Whew.

When I see a client caught in this whirlpool, I have a framework in my head which helps me think about how to help my client take the next step. Here is what it is:

I ask myself whether this client seems to be undecided or indecisive? If they are undecided, then there is some information they need that will take the edge off the decision and make it easier. For instance, it might help them to talk to someone who has completed a graduate program they are considering. Getting more information about the coursework and/or what’s happening in the job market with graduates could give my client a clearer sense of whether the investment in the degree is worth it.

I would describe a client as “indecisive” if there seem to be other issues in the way—self confidence, anxiety, risk taking, to name a few. Often, this indecisiveness stems from fear.

If fear is getting in the way of your accomplishing what you need to in the job search, here are some strategies:

1. Break down what you need to do in the smallest step you can imagine. Force yourself to focus your thinking in this way. “I need to get a graduate degree” is a mighty big goal. The next small step would be” I need to e-mail the department I am interested in and ask for more information.”

2. Work on taking the mystery out of whatever decision you are making. If you are unsure whether you want to work at xyz company, see if you can track down (through your LinkedIn contacts for example), someone who used to work for this company. If they are no longer employed there, they will have no reason to give you anything other than the unvarnished truth and that could be a helpful perspective for you.

3. Figure out a way to practice what you need to do in order to feel more comfortable with it. Before you talk to an important networking contact, try networking with someone that you know very well in order to practice talking about yourself in job search mode.

4. Discipline yourself to focus on and visualize positive outcomes that are a likely result of your efforts, rather than giving a larger than is realistic weight to negative outcomes that are not probable.  There is a word for this: catastrophizing.

5. Finally, I love the concept of “task therapy.” Do it right, do it wrong, but sometimes you just need to do it. Take action, see what happens, and then take the next best step from there.

I think the real problem lies with the fact that LinkedIn typically sends out an update about your activity to your connections. So it would be natural for someone to take notice, if they receive a flurry of updates about your editing your profile, adding new connections, and joining various networking groups.

If you are worried about this you can turn off the feature on LinkedIn that updates your connections on your activity. Here is how you do this:

Go to your Linkedin home page

Hover over the upper right hand corner where your name is listed

Click on “settings”

Click on “turn on/off your activity broadcasts”

Uncheck the box: “Let people know when you change your profile, make recommendations, or follow companies

Click on “no” for both options having to do with notifying your connections of profile or status updates

After you get your profile and connections ramped up for the job search, you can turn these notifications back on because an occasional notification of your activity to your network will be a good thing.

I think that the summary section of LinkedIn can also be a great opportunity for positioning and I strongly suggest that you take advantage of this option when you build your LinkedIn profile. Take some time to craft your summary so that you speak in your own voice as you tell your story.

One of the cardinal rules for resume writing is that you never use personal pronouns but rather start each sentence or phrase with an action verb. In contrast, your LinkedIn summary can be more relaxed and informal. The first two sentences of my LinkedIn summary actually begin with “I”:

“In my work as a career counselor, I help clients assess their career direction through testing to target how interests, skills, and personality traits transfer over to options for work. I also do quite a bit of job search coaching, helping clients with resume writing, interviewing strategies and the most productive ways to look for jobs including the best use of social networking and other on-line sources.”

It is also effective to describe what is most important about the way that your work has evolved and how you see your strengths. For instance, one of my connections writes in her summary about how her admin work has “expanded to include marketing, event planning, project management, sales analysis, board room presentations and web design and interfacing.” She goes on to make a very nice transition as she describes how she believes her knowledge of art, design, aesthetics and communication strengthens her writing and presentation skills.

So here is a recipe, if you will, for LinkedIn: apply a liberal amount of keywords in your profile just as you would your resume, so that it will be searchable if a computer comes looking for you. But think of your summary as the icing on the cake. Write in living color to an audience so that they will understand what you believe your greatest strengths to be.

The goal, of course, is to increase the probability that you will be recommended for jobs that are a good fit for you. And then you can use your positioning skills in the greatest job search event of them all: the interview!

1. Include a picture and while you’re at it, make sure it’s a good image. Don’t settle for something that looks too fuzzy. Now’s not the time to either get too artsy or too social, where you’ve got hands draped around your shoulders and you seem to be laughing hilariously. And if you are male, shave that stubble as you probably would if you were to go on an interview.

