Syndee Feuer

How To Customize Your Search For Your Dream Job

In this bad economy, there are at least four people competing for the job that you want!  Some of these jobs still haven’t been filled because job seekers don’t have the right skills to match certain positions. The Wall Street Journal reports that 52% of companies are having difficulty filling these positions.

With such a competitive market, you cannot afford to do what everyone else does.

Here are seven ways to customize your job search so that it speaks to your specific dream employer at every stage of your search:

  1. Research Your Dream Company
    Everyone wants to be wanted, and this is no different for your dream employer. The most genuine way to prove interest in something is to know a lot about it. If your dream company is Pfizer, you will know the research in the pipeline, recent innovations, their specific challenges, and their organization. Exhaustive research can be your game changer for prospective employers.

  2. Highlight & Customize Your Strengths
    Now that you know so much about your dream company from your above research, you can select the specific things about you that are most relevant. You can highlight the keywords that will resonate. You can talk about the specific projects that match what you will likely be doing on their team.

  3. Show and Tell
    Let’s say you are trying to get a job at a major media company. Consider sending a resume, cover letter and portfolio in the style of one of the magazines this company published. Instead of telling the prospective employer that you understood his company and had great editorial skills, you demonstrated your edit skills outright to recreate your own magazine. This will get you noticed and prove that your style and skills are appropriate for the job.

  4. Approach The Right People
    If you want to get through to your dream company, you don’t stop at the recruiter. You try for the hiring manager and anyone else who might have influence on this hiring decision – board members, investors, related functional areas. You identify more than one person, and you reach out to all of them.

  5. Build Your Online Presence
    Consider creating your own custom blog using WordPress. Make sure you use your full name, a positioning statement that captures your expertise and a summary of your work experience. Create social profiles using the same positioning as your website and cross-link your properties. By writing blog posts and updating your social status routinely, recruiters will find you when they are looking to hire for a position.

  6. Get Social
    Are you following your dream company on social media? Are you following specific people from your dream company – the CEO, the leaders of your target functional area? Have they published books, and did you read them? Are you commenting on their blogs?  Are you sharing their content? There are many opportunities to connect via social media which provide more proof of your genuine interest, help your research, demonstrate your strengths, and give you another method of communicating.

  7. Persistence … Persistence
    It is impractical to customize your approach for every prospective employer.  It should be reserved only for a select group. However, for that select group of dream employers, you must be persistent. You must be willing to try again and again.  Business and market conditions change, so hiring conditions change, and what didn’t succeed before may succeed later.  You must always be willing to go the extra step for your dream employers.

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Syndee Feuer
  • Certified Professional Career Coach
  • Certified Personal Branding strategist
  • Certified Professional Resume Writer
  • Certified 360 Reach Analyst
  • DISC Certified by Thomas International
  • Masters in Education
  • Business background with Fortune 500 companies including ATT Wireless, Convergys Corporation, New York Telephone (now Verizon)
  • Member: Professional Association of Resume Writers & Career Coaches
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