Fastest Job Search » Job Search Follow-up System

Step 2: Start a Job Search Management System

Job Search Coach — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:39:26 +0000

Creating a Job Search Management System sounds like an elaborate project, but in reality nothing could be easier. A job Search Management System is nothing more than:

A way to keep track of all the job applications and follow-ups you have already done in your job search, and
A way to keep track of follow-up tasks you must perform in the future in order to keep your job search moving and effective.

If your image of a job search involves filing online applications and waiting for responses, you are sorely mistaken and you will wait a long time for a job interview. A successful job search involves not only the initial activity of filing an application, but also the critically important follow-up activities that will make the difference between success and failure.

During this course, you will learn the various types of follow-up activities essential to your job search. To be effective in your job search, you will need to follow-up on every job application at least four times at appropriate moments in the future.

At Fastest Job Search, we want to stress the importance of giving each potential employer your greatest devotion, as if it were the only company for which you want to work. Demonstrating dedication and enthusiasm will be the key to getting you hired.

The core of this program is the creation of a system that tells you:

When to perform these follow-ups,
What the follow-ups should consist of, and
Empowers you with all the tools you will need to follow-up effectively.
Enables you to keep track of job applications and follow-ups

iTickleMe Job Search Management System
When you think of a Job Search Management System, you probably envision spending $100 or more on software, or filling filing cabinets with file folders with colored tabs and labels. This is NOT what iTickleMe Job Search Management System is about.

Rather, iTickleMe uses the most commonly used business tool – your own email system – as the basic, fundamental tool of your Job Search Management System. Because specially configured job search follow-up emails are used to fuel your job search, you will never forget to follow up because follow-up tasks will be waiting for you in your inbox on the exact day you need to perform them.

What is a Job Search Follow-up Email?
A Job Search Follow-up Email is an email that you will send to yourself, but it doesn’t arrive until you need it. It will carry all the information you will need to perform a well-timed, effective follow-up in your job search. The Job Search Follow-up Email will contain:

The job posting
Company name, address, phone, contact name
Copy of your resume and cover letter
Dates list of all previous activities
Dates and tasks for future follow-ups

Imagine sitting down at your computer in the morning, finding twenty or thirty Job Search Follow-up Emails in your inbox, each carrying your follow-up tasks for the day. When you open one, it immediately dishes up all the prior history of that job application. In seconds, you are up to speed. You remember the company, the job posting and your previous communications in seconds.

Then you look at the follow-up task you have assigned yourself for that day. If your tasks is to make a phone call, go ahead and do it. The contact name and phone number are there in your Job Search Follow-up Email. If your task is to send a letter, go ahead and do it. Everything you need to accomplish the task is in front of you.

Click the “Forward” button for your Job Search Follow-up Email, but don’t send it yet! The email is now ready to be updated with today’s activity.

Whatever follow-up task you performed, whether it was a phone call or sending a letter, record it in the forwarded version of the Job Search Follow-up Email. If nobody answered, write “Left message, will call next week”. If you sent a letter, write “Sent letter below. Follow in 2 weeks”. Then paste a copy of that letter right in the Job Search Follow-up Email so it will be there ready for you the next time a task is required.

When you have performed the follow-up task and recorded it along with your plan for a next follow-up, send your Job Search Follow-up Email to yourself so that it arrives at the right time in the future for your next continue follow up task.

Q: Huh? How can I send an email “so that it arrives at the right time in the future?”

A:Here’s the beauty and simplicity of iTickleMe Job Search Management System. Only iTickleMe allows you to send yourself emails so that they arrive exactly when you need them, enabling you to follow-up in a well-timed, well equipped way.

Q:How can I tell iTickleMe to send my Job Search Follow-up Email back to me in, say, 2 weeks?

A: Simple! Address your email to 2w@iTickleMe.com. Your email will return to you as a Job Search Follow-up Reminder in 2 weeks. It works for days(d), weeks(w) and months(m), too.

Q: How do I start a Job Search Management System?

A: Sign up for a free trial at iTickleMe Email Reminders.

