Tips featured in the segment:
- Set realistic expectations and avoid getting discouraged: Realize you will run into a number of "no's" before your final "yes."
Stay organized and don't go into overwhelm: Set daily and weekly goals for your search and break your projects down into achievable and realistic steps. Use a checklist so you can track your progress.
- Set yourself up for success: If you're lacking in certain skills (especially technical ones), take a class. Community colleges, senior centers, adult education and several other learning institutions offer low cost classes. You'll not only learn valuable skills and can add them to your resume, you'll be able to network with fellow students and the instructor.
- Know your skills and be able to speak to your accomplishments: Be able to list several of your strengths in a moment's notice and back them up with winning examples of you performing your work at its best.
- Learn to sell yourself: Consider yourself a "product" to be marketed to possible "buyers"(in other words, potential employers). Learn to define the product's (your) strengths and added value, describe your career achievements and contributions, set yourself apart from the competition, and present yourself as the candidate of choice.
- Remember your attitude is all-important: Your resume underscores your skills but the interview is often about fit and personality. Be positive, show energy and enthusiasm, watch your body language, smile and respond to questions with confidence.
About Eileen Williams:
M. Eileen Williams, MA, NCC has appeared four times on View From the Bay. She has 20 years combined experience as a job search specialist/career counselor, university instructor and writer.
As a Nationally Board Certified Counselor with a Master's Degree in Career Development, she specializes in working with jobseekers in midlife, showing them the latest techniques for landing a job in the 21st Century, and helping them turn their age into an advantage.
Eileen is also the host of the popular blog and radio show, "Feisty Side of Fifty" and is a contributing author to Chicken Soup for the Soul in Menopause.
>> Land the Job You Love!: 10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers Over 50 (Volume 1)
