Becoming memorable, especially in a busy workplace, is no easy task. But when you stand out from the pack, you are usually handsomely rewarded and acknowledged. Not only dependable, but exceptional employees are wanted and revered. Companies want people who can make things happen.

The best leaders in the workplace are those who have that extra something. It’s kind of like being a rock star. Certain performers have that “it” factor. The same goes within any industry and company you are working for. You don’t necessarily have to be a sales machine or bring in the most clients, but your attitude, how you treat others and job performance are what people will remember you for.

Creating connections is key. It can be as simple as bringing in donuts for a morning meeting or introducing another staff member to a potential client. People remember the little things, creating a connection in their mind.

Here are some of the best ways to stand out from the crowd in your workplace:

1. Be present and visual: Attach your photo to everything. LinkedIn, Twitter, company intranet profiles, etc. Also, if you can’t have a face-to-face meeting, don’t be afraid to suggest Skype or try a Google hangout. People are very visual and remember faces!
2. Put down the phone: Show people that they are the most important thing in the room. Most people will be texting or answering emails during meetings. Show the person presenting that they have your utmost attention. People appreciate this and find it refreshing.
3. Become a storyteller: Don’t just do, but also share ideas and success stories with your colleagues and managers.
4. Provide value: Most people in business put out the vibe of “what is in it for me?” rather than, what can I do for you? It is not always about you. If you are sincere and actually care about others, helping them, they will remember that.
5. Develop a voice: Sometimes it’s better to pop in someone’s office or give them a quick ring rather than shooting off an email. Especially if someone is right down the hall. That personal attention will make them feel more important.
6. Get to the point: People do not have a lot of time nowadays. There are multiple projects and goals to achieve. We are doing more work with less. Sometimes, instead of taking a half hour to explain something, you need to do it in five minutes. People will appreciate the brevity. And honestly, half the time spent in meetings is not worthwhile.
7. Be sincere: Take notice of your colleagues and let them know when they’ve done a good job. And only say it if you mean it. People can see right through false praise.

Clark Personnel Service can help you stand out from the rest in your job search. Call us today!

Everyone has career goals. Getting there takes hard work, and for some, the right education and experience. Careers take up a lot of time in our life. So if you find yourself wanting to change careers or land a position without the right amount of experience, these goals can be a bit more difficult to attain. However, do not fret. Clark Personnel Service has some strategies that can help you get over that experience hump.

Take on an internship or volunteer.
If you find yourself saying, “but I don’t have the time”—stop right there. Jobs you want do not just fall in your lap. You have to work hard for them. You may have to move to part time at your current job, or work on the weekends, but if this is the experience you really want, you will do anything to get there. Find a company in an industry you would like to work in, and see what they have available.

Look for startup companies.
Startup companies have plenty of opportunities for people to learn and help out. They are usually run by one or a handful of people and everyone in the company does every job available, from producing the actual product, to accounting, to marketing and beyond. Startups may pay little to no salary, but the time and experience you will get there is immeasurable.

Online courses.
Go back to school. Many universities and colleges now offer online and summer courses where you can get a degree in the matter of a couple years.

Network online and off.
Join new groups on LinkedIn and join professional groups in your community. Go to seminars. Get on Twitter. Get yourself out there to build relationships.

Rebuild that resume.
If you don’t have the exact experience a company is looking for, add a section focusing more on your best skills than job history.

Work with a mentor.
Find someone with the experience in the field you desire and ask if you can take them to lunch. Rack their brain. See if they are willing to help you learn and understand the skills you need to succeed.

Young and experienced job seekers are both finding this dilemma in today’s saturated job market. And yes, many people do not find the skills they need until they are working in the job market. So do the best you can there and beyond.

Competition in the job market will never slow down. If anything, with the country’s economic strain, many more people are searching for fewer jobs. How do you set yourself apart from the rest? Sell the product of YOU!

Why not manage your career like a startup business?  Invest in yourself, build professional networks, take intelligent risks, and make uncertainty and volatility work to your advantage.

More information on this career philosophy can be found in The Startup of You, written by Reid Hoffman, cofounder and chairman of LinkedIn and Ben Casnocha, entrepreneur and author. Hoffman and Casnocha make some excellent points on creating a niche for your talents and getting the position and earnings you deserve.

The book acknowledges these three pieces to help you develop a competitive advantage:

1. Assets: What you have going for you now.  Your soft assets (like knowledge, skills, connections) and hard assets (like cash in the bank).
2. Aspirations and Values: Where you might like to go in the future.
3. Market Realities: What people will actually pay you for?

