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Using Market Intelligence Techniques on your Job Hunt

By crooky | December 13, 2007

One of my pro bono gigs is giving talks at local non-profits about market intelligence techniques and how you can use these techniques to achieve other things. Today, I’ll be speaking at Canadian Career Moves to a group of job seekers. Last time I gave this talk, they let me go 10 minutes past my time limit and the feedback was excellent.

Click here to see my handout - and no, it’s not my best graphic design work but it crams a lot of information onto one double-sided sheet.

I called it my CSI (Career Search Intelligence) Methodology. During my presentation, I hammer home this motto: DO YOUR RESEARCH! I really try to emphasize the importance of going hot into a cold call in an attempt to turn it into a “warm call”. Little things like knowing the first and last name of the person you’re trying to reach and what they actually do for a living can make a huge difference in the reception you get. I also make sure that people understand the importance of asking for things. Ask for an informational interview. Ask for a referral to another colleague that might be hiring. If you don’t ask - you don’t get.

Last time I gave this presentation, I was presenting after a woman from the HR department of a large, local employer. She was there encouraging people to apply for jobs at her company. She sat quietly through my presentation until I got to the part about how to guess someone’s e-mail address when all you have is their web URL and their name. She shouted “Oh my god! That’s how they’ve been finding me!”

She doesn’t give out her e-mail address to anyone. It’s not on her cards, it’s not on their website. She doesn’t want people cold calling her about work. She had no idea that people could guess her e-mail address with a few pieces of information. Needless to say, this impressed the people in the audience. I couldn’t have asked for a better setup.

The fact of the matter is that these techniques work. I hired a young woman years ago when I was with the Science Council of BC that used these same techniques on me. She called me up, knew what I was working on, had a proposal for something related that she’d like to work on, etc… She was fresh out of her undergrad business degree and we weren’t hiring at the time. I talked to my boss, made a case for her and we hired her the next week. We didn’t have an office for her so she worked out of the board room but she leveraged that experience into a great job with a pharmaceutical firm the next year and her career has been going very well ever since.

I hired her because she made it an easy decision for me. So, if you’re looking for a job right now… think about trying my techniques. They work.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Research Methodologies |

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