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Top 5 Job Search Hacks

Being in a job search is incredibly frustrating, and standing out from the crowd is nearly impossible. Here are some tips and tricks for hacking your way to a better job search. None of these alone will get you a job, but they will help you take some power back from the employers.

Use an email marketing program (i.e. Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Vertical Response) to email your job applications.

Most email programs have either free trial periods or give permanent free usage to low volume users (if you email out more applications than they give you for free, you're doing something wrong). There are a few solid reasons to do this. You can track opens, clicks, unsubscribes (you should include that ability for reasons I'll go into below), forwards and more. One of the most frustrating parts of a jobs search is not knowing if anyone even saw your application. This minimizes that frustration, even though none of these programs are 100% accurate.

Include a hyperlinked Call-to-Action (CTA) in the email.You know that unsubscribe link I mentioned above? Include it. But don't just stop there. Add a few lines of hyperlinked text (have it auto-populate an email and subject line to you) with a menu of options to make it easy for potential employers to give you feedback. Try a few of these:

Let's schedule an interview!
Hmmm, looks interesting, but we're not sure you're a fit. Can you tell me more?
The position is on hold for now.
We're no longer hiring for that position.
You're not a fit for the position
We don't accept email submissions
We're trained monkeys and aren't actually reading your email.

Become a Guest Blogger.Everyone knows you should be blogging, right? Not necessarily. Blogging has never completely taken off as a form of branding for candidates. It's somewhat risky, very time-consuming, and may be unappealing to potential employers. They don't want to worry about what you may say about them. But you know what's much better? Guest blogging. Here's why:

It limits your online exposure, so feels less risky to employers
It takes much less time to have a committed guest posting relationship,
It brands you as an expert. Anybody can throw up a blog, but if you really want to create the perception of value have other people validate it. Pump your resume up with hyperlinks to guest posts you've written that are even vaguely connected to your core skills set/ expertise. Employers will be impressed.

Go to someone else: If you've applied to a job, maybe even had a phone call or connected on LinkedIn with a hiring manager, but nothing happened after that '" go to someone else in the company. Now this is also a risky one, but can be remarkably effective. Don't assume that the hiring process at the companies you've applied to is anything approaching efficient. 9 times out of 10, it isn't. So you've got to approach it like a sales person. Good sales people track down multiple people in a company because they know that power, memory, efficiency and speed are attributes that are generally spread across an organization. I've heard many sales people (and job seekers) complain about losing a deal because their contact at the company left. But you should always have more than one contact at the company. Because you never know if you're really talking to the right person until you close the deal.

Don't put your resume on the big job boards:This isn't so much as hack as a practical warning. If you're looking for a position at all beyond entry-level, skip Monster and CareerBuilder. There are myriad reasons why but the long and short of it is, hiring managers look down on people who make their resumes searchable on the job boards. It's like dating; you don't want to appear too available. The corollary to this is do put your resume on the niche job boards. Again, it's all about targeting, and appearing to be a known commodity within a limited community.

Surprise! A 6thone! Check out some awesome new tech: There are a few other really interesting sites you can use to optimize parts of your job search.

RezScore - Grade your resume instantly - free! One of my favorite tools.
Resunate -Automatic resume focusing
Evisors - On demand advice for jobseekers
CareerCup'" Awesome guides to handling technical interviews
StartWire- Application tracking system for candidates
Resume Bucket'" Free resume hosting

Got any other suggestions?

By Sean Weinberg - My name is Sean Weinberg and I'm a co-founder of www.RezScore.com. I am passionate about networking, writing, entrepreneurship, Web 2.0 (are we at 3.0 yet?) and career coaching (and, of course, Yankees baseb...

Hating life please help!?
I know I probably can't see the whole situation clearly so I'm hoping someone can help. I'm 23, married,live in Ohio. I just got fired from my job last week (I wasn't making quota) and nowim really scared. I wasn't worriednaboutngetting fired. Initially I was really happy my job was stressful and I knew that getting fired was coming. I had an interview that went really well (they urine drug tested me at the interview showed me how the computer system works and everything interview was hour and a half!) but then when I called to see if my drug test background check results are in the office staff was very rude to me and said the position had already been filled. I was devastated and didn't understand why. Anyway what I really want is a job in the medical office field. A front desk receptionist or something like that. I graduated in 2010 as a Certified Medical Administrative Assistant, Certified Billing and Cding specialist. My last job I was at for 2 years, and it was in the workers compensation field. I processed medical bills. I don't understand why I can't get a good job! I'm underpaid...or I was. My last job I made $10/hr! Now I'm scared I'm not going to get unemployment and my husbands salary just isn't enough to live off of and I don't know what to do. I came from a retail/food/warehouse background and had a long string of crappy dead end jobs before I went to school. I don't wanna go back to that!! Also we (mostly me) really wanna have a baby...and we have to move in the fall. I'm afraid of getting too close to 30 to have kids because of some medical issues I have so I feel like if we're going to we need to have a baby in the next couple years. I just feel down and like I can't catch a break. I don't expect a free handout I'm willing to work for what I want but I just feel at a loss for how to even go about getting where we wanna be. A house, a baby, and a decent living wage! Before I lost my job we made just over 30,000 together...there's no way to move forward on that (my husband just completed bankruptcy, we are still sitting at around 15,000 in debt). Any ideas? How can we get out of this mess and how quickly? I'm pretty good with budgeting and numbers we live very simply...but I feel like I just can't reach what I want. Any insight is appreciated. Thank you!