Executives continuously reassess these items to determine the right job search mindset and personal marketing strategy.

Other ways to thrive in your career through the startup mentality:

• Adapt your career plans as you change, the people around you change, and industries change

• Strengthen your professional network by building powerful alliances and maintaining a diverse mix of relationships

• Find the unique breakout opportunities that massively accelerate career growth

• Take proactive risks to become more resilient to industry tsunamis

• Tap your network for information and intelligence that help you make smarter decisions

Once you decide what qualities and strengths make you truly unique, your career goals can be achieved much easier. And to truly achieve we much think and work like a startup: no guts, no glory!

For additional help on putting your career on the fast track contact Clark Personnel Service.

We spend a lot of time working. We also have special talents that differentiate us from others. Some people are good at writing. Others are good at taking photographs. Some of us are good at running marathons. Some could sell a snowball to a snowman.

Most people would like to be doing something they love. Guess what? You can! There is a realistic way of turning your talents into a career. As the saying goes, “if you can do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

Are you ready to take the plunge? Here are some recommendations for starting your dream job:

Prepare to Work Part Time

It’s good to have a backup plan. So yes, you may have to start by keeping your day job and working on your preferred career on the nights and weekends. Starting an entire career is difficult no matter what the industry. Quitting your day job to pursue your dreams may not be possible for everyone. This way you will always have a steady income in case you need to regroup or change direction. That being said, sometimes when the rug is pulled out from underneath us, we tend to work that much harder.

Be Creative

If you want to turn a hobby or an interest into a business, you may need to think outside the box. If you really love hockey, but don’t have the skills, consider starting a blog or a skate shop. Although you may not have the ability to hold the Stanley Cup over your head, you will likely still love your job because it deals with the same subject matter. You may need to modify your hobbies or interests in order to create a stronger career.

Create an Online Presence

It’s important to create a website and social media channels for your new business. A professional looking website will show that you’re serious. Create engaging content about your hobby/area of interest through a blog and repost these tidbits on Facebook and Twitter.

Network: Virtually and In Real Life

It’s no secret that networking is extremely important for any business. You can do this by setting up a LinkedIn profile, as well as attending local networking events. Make sure all of your online information is included on your business cards. Go out and search for professionals who you think might like to help you jumpstart your business—you may be surprised who you can get on your side.

Hire Help and Advertise

This step doesn’t come into play until your business is making enough money to become your full time career. You may want to take out a small business loan if you feel your company has the potential to grow. These are usually available for most brick and mortar businesses. If you work from home, this may be a bit more difficult. This will allow you to hire experts to keep track of your business finances, legalities and other tasks.

Starting a business is one of the most difficult things you can do, yet one of the most rewarding. These suggestions are simply the stepping stones to help turn your talent or skill into a career. Good luck!

Are you ready to find your dream  job? Call Clark Personnel Services! We’ll work with you to find the right job for your talents, skills and passion.

When you’re trying to find a job, it’s easy to think of the hiring manager as the villain. Or the dragon you have to get past to get a job. But to increase your chances of getting hired, try to understand the hiring process from a hiring manager’s point of view. Some points to ponder:

1. Hiring managers are human beings too

When you go looking for a job, you’re preoccupied, of course, with your own needs and priorities.  Well, a hiring manager is interested, first and foremost, in protecting and promoting her own career. And she’s not going to willingly make a decision or take an action that might jeopardize it.

Your goal is to help them feel secure about hiring you. Managers want employees who are competent in terms of knowledge and skills, yes—but who can also be managed easily. A hiring decision for a manager is about feeling safe, in terms of protecting her department, her goals and her team.

2. Hiring is a risk assessment exercise

Managers know that nobody is perfect. Everyone has shortcomings, weaknesses, faults, biases and prejudices. And everyone has a downside. There’s a lot of truth to the old cliche that people hire who they know. Why? It’s easier to hire somebody you know because it’s easier to assess their downside.

In formal interviews, many questions are designed to uncover weaknesses and shortcomings: What is your greatest weakness? Describe a situation in which you were unsuccessful achieving a goal, and how did you respond? How would you rate your ability to resolve conflict on a scale of 1 to 10, from low to high, then give me an example?

3. Hiring is about pain relief

Consider the priorities of a hiring manager. Managers are responsible for achieving the goals and objectives of their organization. If it were easy to attain those goals, they could do all the work themselves and wouldn’t need employees!

But, of course, various problems, challenges, issues and pressures get in the way of corporate goals and objectives. To a sales professional, these things are known as “pain points.”

Salespeople need to understand their prospects’ pain points in order to make that pain go away. In a job search, you’re selling yourself as the product or service for the hiring manager’s pain relief.

