Painful Job Search? Here's a Better Way to Get Hired By Liz Ryan.

If your job search isn't going anywhere, you're getting a signal from Mother Nature that it's time to try something new. I hear from people every day who say "I've applied to 114 jobs through online applications and I've only had two interviews" or "I've sent out 86 resumes without a nibble."
Of course, the hiring system at nearly every medium-sized and large employer is broken. That is clear. Still, you can't put your career on hold waiting for employers to fix their broken recruiting processes.
That will take years, and I say that because even the forward-looking, talent-aware employers who work with us on renovating their old-school recruiting processes usually plan on a two-year schedule for their projects. The bigger the organization, the longer it takes to change things.
So where does that leave you? You need a job now! You can't wait for the awful Black Hole automated job-application systems to disappear.
You can't wait for the keyword-searching algorithms and online application forms to go the way of the dodo bird. You need to start working!
You can crawl through the wreckage of the busted recruiting process to get your next job, and here's the best part. When you step outside the standard process defined by employers and use a different approach to get your next job, you won't feel so sheeplike and docile anymore, because you won't be sheeplike or docile.
You won't crawl on your knees in hopes of getting an interview. You'll walk right in the front door!
You'll show up on a hiring manager's radar screen like the vibrant, talented person you are -- like an equal. You are an equal party to your hiring manager in the employment equation, but in the traditional job-search process few job-seekers feel that way.
That's because the traditional process rests on the notion that employers are godlike and job-seekers are nothing. The old-school recruiting mindset is just one of the reasons my teammates and I launched the Human Workplace movement to reinvent work for people in 2012.
Here's how you will get a job without completing online application forms and without approaching your job search with the mental frame "I have to please these people, and grovel and beg however they want me to, because that's what it takes to get a job." False!
First, you have to shift your mindset. Here are three old-fashioned ideas about job-seeking that you will replace with new ideas appropriate for the new-millennium talent marketplace we are operating in now.
Old Idea:

Employers have all the power, so job-seekers have to do what they're told.

New Idea:
Obviously, employers don't have all the power. If they didn't have problems, they wouldn't run job ads. When your kid stuffs his sock down the tub drain at home and you have to call the plumber to come out, who has the power -- you or the plumber?
When you call the plumber, you are not going to ask the plumber "Tell me about a time when you got a kid's sock out of a tub drain." The plumber would hang up the phone if you did. When you know what kind of Business Pain you solve, you gain power in the hiring equation.
Old Idea:

I can only consider full-time jobs with benefits.

New Idea:
Putting the limitation "I can only look at full-time jobs with benefits" on yourself is dangerous. The world is changing. You are a consultant whether you get a paycheck every two weeks or whether you invoice your clients, so why not step into your consulting persona and unlock the value inside you? I want you to get a consulting business card right away and to start introducing yourself, and thinking about yourself, as a consultant.
Old Idea:

I have to follow the rules that employers specify in their job ads.

New Idea:
Who made you responsible for reading job ads? The only people who could conceivably be held responsible for knowing the rules listed in job ads (like the rule "Don't contact our managers directly") would be people who have read the job ads -- and why would anyone think you have the time or inclination to do that?
You don't have to read job ads, nor note, acknowledge or follow any rules included in them.
Now you are a free-range chicken! Here's how you'll get your next job:
Choose a Direction
Decide what you want to do next, not because you can do those things (you can do a lot of things!) but because the work is meaningful to you, will pay you enough to live on and will make use of your talents. You have to like your work. It's hard enough to job-hunt without also having the thought "Even if I get this job, I'll hate it" hanging over you.
Brand Yourself for the Jobs You Want
Many people brand themselves too broadly. The least compelling brand in the world is the brand "I can do all sorts of things!" Decide what you want to do and brand yourself for the jobs you've targeted -- not every job in the world.
Make a List of Target Employers
As you think about your next job, ask yourself "What kind of Business Pain do I solve better than most people?" Maybe it's not-closing-enough-deals pain, or 'Why are we spending so much money on excess inventory?' pain. Think about the organizations near you who might run into that kind of Business Pain, and make a list of them on a spreadsheet. These are your Target Employers.
Find your Hiring Manager in Each Organization
The person you care about in each of your target employers is not the HR manager, but your own department manager. That person has pain -- whether he or she has posted a job ad or not. It's worth reaching out to him or her to ask "How are things? Have you by chance run into this particular kind of Business Pain, as many managers in your situation have done before?"
Send Each of your Target Hiring Managers a Pain Letter with your Human-Voiced Resume
What is a Pain Letter? It's a letter that you'll research and write and send to your hiring manager in each of your target employers. You'll send your Pain Letter in an envelope stapled with one staple to your Human-Voiced Resume.
The two documents will arrive on your hiring manager's desk where he or she may be nudged out of his or her usual overbooked haze into awareness that somebody (you!) outside the company is paying attention and has an understanding of what the poor stressed-out manager is going through.
Pain Letters are effective because they come at your hiring manager in a different way. Your resume is not one of forty in a stack. It's just you, talking to your hiring manager directly as he or she sits at the desk or stands in the doorway thinking "Geez, I should meet this person."
On average, twenty-five percent of Pain Letters hit pay dirt and result in an interview or a phone conversation. That's a lot better than the Black Hole results. You have to step out of a traditional mindset and process to get a job using a Pain Letter.
Have you reached the frustration point where you can take a step out of the known and into the exciting unknown? That is the question for you to consider!

Questions and Answers

It seems like it would be hard to find my specific hiring manager. How do you do that?
If your target employer has ten or twenty thousand employees and a lot of the managers share the same job title, it can be tough to find your hiring manager, but apart from that situation it's easy. Here are the steps to follow. You can learn the detailed process in the Four-Week Virtual Course Find Your Hiring Manager.
Okay, I'm ready to try something new. What I'm doing now isn't working. How do I start?
Read Liz Ryan's articles on LinkedIn and Forbes to learn more about Pain Letters, your Human-Voiced Resume and the Whole Person Job Search method Liz invented.
If you want to learn how to research employers, find your hiring manager, write Pain Letters and your Human-Voiced Resume and use the Whole Person Job Search methodology, join a Four-Week or 12-Week Virtual Course starting Saturday, February 6th! This month, our course members get an awesome gift!
Everyone who joins a 12-Week Virtual Course (USD $299 and up) in February will receive the Four-Week Virtual Course "Create Your LinkedIn Profile" (a $129 value) for free! You'll also receive our $99 "Look Back, Look Forward" 2016 Planning Guide.
Everyone who joins a Four-Week Virtual Course in February will receive the $99 "Look Back, Look Forward" 2016 Planning Guide for free!
KINGSMITH.