In our next post, “Build a Job Search Follow-up Email” we will discuss how to build a powerful Job Search Follow-up Email.

iTickleMe Job Search GUARANTEE:

Follow this plan for 4 months, initiating at least 10 new contacts every day (this is easy once you get the hang of it). If you don’t have a job at the end of 4 months of implementing this program and you wish to discontinue service, simply notify us at support@iTickleMe.com and we will refund your $19.95 in full! You have nothing to lose, and a lifetime of rewarding employment to gain. You owe it to yourself and your family to sign up right now!

The most powerful tool you can have in your job search is iTickleMe Email Reminders.You can try it for free.

Step 3: Build Job Search Follow-up Email

Job Search Coach — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:43:30 +0000

Last time, we talked about iTickleMe’s Job Search Follow-up Email, what it is, and why it is crucial to your finding that perfect job. This time, we are going to tell you how to build it. In order for a Job Search Follow-up Email to be an effective means of coordinating communications with your prospective employers, let’s look at what it must contain:

First, it should quickly remind you all of your prior interactions with the prospect. This includes your resume and cover letter you sent, along with any information gathered from or notes on conversations you have already had. In other words, you need a way to “get up to speed,” and fast. Who did you talk with? What was said? You will need to quickly remind yourself of as much detail as possible. That way, you can seamlessly continue the thread in your next communication with that person.
Second, you need to know what to do next. Say your plan was to place follow-up call one week after sending a resume, and a friendly note two weeks later. You will need to have these tasks laid out for you. That way, you can easily act on one and move on to the next.

To achieve these objectives and compose an effective Job Search Follow-up Email, follow these steps:

Copy all pertinent text from the job posting into your Job Search Follow-up Email. This should minimally consist of the job title, job description, and desired qualifications. Make sure to include a link to the posting’s website in the email. As such, you will have quick access to anything you may have omitted.
Paste your cover letter it in or attach it to the email.
Paste your resume it in or attach it to the email.
Subdivide the email into sections with bold headings (i.e. “Job Description,” “Qualifications,” and “Cover Letter”). This will help to neatly order and organize of all relevant information in your mind.
Be sure to include the company name in the subject line.

Here is what it looks like:

Sample Job Search Follow-up Email

You will schedule this email to come back to you at key times in the future – that’s the special function of iTickleMe. When it returns, you will be able to refresh your memory about that particular job application just by re-reading the email.

With all of the information organized into one place, you won’t waste time shuffling through disparate files on your hard drive and your web browser’s history to find what you need to know about that job search. Everything will be right there in front of you in the email!

Now that job search email is almost ready to be sent. But there are still a few things you can do to accrue even more benefits from its service. In our next post, “Find the Target Person,” we’re going to show you how to make this email bomb even more powerful.

iTickleMe Job Search GUARANTEE:

The most powerful tool you can have in your job search is iTickleMe Email Reminders.You can try it free for 90 days.

Step 5: Plan Your Job Search Follow-ups

Job Search Coach — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:19:33 +0000

The last post focused on establishing a direct line to your target person. Now that you know to whom to direct your energies, you now need to communicate with them on an ongoing basis. This ongoing communication will keep you “in front of” the Target Hiring Person, so that when a hiring decision is to be made, you will be the one who is thought of.

The target person (or people) isn’t your friend, someone who you can call out of the blue just to catch up. If you bombard this person with calls or emails, especially without a good reason, you will assuredly turn them off. And if you try to get in contact too sparsely, they will forget about you.

So, you must strike a balance by pacing and scheduling your job search follow-ups. This allows you to be present in the target company’s consciousness for a long time. If you communicate on a scheduled, ongoing basis, you demonstrate an unfailing interest in their company and will likely imprint yourself on a hiring recruiter’s memory. All of your seemingly spontaneous interest in the target company will actually be the result of your implementation of a master plan of follow-ups.

Planning Your Job Search Follow-ups
Planning is fundamental to a successful job search.

