How to make yourself stand out when job seeking

Jobless claims for the week of November 2nd came in just below expectations at 221,000 claims. Now, this is 3,000 more claims than the week prior. While data points to a strong labor market, we want to get a sense of how Americans are really feeling about the state of the job market, our very own Alexandra Canale. She took to the streets of New York City. Here's what she heard. I think it's a really interesting time. I think there's a lot of opportunity and I think there's a lot of challenges. There has been disruption to what traditional jobs are. It's both despair and hope. There's a lot of food jobs out there, fast food, restaurant jobs. It's just about putting yourself out there, you know, stepping out of your comfort zone. Most places, they don't take you if you have no experience, but how are you going to get experience if you don't, if they don't hire you, you know what I mean? I think there's a lot of uncertainty no matter what happens over the course of the next few months. Bills got to get paid, so I have no, there is no no. Whether it's shoveling, construction, anything. The purchasing power is, what, 80% of what it was five years ago? Unless you're getting a 20% raise from that five year ago salary, you're in a situation that's less off. You have to have a bunch of experience to really get a sustainable job or a job that really keeps you and likes you. I'd say just be present with where you are right now and know that everything's going to change. If you can stay as present as you can in your current situation, you will be able to see the shifts that will come or the better opportunities that will come in the future. Everyone's at capacity and nobody's really looking for more, has the time for more. We're all somewhat at burnout and trying to find the creative solutions is a lot harder when you're at burnout. For those who may be feeling burned out at a job that's current and our next guest here, she's got some tips to help find something new. Joining me now, we've got Eliana Goldstein, who is the founder of Eliana Goldstein Coaching. Great to have you back here in studio. You say that job seekers should be applying to positions even before they're posted online. How exactly does that work? It's a good question. I mean, I think coming out of the clip that we just saw, there's a lot of mixed sentiments out there that there's despair, there's frustration, there's burnout, but there's also hope. As one of them very well said, that it's all about the industry. He said construction, manufacturing, and it really depends on where you are applying. We have to be thoughtful about that and strategic. Because we're in a time right now where there aren't as many jobs getting posted, we need to focus on a proactive strategy as opposed to a reactive strategy. Reactive job searching is waiting for a job to be posted and then applying for it. Proactive job searching is focusing on, okay, what are my target companies? Where do I want to work? How do I proactively establish relationships there before anything even gets posted? Because number one, so often jobs don't even get posted in the first place. At the very least, as soon as it is posted, at least I have the relationship there who can help me out and refer me in. That is what we really want to be focusing on right now. As we think about the proactive versus the reactive, say you finally get the opportunity to speak with that company, to show your face, to say, hey, I'm valid for this position regardless of what the prerequisites may look like. Once you've finally gotten that in-person face time, whether it be in-person or virtual these days, how do you go about making the best case for yourself? I think one of the keys here is that if you have been proactively building these relationships and you've been having conversations with people at the company, in the department, on the teams, you should have already collected a lot of information in terms of what the company's goals are, what some of their challenges are, what some of their problems are. You are armed with that information so that when you have that first opportunity to make that first impression, you can leverage all of that to your advantage. One of the things I like to say is you need to position yourself as the solution to that employer's problem. That is why we hire people. Hiring doesn't happen arbitrarily. It happens because a team, a hiring manager has an issue, has a specific goal in mind, and they want someone to come in and help them with that. If you're able to lay that ground or collect that information proactively, then you can use that when you position yourself and really talk about what your unique value is as a potential employee there. Immediate value contribution to the team, what many employers are looking to hear. For those who are trying to figure out as well, even within this market where it feels like they're perhaps running into a wall one direction or another, trying to get into that new role, what do they need to keep in mind along the process? Again, they touched on this in this video. I think you have to stay optimistic and hopeful. The one thing that will guarantee you not getting a job is convincing yourself that it's never going to happen, that you should just give up and you should stop applying. Then you're not going to get anything. I think it's about remembering that people get hired every single day, and you just have to be more thoughtful and strategic about how you approach it. Sitting there and applying for 100 roles a week and just throwing your resume out places is not going to be helpful for you. If you can think about, okay, what are my target companies? How do I really add value? How do I go about and really build those relationships? Again, proactively, what we've been talking about, it gives you a much better chance. My message is really be thoughtful, be strategic. Don't just think that, okay, if I send 50 resumes out a week, that gives me the best shot because that's actually going to lead to more rejection and make you feel more hopeless. We didn't talk about this ahead of time, but I'm confident in you and I know you have great answers all the time. How can someone craft a good cold open for themselves and try to introduce themselves in perhaps a non-IRL setting where they know that they're going to have to make a good subject line for themselves, a good first line once somebody opens up their email and ensure that they get a response? Such a good question, and it's incredibly counterintuitive because the best way to get somebody to respond and be willing to sit and have a conversation with you is to not make it about you. It's to make it all about them. I like to say, maybe this is a sad thing to say, that human beings are innately self-interested. We all like to think and talk about ourselves. If we have somebody saying, hey, I'm great, I did this, I did that, I don't know you from a hole in the wall. Why does that matter to me? If I make it about you, I was so incredibly interested in what you built in your career, your trajectory, I really feel like you're somebody that I could learn from. I would love to absorb knowledge from you. That piques somebody's interest. Make it about them. Make them feel good. Compliment them. That will always bring in more responses than just focusing on, help me out, and being very transactional. I knew you could handle the curveball. Thank you so much for joining us here this week. Eliana Goldstein, who is the founder of Eliana Goldstein Coaching, she's going to stick around for a hot second here. I do want to play a quick promo and a clip here. If you want to hear more from the budget nista, step into the classroom here, and we're going to play a quick clip from the Money Glow Up podcast. I really believe in multiple offers, and the biggest negotiations that I've helped through coaching, it has been through the biggest gains in compensation I've seen, have come when women have had at least one or two external offers that they can leverage. And sometimes you don't even need a hard, cold offer. Just the knowledge that you are interviewing and getting interest from outside employers, that can be enough to get you what you want from your current employer. And so, Eliana, just as we heard that, lastly, while we have you here with us, negotiating, getting the right salary for yourself, and total compensation package right now, where there are many things to consider when you're going and saying, finally, I've got an offer on the table, but I need you guys to maybe do a little bit better here. Yeah. I mean, she hits the nail on the head that leverages everything. And obviously, if you can get two offers, that's even better. But I think it still goes back to thinking about negotiation as collaboration. A lot of the times we think about it as me versus you. I need to get this. But if we think about it from the perspective of how can we help each other to achieve a common goal that I want to, again, add value to your team, I want to help, I know that I can do that. And I know by you valuing me and seeing what I have to offer through fair and good compensation, that will help us. So I think it's really that approach of how do we collaborate on this to help each other as opposed to you just need to give me this.