What Color Is Your Parachute? (32 page)

THE BEST TIME TO CALL…

Job hunters have reported that they have great success reaching employers or hiring managers in person at the following times:

• First thing in the morning and last thing in the afternoon.

• Fridays right before and just after lunch

• Reliable transportation, for both interviews and getting to work once you are hired.

• Appropriate interview clothes. Look at how people are dressed at places where you want to work. Wear clothing just a bit more formal than what these workers wear when you go for an information or hiring interview. If you don’t have some sharp outfits for interviews, some communities have organizations that help you find good interview
clothes for free or low cost.

THE BEST WAYS TO LOOK FOR A JOB

Common Methods	Effectiveness Rate
Using Internet job boards	4%
Mailing out resumes	7%
Answering ads in trade journals	7%
Answering local want ads	5–24% *
Going to private employment agencies	5–24% *
Asking for job leads from friends and family	33%
Going to see employers, vacancy or not	47%
On your own, using the Yellow Pages to identify employers to contact	69%
Doing the above in a group	84%
Being a job detective **	86%

*
The range is due to the level of salary being sought. The higher the salary being sought, the fewer the job hunters who are able to find a job using only this search method.

**
A “job detective” follows the strategies used in this book: doing research on oneself, finding jobs that match one’s skills and interests, identifying which places of employment have those jobs, and then determining who has the power to hire new staff. We are indebted to Parachute trainer Brian McIvor for this concept, explained in his book
Career Detection: Finding and Managing Your Career
(Management Briefs, 2009). The success rate of the job detective method is twelve times higher than just sending out resumes!