Your job in an interview is to uncover that agenda.  Listen for clues to the hiring manager’s pain points. Respond not with the features of your value proposition (i.e. your education, experience, personal traits) but with benefits (i.e. how you can help them with their pain points).

Establish rapport with a manager by focusing on their needs and priorities.  Flush out concerns. What challenges, issues, problems, pressure points are driving this hiring decision? Reduce risk. Find out what red flags the manager may have about hiring somebody they don’t know. Make it easy for them to hire you!

For more great interview tips, contact Clark Personnel today!

No matter what field you’re in, there are certain skills you need when you’re on the job hunt. In the past, they included how to put together a resume, how to behave in an interview, how to handle followup. These days, there are brand-new must-have job search skills. Here are five of them:

Pain Spotting To really grab en employer’s attention in your cover letter (or cover email), you’ve got to figure out—by reading the job ad and researching the employer—what sort of business pain lurks behind the job opening.

Is it growth-related pain, or consolidation-related pain? Pain associated with customers fleeing, with competitors outsourcing the work and cutting costs, or with a shortage of talent in an industry? When you know or can guess at the pain behind the job ad, you have something of substance to say to a hiring manager.

Storytelling: “I have a strong work ethic and get along with all kinds of people” is about as compelling as “I had coffee this morning.” Nearly everyone claims these traits. To get a hiring manager’s attention, tell a brief and powerful story that demonstrates what you get done when you work. Let a hiring manager know some of the good things that you make happen.

Using a Human Voice: The old “results-oriented professional with a bottom-line orientation” style of resume is as out of date as VCRs. Using a human ‘voice’ in your resume or in any other communication with employers will separate you from the boilerplate-spouting hordes. Replace tired resume-speak like “Met or exceeded expectations” with a concrete achievement. And forget the old rule about not using the word “I” in your resume.

Showing Relevance: Forget the one-size-fits-all resume that gets sent out for any open position. You need to make your background relevant to the hiring manager by highlighting the accomplishments from each past job that relate to the role you’re pursuing. Update your resume as often as necessary to make sure your most relevant stories come to the fore.

Knowing Your Value: No one will pay you more than you’re worth, so know your value before you begin an active job search. There are several website that will help you calculate your market value and avoid getting lowballed in the hiring process. Arm yourself with information, then get out there and tell your story.

Still feeling unsure about a job search in this economy? Contact Clark Personnel today—we’re happy to share our expertise and help you find that next great opportunity!

What’s one very necessary part of your job search? Monitoring your online reputation. So Google your own name! You need to know what employers are going to see when they search it.

Employers research potential employees more than 80% of the time, according to recent research. If you’ve applied for a job or are being considered for a job, the name you put on your resume or application will probably be Googled

Do you know what results show up if someone Googles your name?

People have had their job searches damaged by their own mistakes—posting inappropriate photos or videos online or making nasty comments on blogs and other public forums.

Sometimes it’s someone else’s mistakes that can harm you—if someone with your same name did something illegal or stupid, like robbing a bank or posting revealing personal photos. Few employees will take the time to double-check what they see online. If there is any confusion or uncertainty, they’ll just move on to the next applicant.

So, what should you do?

1. Know what online content is associated with your name.
Run your search. If there are no issues, consider yourself very lucky. If there are issues, the steps below will help you address them.

2. Pick a clean, relatively unique version of your name to use publicly.
Assume that, unless your name is very unique, someone else with the same name will turn up eventually, so use more than your first and last name.

If there is harmful content about you online, or if you share a name with someone who has a bad online reputation, find and claim a “clean” version of your name.

Add your middle name or middle initial, turn your first and middle name into initials, or figure out some other change that makes your name unique (but still professional).

3. Establish, or re-name, your LinkedIn and Google profiles with the clean name.

You have two powerful platforms to clean up your online presence: LinkedIn and Google. You can control what they tell the world about you. And Google ranks both sites’ results high on Google search results pages.

Go to Linkedin.com and profiles.Google.com to set up or modify your profiles—using your “clean name.”

Going forward, use that “clean name” online, on your resume, on everything public that’s associated with your work/professional life. Don’t use one version on your resume and another on your LinkedIn profile.

The Bottom Line? Monitoring and managing your online reputation is a necessity in today’s job market. The sooner you get started, the better for your job search and career.

And if you need more advice on how to find the perfect job, or help finding it—contact Clark Personnel today!

Just like when you’re dating, looking desperate isn’t going to get you anywhere in your job search. If you seem too anxious, employers will question your motives and you’ll lose credibility in an instant.

