grow tedious and fruitless if its potential is not maximized. The following Top Five career search channels can help any job seeker who has grown weary of the information super highway:

1.         Temporary Employment Agencies: Temp agencies often have both temporary contract positions and long term, direct hire positions. Organizations typically have a contractual arrangement with an employment agency and may utilize the agent to seek a variety of candidate types.

2.          Local and State Governments: Many skill sets are applicable to a government agency. Searching the postings directly from these employers can reach a new pool of jobs that are often not listed through mainstream job search portals.

3.          A Local Newspaper: In most areas you can look through a newspaper classified without leaving your computer. The value of seeking out a listing in a classified ad is that an employer typically had to directly pay to post the position so it is truly active. Many of the mainstream internet search engines have agreements where postings are continually placed to build  pools of candidates for anticipated openings rather than actual active postings.

4.         Non-Profit Organizations: Often times non-profit organizations are not the first place a business professional will look for a position, however, the skill sets needed are similar to many professions. Non-profits also don’t typically have the human resources budgets of many organizations and could be more conservative in the advertisement of their job postings.

5.         Internet Social/Job Networking Sites: Many of the popular social networking sites are adding job posting and searching components. There are also some sites completely dedicated to professionals. Contacting previously colleagues can be a great resource, especially in an environment where there are far more candidates than positions.

A career search can be an overwhelming prospect that quickly turns mundane after weeks of staring at the same postings, shooting off resumes and receiving no feedback to help understand why you are not progressing. It is important to be patient during a job search but it is also important to be aggressive and not wait too long before trying a new approach.

In addition to keeping your job search channels diversified, there are many professional services that could help to boost your search. You can have your resume evaluated for professional feedback by a recruiter who can help to point out areas that could benefit from revisions. The recruiter may be able to directly assist you with revisions or provide you with resume writing resources. There are also a number of online options for seeking out a freelance writer or resume writing service to revamp your existing resume. 

What are your favorite channels for getting a job?

In the current economic downturn, more and more Americans are joining in the hunt for jobs. Positions that once received ninety resumes are now seeing applications in the hundreds.

Industry standards that once applied to resumes are now doubly, even triply true. You’d heard that employers skimmed through resumes before? You can only imagine how quickly they toss through the pile now.

With your resume as a single sheet in that huge stack of paper, creating a pertinent, easy to skim document is more important than ever. So more and more people are taking steps like hiring a professional resume writer to aid them in their job search.

Some people question the ethics of enlisting this type of aid, implying that you cannot present yourself in a genuine manner with the use of such a service, or that the need for help is a manufactured need, or even that the type of help provided leads to a non-accurate representation of one’s skills.

However, these statements seem to stem from a misunderstanding of what it is that the professional resume writer does.

To start with, what is a resume, exactly? It’s a marketing tool that advertises your skills and experience.

In your business, is it unethical to hire a marketing firm in order to sell your product? Probably not. It’s only logical to hire experts to help you in areas where their expertise is needed to improve sales.

A proper resume writer won’t represent you in a way that is not genuine. It is against our code of ethics, and would damage their reputations as professionals.

Let’s face it, in a consulting-type business, your reputation is really all you have. Not to mention that representing clients inaccurately would cause real problems for them, once uncovered.

What does a resume writer do? We take lists, that you supply, of your past jobs and accomplishments, your education and experiences — we review your old resume to see what may have been tripping you up, and we present you with a new document, tailored to the type of job that you’re pursuing.

We have industry knowledge of certain words that will catch the boss’s attention in your line of business, and we know how HR filters documents. For one thing, did you know that these days, resumes are often scanned by computer for certain keywords?

Let’s face it, the first thing we all do when faced with a huge stack of paper that we have to weed down to just a few sheets, is to get rid of as much as possible, as easily as possible. So, the first scan, whether by computer or an individual is for weeding out the chaff.

Resume writing experts know what keywords are typically used in the computerized process and can ensure that your resume includes them. We also excel at aiding people in camouflaging gaps in history.

We are résumé experts, and know how to make yours clear and readable — after all, if those two attributes aren’t met, the rest falls by the wayside.