To plan your job search follow-ups, open your Job Search Follow-up Email and add your follow-up schedule to the top. We will demonstrate a potential format for the job search plan below. While this may work for many people, feel free to tailor it to your situation. You could add the specific dates planned for each follow up, or write more notes about the content of each communication, or whatever will help you devise a thorough communication scheme.

We suggest the use of important abbreviations and symbols. In our example, “d” stands for “days,” “w” for “weeks,” and “m” for “months” following the job search start date.

Tasks for XYZ Corporation Job Search – Start 1/15/2010:
4d: follow-up call
2w: re-send resume and cover letter with “I will call in a week” phrase
3w: follow-up call
6w: follow-up call
2m: friendly note
3m: follow-up call

You have now created a master plan of job search follow-ups. This master plan should be placed at the top of your Job Search Follow-up Email. This email is now ready to be sent.

If the first activity is scheduled for 4 days, address the Job Search Follow-up Email to 4d@iTickleMe.com. If your first follow-up is 2 weeks, address your email to 2w@iTickleMe.com. Only send to the first follow-up date in your plan.

When you receive your Job Search Follow-up Email in the future, after you perform the follow-up activity, you will then re-forward it to the next time interval in your plan. At that time in the future, open the email, perform the task, and re-forward again. It’s as if you are a quarterback throwing a pass to yourself… in the future.

See how easy it is to create and manage a job search management system? One Job Search Follow-up Email carries everything you need to be effective in your job search. The availability of all needed information in one email allows your follow-ups to be not only targeted to the job and people you are pursuing, but you will do so in an amazingly efficient way.

The plan shown above is just a sample. You should create a follow-up plan that is right for you. As you use the system, you will learn more about what time intervals work best in your situation. This system allows you to make changes on the fly. If you want to change the follow-up plan, just edit it in the Job Search Follow-up Email.

Now you have a firm schedule of follow-ups. Planning your follow-up communications, and implementing this plan, will give you an identity which will help you stand out above the crowd of other applicants, and will help you build critically needed business relationships. This consistent, scheduled communication will strengthen your candidacy for a job and put you many steps closer to being hired.

In our next post, entitled “Types of Job Search Follow-Ups,” we will discuss how to stick to this schedule and make the most of it using iTickleMe.

iTickleMe Job Search GUARANTEE:

The most powerful tool you can have in your job search is iTickleMe Email Reminders.You can try it free for 90 days.

Step 6: Obey the Reminders, Work the Plan

Job Search Coach — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:17:22 +0000

Once you get the program going, every day you will receive Job Search Follow-up Emails in your inbox, awaiting your action. Think of these as the suitcases in “Deal or No Deal”. Any one of these emails could hold the key to your financial security.

When you open these emails, you will be quickly reminded of everything you previously knew about the company and posting, because it is all right there in the email. You will also be prompted to do the next task required for successful job searching.

Let’s say you receive a Job Search Follow-up Emails from 4d@iTickleMe.com. You will know from this that you need to perform step “4d”. Look at the task you assigned yourself for 4d. It might be “Follow-up call”.

Pick up the phone and call. The contact name and phone number, plus the full history is right there on the email. You won’t have to rummage around to find the background history. In seconds, you will be up to speed and running.

What if the person is on vacation or away? Don’t despair, this will be a common occurrence. Just leave a voicemail explaining who you are and the reason for your call, and say you will call back in a week. Forward a copy of your job search email to 1w@iTickleMe.com, with a note to yourself at the top such as “Left message 1/19/2009 that I will call back in a week”. A week later you will receive a reminder to make that call. Get the idea?

If you are lucky enough to make contact with the Target Hiring Person, be sure to get quickly to the point and respect his/her time. You have 3 steps to cover in a very short time:

Three “Must Accomplish” Goals of a Job Search Follow-Up Call

In a friendly tone, give your name and a brief history to remind the Target Hiring Person who you are. Allow them time to respond to what you are saying.
Be sure to express how interested you are in working for that specific company, and be complimentary of the company in some way.
Ask for an appointment, even if it is an informal five minute face-to-face in the lobby. Make it easy for the Target to agree by saying something to the effect of, “I will be in your area Thursday. May I come by for a few minutes and meet you?”

