When most people start looking for a new job, they tend to consider the activity as one complete process. Successful job applicants, however, will see it as three distinct phases:

Job searches

Resume (curriculum vitae) preparation

Interviews

The aspect that the casual applicant will spend the least time and effort on is job searches – yet logic dictates that this should be the area that gets most attention. For every job offer there are typically a higher number of interviews. And not every application receives an offer of an interview.

So it is amazing how many people treat finding jobs so casually. Typically they will have two or three places that they focus 90% of their effort on and the remainder of their time is spent browsing a few more sources once every few weeks.

It is no surprise that these people tend to have the least success in finding a new role. Good job hunting requires effort and nowhere is this more important than finding the vacancies in the first place.

Most job hunters tend to only focus on advertised vacancies – and then they only look for a small percentage of these. Typically they have a favourite paper or magazine and a few internet jobs boards. They will also register with a few agencies and wait to be called if any openings arise.

And their effort usually ends there.

First of all this restricts the volume of advertised vacancies that can be found and it also ensures that they never get to find out about the jobs that never find their way into the papers or onto the internet.

Here are ten very quick tips for increasing the volume of openings that you can apply for:

1. Read every local newspaper in the area you’d like to work. Most of them have an on-line presence too.

2. Find out which trade journals are published in your chosen field.

3. Find out which agencies specialise in your chosen field.

4. Draw up a list of companies you’d like to work for. Find out where they typically advertise.

5. Build up a network of people that work in recruitment.

6. Build up a network period. People know people who hire.

7. Spend some time finding out which companies are growing – and therefore likely to be hiring.

8. Find out which companies are moving to your area – and therefore likely to be hiring.

9. If you register with a recruitment agency, try to meet them face to face. You’re more likely to be remembered by them.

10. If you are serious about getting a new role, factor it into your schedule. Allocate, say, an hour a day and stick to it.

There are two factors that kill recruitment effort. The first is apathy. If someone can’t be bothered to find out which agencies specialize in their chosen field then they are doomed to failure.

The second is distractions. People start out with the best intentions to research some recruitment information on the internet. Oh yes, the internet. And so, just before they check out that new jobs board, they check their email. Then they find out about the score from last night’s game. Then they check a friend’s blog.

Before you know it, they’ve been on the web for forty minutes of their scheduled hour and that only leaves them a small amount of their allotted schedule to do any work.

Worst of all – they kid themselves they’ve spent an hour researching.

Job searching may not be fun – but it’s productive time. Unless being productive is more important than having fun, the aspiring job hunter will still be stuck in the same old job.

Remember the fact that it’s a numbers game. If you only find a fraction of the jobs that are out there, you’ll limit your chances of getting a new job. And if you only look in the obvious places, you’ll be up against all the other lazy job hunters who only looked there too. Meanwhile the hard worker finds the off-the-beaten-track jobs and ends up with the post you were better qualified for. If only you’d known about it!

Mark Walton is the author of 20 20 Easy Ways to Find That Dream Job, a self-help guide for people looking for a new job. If you want to improve your chances of getting a job offer then go to: http://www.jobhuntingresults.com/Job_Searches.htm to see how you can ensure you find that elusive dream job.

Too many would be job applicants get overly worried about the quality of their resume (curriculum vitae). Although I’m not advocating a sloppy document, in my experience, too many people spend a disproportionate time on it.

Most would-be candidates I speak to will spend 10% of their time looking for jobs, 10% preparing for the interview and 80% making their resume look perfect.

Worst still, once they’ve perfected the resume, they keep it static, regardless of the role they’ve applied for (but that’s another story).

At the risk of sounding like I’m talking to a dog, I’ll spell this out as simply as I can.

A resume won’t get you a job.

Don’t confuse yourself. Nobody got a job just by applying. Ok, I’ll admit maybe one or two have, but for 99.999% of roles, it simply moved them one step along the process.

Recruitment is a numbers game.

Simply put, the more applications you make, the more interviews you will get. The more interviews you get, the more job offers you will receive.

You could strike it lucky and submit one application, get interviewed and offered the job. This is rare and not to be relied upon. The more applications you put out there, the better your chances of being interviewed.