2. Pay attention to what is on the second line under your name because that is what people who see you listed as a connection will see. One of my most important friends in terms of the heft of her job title, somehow has her volunteer work on her second line. Good works are important but a descriptive job title is what you want to put out there for networking purposes.

3. Opinions differ on this one, but I would agree with the camp that thinks you need not advertise the fact that you are actively looking for work on Linkedin, even if you are unemployed. People who know you will be aware of this; people who don’t know you but who might be trolling for recruiting purposes may think you are a stronger candidate if they believe you are currently employed. So if you are unemployed and looking for a job in sales and marketing rather than saying “Seeking position in Sales and Marketing,” I would just put “Sales and Marketing.”

4. Take the time to flesh out the details of your work experience. At the very least, cut and paste your resume into your profile. Better yet, I think you can take a bit more of a narrative approach on Linkedin that might be easier for those who might be reading around to digest.

Coming up in my next blog, I’ll talk about my favorite part of the Linkedin profile: the summary section.

I subscribe to their newsletter (and you can too—it is just a click away on their home page) and their January, 2012 newsletter listed 24 companies who have either announced new locations or expansions in the Richmond region over the past year. By their calculations, these announcements have totaled nearly 5,000 local jobs! As the newsletter says “some are hiring now, and some will be hiring in the future, but all are growing and should be on your radar.” Here are the companies they listed:

• Amazon

• Amsted Rail Company, Inc.

• Ashland, Inc.

• Capitol One

• CarePoint Medical

• ColorTree Inc. of Virginia

• Cuore

• Dominion Due Diligence Group

• Elephant Auto Insurance

• Flexicell

• GE

• Health Diagnostics Laboratory

• MeadWestVacp

• Mazda Motor Corp.

• Alllianz (Mondial Assistance USA)

• Networking Technologies and Support

• Quality Technology Services

• SnagAJob

• Sonoco Recycling, Inc.

• Spiniello Co.

• Standard Motor Products, Inc.

• Universal Health Services, Inc.

• UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing

• Vulcan Materials Co.

Today, as a matter of fact, I have heard from two people that they accepted job offers yesterday. Three other folks wrote that they are in the final stages of interviewing and one of them had two really good opportunities from which to choose (and no, this is not the same person I wrote about on my blog two weeks ago). Two additional clients told me they were scheduled for second interviews for a position they really want and for which they felt the first interview went especially well.

Perhaps even more exciting: all but one of the clients that I mentioned above are in their 50’s and the other is in his 40’s. This is really good news for those of you who have a lurking fear about age discrimination. I am not saying that it doesn’t exist…but here is some evidence that it really is possible to get some traction out there in the marketplace regardless of age.

Keep at it. Good luck just might be headed in your direction.

Since the area in which he ultimately wants to be is fairly technical and he is without many contacts, I told him I would do whatever I could to set him up with some informational interviews in order to get good advice about how to craft his search and to figure out whether he needs to go to graduate school. I felt very inspired about helping this particular client reach out to the professional community.

But then….I found myself experiencing just what so many of my clients feel. I had some good ideas of people he might talk to but I began to feel very self conscious about asking for this favor. Perhaps I will bother people when they are busy and don’t want to be distracted by me. Perhaps I will interrupt them when they were in the middle of an extremely important task. Perhaps they will think to themselves, “I don’t know Bonnie Miller that well. Why is she asking me to go out of my way for her?” Or worse: perhaps they will think, “I don’t even like Bonnie Miller very much, how obnoxious of her to inconvenience me.”

Dramatic I know but as you can see, I whipped myself into pretty much of a frenzy and decided to put off the e-mails I need to send. But just as I know sometimes an appointment with me and the need to talk about agreed upon goals makes many of my clients accomplish things they don’t want to do, so also did my upcoming meeting with my client serve as a catalyst for me to go ahead and reach out to the people I had in mind.

Responses came back quickly and were filled with enthusiasm. One friend encouraged me to give my client both her cell and work numbers so that she would be easy to reach. Another friend actually thanked me for thinking of her (whoah!) and went on to say she had recently worked on an HR project where they drilled down factors they used to hire and promote and she would happily share that info to help my client understand the job search better.