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Hating life and don't how to fix it, help!?
I know I probably can't see the whole situation clearly so I'm hoping someone can help. I'm 23, married,live in Ohio. I just got fired from my job last week (I wasn't making quota) and nowim really scared. I wasn't worriednaboutngetting fired. Initially I was really happy my job was stressful and I knew that getting fired was coming. I had an interview that went really well (they urine drug tested me at the interview showed me how the computer system works and everything interview was hour and a half!) but then when I called to see if my drug test background check results are in the office staff was very rude to me and said the position had already been filled. I was devastated and didn't understand why. Anyway what I really want is a job in the medical office field. A front desk receptionist or something like that. I graduated in 2010 as a Certified Medical Administrative Assistant, Certified Billing and Cding specialist. My last job I was at for 2 years, and it was in the workers compensation field. I processed medical bills. I don't understand why I can't get a good job! I'm underpaid...or I was. My last job I made $10/hr! Now I'm scared I'm not going to get unemployment and my husbands salary just isn't enough to live off of and I don't know what to do. I came from a retail/food/warehouse background and had a long string of crappy dead end jobs before I went to school. I don't wanna go back to that!! Also we (mostly me) really wanna have a baby...and we have to move in the fall. I'm afraid of getting too close to 30 to have kids because of some medical issues I have so I feel like if we're going to we need to have a baby in the next couple years. I just feel down and like I can't catch a break. I don't expect a free handout I'm willing to work for what I want but I just feel at a loss for how to even go about getting where we wanna be. A house, a baby, and a decent living wage! Before I lost my job we made just over 30,000 together...there's no way to move forward on that (my husband just completed bankruptcy, we are still sitting at around 15,000 in debt). Any ideas? How can we get out of this mess and how quickly? I'm pretty good with budgeting and numbers we live very simply...but I feel like I just can't reach what I want. Any insight is appreciated. Thank you!

Get the answers...

Hating life and not sure how to fix it, help!?
I know I probably can't see the whole situation clearly so I'm hoping someone can help. I'm 23, married,live in Ohio. I just got fired from my job last week (I wasn't making quota) and nowim really scared. I wasn't worriednaboutngetting fired. Initially I was really happy my job was stressful and I knew that getting fired was coming. I had an interview that went really well (they urine drug tested me at the interview showed me how the computer system works and everything interview was hour and a half!) but then when I called to see if my drug test background check results are in the office staff was very rude to me and said the position had already been filled. I was devastated and didn't understand why. Anyway what I really want is a job in the medical office field. A front desk receptionist or something like that. I graduated in 2010 as a Certified Medical Administrative Assistant, Certified Billing and Cding specialist. My last job I was at for 2 years, and it was in the workers compensation field. I processed medical bills. I don't understand why I can't get a good job! I'm underpaid...or I was. My last job I made $10/hr! Now I'm scared I'm not going to get unemployment and my husbands salary just isn't enough to live off of and I don't know what to do. I came from a retail/food/warehouse background and had a long string of crappy dead end jobs before I went to school. I don't wanna go back to that!! Also we (mostly me) really wanna have a baby...and we have to move in the fall. I'm afraid of getting too close to 30 to have kids because of some medical issues I have so I feel like if we're going to we need to have a baby in the next couple years. I just feel down and like I can't catch a break. I don't expect a free handout I'm willing to work for what I want but I just feel at a loss for how to even go about getting where we wanna be. A house, a baby, and a decent living wage! Before I lost my job we made just over 30,000 together...there's no way to move forward on that (my husband just completed bankruptcy, we are still sitting at around 15,000 in debt). Any ideas? How can we get out of this mess and how quickly? I'm pretty good with budgeting and numbers we live very simply...but I feel like I just can't reach what I want. Any insight is appreciated. Thank you!

Get the answers...

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