3 Tips to Getting a Job From a Pro.

Roy Cohen, a professional career coach and
author of "The Wall Street Professional's
Survival Guide," has two words of advice for
job seekers: Embrace rejection. Cohen, who
has been helping individuals find work for
more than 20 years, recognizes that rejection
never feels good. But to be successful in this
job market, you have to put yourself out
there, he argues.
“My measure of a really great job search is
getting rejected a lot,” he says in an interview
with The Daily Ticker. “The reality is more
activity means more rejection. We live and
work in a world now where there is constant
rejection. You’ve got to get tough.”
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Ambitious Women
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the
May employment report on Friday. In April
the U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs. Nearly
12 million people were unemployed in April;
of that group 37.4% or 4.4 million individuals
were “long-term unemployed,” which the BLS
defines as jobless for at least 27 weeks. As of
March there were more than 3 million
Americans who have been unemployed for at
least a year.
Williams Dickens, a professor of economics
and social policy at Northeastern University in
Boston, and PhD candidate Rand Ghayad
recently published a groundbreaking report on
the plight of the long-term unemployed. They
sent out 4,800 fictitious resumes to 600 jobs.
The level of experience and employment
history varied for each candidate but all were
male and had similar education backgrounds.
Individuals who had been out of work for less
than six months received the highest number
of callbacks; even if another individual was
more qualified for a position, the applicant
who had been out of work the longest would
rarely get an interview. This experiment by
Dickens and Ghayad underscores the
challenges in the labor market today.
Cohen says unemployed individuals can take
several steps to improve their chances of
getting a job. If someone has been out of work
for several months or years, employers will
want to see that the job candidate has been
productive during his or her time off. Get
certified, take classes, learn a new language or
volunteer in an industry that’s relevant, he
recommends.
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Networking has become a crucial element in
the job search process but individuals need to
ramp up their activity level, Cohen insists.
“In the job search you’ve got to be everywhere
at once, he says. “Clients tell me ‘The job
search is so much more rigorous and
demanding than actually working on the job.’”
Networking involves contacting former
colleagues, family friends and neighbors for
job connections but also “surrounding” the
companies you want to work for, Cohen says.
Get the names and emails of hiring managers
who are likely to agree to informational
interviews. But most importantly, job seekers
should not spend hours perfecting a generic
resume, Cohen advises.
“You really need to focus on a bespoke resume
that speaks to those qualifications and
requirements,” he says.
And what about the vexing cover letter? Create
a boilerplate letter that clearly outlines your
qualifications and why you’d be a good fit for
the company, Cohen says. Resumes may hold
more sway with human resources but there is
a small minority of HR professionals that read
them, so letters must be well written and free
of grammar and spelling errors.