I have been reminded once again that there really is kindness in this world. My client was very thankful for these contacts. I told him I was counting on him after he got settled to return this type of favor whenever he could. I know he will and I hope you will too. I also hope that you will not be afraid to ask for what you need.

Wow.

We talked about how his job search had taken a while and how in some of the dark and seemingly inactive days of his search, this abundance of offers would have been unimaginable. Figuring out which offer to accept is a nice problem to have!

I asked my client what advice he might share with folks who are in the middle of a search. “Perseverance, patience, and perspective are all really important,” he said. I was in the middle of trying to write down all of these p-words, when he put a post it note in front of me and said, if you are going to write a blog, make sure you mention how important it is to do everything you can. On the post it, he had written: “Linkedin, recruiters, friends, business meetings, networking.”

I know that you might be feeling impatient and discouraged about your own search and perhaps it is not helpful for someone to tell you to calm down and be patient. But the truth for this particular client—and might be true for you too—is that he actually created each of these opportunities by a process of:

1. Talking to folks in order to uncover where the action was in his particular industry

2. Letting people know that when the time was right for an organization to hire, he was interested in making a move

3. Staying in touch with folks in order to nurture the relationships he had developed

4. Following up on new ideas and new contacts when they surfaced

I put these in numerical order in order to show that there is some logic to the process. It might even be better described as a circular process.

And when you “persevere, be patient, and keep your perspective” as my client suggested, the circle expands until one day you get a job offer.

Or who knows. Perhaps you’ll get three of them at once.

It just so happened that I had gotten a call a few days before from a friend of mine who is on a Non-profit board that was starting a search for a staff member. He kindly wanted to give me information about the position for which they were recruiting, just in case it would be a good fit for any of my clients.

You guessed it. This opening was actually a very strong match for the client that had been in touch with me about her search. She was quite excited to receive information about the opening from me. I contacted my friend to let him know I thought I was sending a strong candidate his way and encouraged him to keep a look out for her application.

I write about this not to set myself up in super-hero mode but to remind all of you who are in the middle of a search that you just never know who might have heard about a job for which you’d like to apply. I often recommend to my clients that networking is indeed important…and yet it is as important to stay in touch with your network as it is to make that first contact. If my client had not reminded me that she was looking, I admit that she might not have been in the front of my mind when my friend called. I am so glad she did because it was a win-win for both my client and my friend.

The start of the new year is a good time to be in touch with your friends, family and professional contacts to remind them of your search. All the best to each of you for a prosperous new year in which your job search produces that great job that you deserve.

Not that those things aren’t important. But don’t they feel just a little, well, mysterious and out of reach? How do you describe in a concise yet insightful way, the essence of your job search targets in two minutes? How do you figure out what a computer program is going to be looking for when you are trying to make the cut for the job of your dreams? How do you stuff enough things into your interviewing tool box that you’ll be able to respond in a spontaneous yet powerful way to any “tell me about a time” query that comes your way?

The job search is both an art and a science. When your search starts to drag you down it’s probably time to let that pendulum swing back towards the art side of things.

By this I mean:

• Whether you’re interviewing, networking or resume writing, make sure your message is coming from the inside—what you want to do and why you know you can it—rather than putting pressure on yourself to craft a pithy message for some audience out there. You’re a job searcher not an advertising copywriter.

• Do your homework (research, research, research/practice, practice, practice) so that you know what you’re talking about. Then make a conscious effort to relax and be yourself. Don’t let anything flow from your keyboard that is so stilted and formal that it wouldn’t come out of your mouth. Don’t let anything come out of your mouth that you wouldn’t risk saying to your best friend without expecting an eye-roll.

• Make sure all of your learning about the job search isn’t just coming from authors of books and articles. After all, these people are paid to talk in superlatives about grand gestures and this can be overwhelming. Talk to people who are really in a position to teach you something: folks who have just finished a job search! Take advantage of their hindsight. If they could do it over, what would they do more of—or less of? What resources were helpful to them? What perspective did they develop over the course of their search? How did they keep their energy up?

Experience and practice serves an important purpose in the job search. For instance, you probably don’t want your first or second interview to be for THE JOB; you’ll do better if it’s your fifth or sixth interview. But sometimes the best practice of all is when you just take the plunge and do your best, with a steady resolve that you’ve organized your thinking and your heart is in the right place.

That’s job search art.