 What are two signs that you’re coming across the wrong way?

1. You’re Using the “Spray’n'Pray” Technique

If you’re sending out the same resume and cover letter to multiple positions a day, you’re going to look not only desperate but unprofessional and unqualified. A recruiter will disregard a resume from someone who #1, looks like they’ll take any job they can get their hands on and #2, doesn’t even bother to personalize his resume or cover letter for the job in question.

2. You’re Excusing Your Actions with “Someone told me to…”

For too long, the typical ‘expert’ advice was to call the recruiter and/or employer just to “check in” and make sure they read your resume— and put you at the top of the pile. In this day and age, this won’t make you stand out. If anything, you’ll just annoy the recruiter and probably guarantee your resume goes either to the bottom of the pile or in the trash can. A hiring manager wants enthusiasm from a new employee, but not desperation.

But Shouldn’t I Do Whatever It Takes To Get A New Job?

Of course you should try everything—within reason. You only get one chance with each company, and you want to make it count. Instead of applying, imagine being headhunted or even contacted directly by a hiring manager. This would put you in a much stronger bargaining position to leverage from, especially if get a job offer. Try to get yourself referred to a recruiter via somebody else. Or work on your personal branding, start getting active online, give talks in your field and raise your profile. Employers and recruiters will come after you, not the other way around.

How To Avoid Looking Desperate

Have high standards and only go after jobs that you really want. By only applying for the right roles for you, you’ll save your time and effort for the ones that really count. Furthermore, recruiters and employers will respect your integrity and remember you for the next opportunity they have that is more relevant to your preferences.

You want to turn the tables and be truly different than other jobseekers. You don’t want to be pushy. Just like in dating, the hard-to-gets get more offers and can pick and choose. Set standards for yourself, remember your dignity and make it work!

Throughout the most recent employment drought, many professionals have been making ends meet through a variety of freelance gigs and part-time jobs. Some people enjoy the security of working two, three, four or more jobs—figuring if they lose one gig, they won’t lose all their income. Others find job juggling to be a hamster wheel: It’s hectic, and the work isn’t necessarily leading anywhere.

Whether you’re working multiple jobs by choice or necessity, here’s some advice for turning your part-time jobs into the career you want.

Maintain Your Long-Term Vision

It’s easy to lose sight of your target career when you’ve been taking any job to pay the bills. Make sure you have a 5-year plan in place. Then regularly reevaluate what you’re doing to make sure you’re making progress on that plan.

Build a Job Portfolio

Connect the dots between your vision and your jobs. How do all of your income sources relate to your overall career path? Then try to create a narrative that says you’re a professional with a wide range of useful experience. Good part-time jobs should give you some skill or opening that will help open other doors.

Make Time for a Job Search

Even if you need the income, don’t take on too many jobs if they keep you from pursuing your career. Some people think they can work 70 hours a week, earning as much as they can, then get around to their real career when their time frees up. But when is that going to happen? Keep up your job search!

Stay Current in Your Industry

Join industry associations and network at every opportunity. It’ll help your career to get additional training, to stay up on innovations and to show an employer you’ll be ready to go on Day 1 when you’re hired.

A new year means a new start and a new perspective. Have you considered revamping your job search tactics? What are the latest and greatest ways to go about getting a job?

U.S. employers are expecting to increase their hiring by 9 percent in the first quarter, according to the December Manpower Employment Outlook Survey-the most promising hiring Outlook survey since 2008. Take advantage of that upswing by following these  “Best-Kept Job Search Tips.”

1. Apply Early. If you’re using job postings, stay on top of them. A recent study revealed that 50% of company hires were applicants who applied within the first week. Approximately 75% of all hired candidates applied within three weeks of the job posting.

2. Keep up on Company News. After you’ve compiled your list of target companies, read up on their current news. The newspaper, their company website or their social media accounts can report their positive announcements – which can lead to more job opportunities posted by them. Plus, it gives you a way to prove to them that you’ve done your research, when you go for an interview.

3. Understand A Company’s Hiring Approach. Each company has a different way of recruiting and hiring candidates – for example, a company may solely hire on employee referrals. For the companies you’re interested in, learn what kinds of processes bring candidates to them so that you can adapt.

4. Join a Professional Organization. Join the local chapter of a professional organization. You can network and also keep up on recent developments in your field at meetings and presentations.

5. Network Through Social Media. Following a company’s Twitter account may not be enough, so engage with other users that work at that company. Research shows that 1 in 10 candidates whose resumes come through a referral are hired, compared to 1 in 100 general applicants.

And if you’re looking for more assistance in finding that perfect job? Contact us today!