It sounds so obvious, doesn’t it? Yet most job seekers would rather rely on the immaculate resume that does all the work for them. One application, a killer resume and the job is theirs before they even turn up for the interview. Meeting the employer is just a formality.

Despite the numbers aspect, I would like to add that if you have a choice between 100 standard applications for jobs or 50 tailored applications, I would say your chances of getting an interview would be greater with the 50.

Me? I’d go for 100 tailored applications. Cover the numbers and the quality. Unfortunately, we live in an age where we want something for nothing. We all want to be millionaires and work only a few hours per week. In reality, fortune favours the hard worker.

So how would I recommend the division of labour? Well as the recruitment process is a funnel i.e. wider at the top than the bottom, you need to spend most time looking for jobs. You’ll need to find more jobs to apply for than potential interviews. And in turn you’ll need plenty of potential interviews to generate the job offers.

I wouldn’t like to be prescriptive about percentages, but if you spent 50% of your time job-searching and then 30% of your time tailoring your resume, that would leave you 20% to spend preparing for interviews.

This is some way away from my prediction of a typical job seeker at the beginning. Yet the numbers make sense. Armed with this knowledge, the question is, what will you do with it?

My father used to laugh at my shyness with girls. He once told me that if I asked 100 girls out, at least a few were bound to say yes. A simple numbers game.

I agreed with his logic but, do you know what, I never followed his advice. The question is, will you be as stubborn as I was?

Mark Walton is the author of 21 Ways to Build the Perfect Resume, a self-help guide for people looking for a new job. If you want to improve your chances of getting a job offer then go to: http://www.jobhuntingresults.com/Resumes.htm to see how you can ensure you

Depending on which expert you believe, up to 95% of communication is non-verbal.

So if just five per cent represents the words, why do so many interviewees rely on this single aspect to convey what they mean and understand the interviewer?

This article is all about the major part of communication – body language. Up to 60% of what you communicate is conveyed this way – so why don’t we use it?

I’ve recruited for twenty years and I use every trick in the book. I use Neuro Linguistic Programming like the best of them and yes, I spend a lot of time analyzing body language.

In the hands of a willing amateur, a body language book is a dangerous tool – especially when recruitment decisions could be made on a single interpretation. But used prudently, it can help you understand someone’s mood or even their true intentions.

If you’ve ever watched television without the sound, you’d be amazed how easily to pick up on people’s moods. It’s a subconscious thing and that fact helps the interviewee. You should instinctively know about body language and how to use it to convey a message. I say ‘should’ as some body language is subtle and although we know instinctively what an action means, our conscious brain dominates and ignores the sign.

Further, our body language reveals our true intentions and often in an interview, we want to disguise these aspects.

So what does it all mean? It means sticking to the obvious body language signs if possible.

Here are a few common examples:

If someone’s happy, they tend to smile. Obvious really. They tend to show open palms and will sit in an open manner – nothing is crossed. They will unbutton their jacket for example. So if you want to appear happy, you smile and sit in an open manner. Self-explanatory really.

If someone is confident, they tend to lean forward (leaning towards someone also suggests you like them).

If someone is nervous, they will fidget. They will clear their throat and play with anything in front of them.

If someone is unsure, they tend to pull on an ear lobe.

If someone is lying, they often put their hand in front of their mouth – subconsciously hiding their lie. They will also avoid eye contact.

If someone is being defensive, they will lean away. They will cross arms and legs.

If someone is aggressive, they will clench their fist. They will often grit their teeth. They will typically point with their finger – particularly with jabbing motions. They may chop one hand into the palm of another. If sitting, they often tap a foot or bounce one of their legs (this could also mean they are bored or just irritated).

This isn’t a definitive list but it’s a useful starting point. I’d recommend every interviewee buys a copy of a body language book and spends some time in a public place, observing behavior. Note facial expressions, body positioning and what people do with their hands. Consider how they handle a pen or a spoon. What does it all tell you about their mood?

Go ahead, I give you permission to use the 95% you’ve probably dismissed until now.

Mark Walton is the author of 20 Ways to Deliver the Perfect Interview, a self-help guide for people looking for a new job. If you want to improve your chances of getting a job offer then go to: http://www.jobhuntingresults.com/Interviews.htm to see how you can ensure you