A One-Stop Center for Guidance, Strategies, Tips and Tricks on All Things Job Search
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The Job Search Classroom
A One-Stop Center for Guidance, Strategies, Tips and Tricks on All Things Job Search
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** About Identifying Target Opportunities **
Identifying your target opportunities to pursue involves deciding on the various aspects that a new position might entail. A separate discussion on each aspect is provided to help focus what it is you desire and/or are willing to trade off on before beginning pursuit of your next job. Without addressing these aspects, you risk embarking on an inefficient and unnecessarily stressful job search effort. The more focused your target, the more effective your search can be.
For whatever reason you may be in the job search mode--desire to change careers, layoffs, just starting your career etc.--overall career assessment is usually a helpful step to confirm or reconfirm that direction you think you want to head in in terms of career paths. Once you've narrowed your targeting to an industry or occupation, then other areas below (e.g. job title, geography, companies etc.) can be more easily determined.
Whether you're just starting out, or have experience in the working world, several resources can be tapped to help understand possible choices and paths to take.
Job titles can vary in form from employer to employer.
Think of title in at least two components: level and functional area. Level typically indicates level of responsibility such as: clerk, administrative assistant, associate, manager, senior manager, director, senior director, VP, President etc. Functional area speaks to what area of expertise the position works in. Examples include: Marketing, Finance, Purchasing, Payroll, HR, Fundraising etc.
Clearly, level of responsibility will be related to one's experience, there may be variation in the
true scope of a title depending on the size and complexity of an organization. A VP of Marketing in
a small startup enterprise with only 10 employees will clearly be of a different nature and substance vs the
similar title in a Fortune 500 company. The amount of compensation and required experience will
likely vary widely too in this example.
To get started, it's helpful to scan several resources to understand what is usually meant by such
titles, particularly if you're unfamiliar with the range of them. Click on the How-to-do-it section below
to find out what sources are useful to consult to see what the various titles, and their typical
responsibilities and requirements are in the current marketplace.
Look through the US Government Occupational Handbook Outlook.
Look through job postings (newspaper or online job boards e.g. Indeed.com etc.[more on Indeed.com later])
Look through business networking sites (e.g. Linkedin.com, Spoke etc.)
This is pretty straightforward. The core insight of this question is whether you are willing to relocate to pursue opportunities. If you desire to stay or be in one particular geographic location then the search process can be focused accordingly. If you're open to moving, then a
secondary question is how feasible or affordable is it, particularly if relocation reimbursement from the
new employer is not likely.
If you know the geography you want to work in then a very useful tool exists where you can enter your target zip code or city, enter in a mileage radius and a list of virtually all employers in that radius is
produced. The online service is called the "D&B Million Dollar Database". The list generated can be
sorted by revenue size and/or number of employees at that site.
Google lists several several other sites that profile other geographies.
Various geographic cost of living comparisons can also be easily found.
To understand whether relocation expenses are tax deductible click here.
Using D&B Million $ data base: As this is a proprietary, fee-based service it is
available on a limited basis.Usually it is available with outplacement firms as part of their services.
If you don't have access to it that way then access can often be gained by visiting a major public library
which has the service. For example, the Stamford Ct. Public Library has free public access to this from their
building.
Finding industries and companies to target can help make your search more focused and potentially more productive. If you desire to maximize your fit, appeal and value to a potential employer, than more than likely you will want to target those industries and companies with which you have the most experience.
Research Industries
(many, many sources, but here are some good starting places)
Research Companies
The compensation question can be answered at many levels. Is total compensation (i.e. salary + bonus + benefits + long term incentives (if available)) the most important criteria to you? Or is just base salary or having benefits the most important aspect, with all the other compensation benefits being "negotiable"? Knowing what element(s) are most important can then help determine what flexibility you may have in targeting possible opportunities.
To determine what "going rates"
are for particular jobs, occupational categories, and geography, consult the sources below:
To understand what all the possible elements of compensation click here
To determine minimum salary requirements requires determining total expenses you are responsible for on an ongoing basis minus whatever other income can be used to pay those expenses. The net remaining expenses then needs to be divided by (1-X%) where X% is your combined federal and state income tax bracket, to get to the minimum pre-tax salary requirement.
There are several resources online to help in figuring what your ongoing level of expenses are:
Some positions are more demanding than others of kinds of time commitment and time flexibility.
If you think Flex-time scheduling might be important to you, then consider these discussion sites:
• Article that highlights aspects of flex time.
If you wish to pursue non-traditional work styles then consider alternative work style recruiters to help
identify such positions.
If you wish to work at home, a great many sites are out on the internet, but quality and legitimacy and
representation are frequent concerns.
For many college students, or people just entering the job market, determining what jobs or career fields to pursue is an open question. For college students, they've been focused on getting into a college, selecting a major and coping with the academic challenges and other
adjustments of college life, and often career questions don't come into real focus until the junior or
senior year. Then the pressure to find a job begins to build. For others who may be just entering the
jobmarket for the first time, or who may be re-entering the paid workforce after a long layoff, many possibilities may be open to them, but they just aren't sure which path to take, and the very simple
question of "what should I do next?" arises.
Answering this question is often a two-part process -- 1) what are my skills, aptitudes and interests, and financial needs, among other personal assessments, and 2) what sorts of occupations match up
well with such a personal assessment?
While the purpose of The Job Search Classroom is not to solve such career assessment questions per se, some basic guidance and resources are suggested below (and above in the overall Career Assessment discussion section above) that will help you get at these answers.
Take aptitude, personality and other career tests and assessments to gain confirmation or help clarify what sorts of work you might enjoy and/or be good at. You may already have a sense of this, but an independent, more objective benchmark can reinforce your perceptions or open your eyes to new ideas you hadn't thought about or been exposed to.
Here are the basic variety of tests & assessments available to go forward on
How?
Keep in mind that what you're good at (aptitude) and what you like to do (personality) may not always overlap. A key to maximizing one's enjoyment in a career field is maximizing the overlap between those two aspects of job and career choice.
Any time during one's college career, and clearly the earlier the better, students should talk to as many people as possible who are already in their careers to get some basic information about what their respective industries and fields are like to work in.
Internships (paid or volunteer) provide a good way to experience different fields before and even after you graduate. They can be of a finite length with no long term obligation if you wish.