Tips and Tricks to Reach Those Who Can Find You Your Next Position

I read over my last post on customizing your resume and am not sure if I made the point I wanted to about a 1 page resume.  The one pager is a brief version of your 5 pager.  Title, company and what you do, so any dummy can understand it.  A few attaboys are fine.  You want this to tell your best friend, fishing buddy, golfing buddy or the guy next door what you do for a living.  Once done, never, ever leave your home without at least 5 copies of your resume and 1, ALWAYS on your person when you’re searching for a job.

Hopefully you have created a sizable list of names and companies as well as the one page resume.  Let’s start off on your list of names and companies.  First, for company contact info, just do a most basic company search.  With Google you should come away with 1 or more phone numbers and the company’s URL.  If this is a large company with multiple locations, search for them using google maps (who’d have thought?).  If you still don’t have the info, use Dexknows.com.  If that doesn’t work, move on to the next one.  With phone number in hand, let’s find the email address.

Almost all corporate email addresses tend to have a set pattern.  Find one email and you can get them all.  The following is a secret.  Please don’t pass it on or they will end up charging.  https://www.email-format.com/i/search/ is truly a great site.  Type in the company URL and it will give you the email pattern.  If a large company, it may have more than 1.  If it says paul.smith@abc.com, you can be fairly confident that everyone is first name dot last name at >abc.com

One thing.  There will be times that determining an exact email address may be tough and you might have as many as 3-4 alternatives.  If so, in an email, put the most obvious in the To… box.  Then put the others on the same email but put the addresses in BCC.  One will get delivered and the rest will bounce.  Only you will know that and you will now know the right address.  You will also have saved some time.

Another nice site is mailtester.com.  Type in the possible address and it will say yes or no unless their systems admin has disabled the ability to query their email site.  With smaller companies it is a gem.

About 80% of the time, you will have a valid email address and business phone number by now. Another way is to find email addresses is using the google-advanced search.   Click on advanced search, the second box is “must contain the exact word or phrase.  Type in the email url. @abc.com.  Near the bottom of the page is “file type”  Click on XLS.  Hit enter. Without getting all technical, on any google search, it try’s to give you the smallest preview with your criteria.  You should not have to open any of these files.  If you get 2 addresses, you should now have the email pattern (jjones@abc.com) add your contacts name and move on.  If you do not find it on the first 3 pages, move on.

Let’s take stock.  You should have a list of potential contact to network with.  You should have company phone numbers and company emails for all.  Lastly, you should have 2 new resumes.  One is an epistle while the other is a “resume for dummies”.  This is your one page hand out.  Use it with everyone you see at parties, out and about or to contacts that you feel are not in your industry.

The next step is what to do with all this info.  Do I send emails with resumes?  Do I just make calls?  Do I do both and which do I do first?  What if my contact answers the phone?  What do I say?  Let’s cover that next week.  Start getting your networking info.  Your LinkedIn network, members of Linkedin groups you belong to.  Business associates and friends.  Don’t assume any one person can help you or not.  Your next door neighbor could own a gas station but his brother in law could be a Vice President at Cerner or a hiring manager at an EHR consulting firm.

   

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