Record the results of your conversation at the top of the Job Search Reminder Email. Be sure to include the date, the name of the contact, and a thumbnail of the conversation. Also, don’t forget to write the next step in your follow-up, with your plan for when this step should occur.

Sample note in Job Search Reminder Email:

2/1/2010 Spoke 10 min w/ Mrs. Perkins. Nice lady. From Kansas City, like Mom.
No hiring for 3 weeks. Ok to call her after that. Call her in 4w.

Have you figured out that you will now send the Job Search Follow-Up Email to 4w@iTickleMe.com? You are getting in the swing, my friend!

Notice that in an abbreviated fashion, your summary of the conversation carries lots of meaning that you will use in your next call. Next time you can ask how the hiring freeze was going, did it end on schedule? If Mrs. Perkins doesn’t seem too rushed, you might venture a personal comment such as, “I was thinking about that you said you were from Kansas City. When I went to Kansas City as a kid, we always used to go to Swope Park. What a great place. Is it still there?” If she wants to talk, let her. You are building a relationship! Then you can move on to points # 2 and #3 above. Get that face-to face-meeting!

Implement all of your Job Search Follow-up tasks as they come due. This is a must. Once you get the Job Search Follow-up Email, don’t let it linger in your inbox. Use it to refresh yourself of all you need to know, then execute the task at hand. The follow-up tasks are not very difficult, but they will be coming at you fast and furious.

In addition, initiate a minimum of 10 new contacts every single day. In just one month, you will have hundreds of job prospects in your system. You will be processing follow-ups like a pro, and you will be massively effective. Remember that for whatever you do, you will be the beneficiary, so give this everything you’ve got!

Work this Job Search Management Program for only four months, and you will be poised to get at least one, if not more than one job offer. If you don’t have your dream job at that point, keep going. You will have planted, and will continue to plant a field full of promising seeds, and they will undoubtedly bear fruit. If you maintain the job search program diligently, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you will result in an interview, and, eventually, an offer!

iTickleMe Job Search GUARANTEE:

Step 7: Visit the Dashboard

Job Search Coach — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:16:33 +0000

In our last post, we addressed how important it is to fully implement the Fastest Job Search Management Program . As your job search progresses, you will find that your number of job search tasks will quickly mushroom as you bring more and more job prospects into the system. Luckily these tasks will be fed to you only as you need to perform them, so with good pacing you won’t be overwhelmed.

There may be times, however, when you will need to pick up the thread when the time to act has not yet arrived. This could be a good thing, it might be an instance of the Target Hiring Person calling you! If this occurs, and we certainly hope it does, you will want to find the Job Search Follow-up Email for that prospect, and update it with the new information. iTickleMe Dashboard to the rescue!
The Added Value of iTickleMe Dashboard
In addition to allowing you to locate a Job Search Follow-up Email midstream, the iTickleMe Dashboard is useful in other ways, too. This view shows your options when you log in. Note that you can have up to 3 email addresses on one iTickleMe account.

To locate the Job Search Reminder Email for a particular prospect company, simply click on the Log for Email Address #_, then you will see a log of all your activity. Visually scan the column “Subject”, or search on it as shown below and find the company you are seeking.

Click “View” to read the Job Search Follow-Up Email and get up to speed before returning the call.

There will be times when you will want an overview of your work. Having the overview that the iTickleMe Dashboard provides can be a way to reward yourself, because you will be impressed and gratified that you have been making so many important business relationships, and that you are smoothly managing a substantial list of contacts and tasks.

The iTickleMe Dashboard also allows you to look for successful patterns in your approach to applying for jobs, or simply to assess your progress.

Make it a habit to visit your iTickleMe dashboard once a week, and you will soon develop a new “bird’s eye view” of your own activities. Powerful new strategies and ideas could result.

Sucker question: How will you remember to visit your iTickleMe Dashboard every week?
Obvious answer: Send yourself an email addressed to 1w@iTickleMe.com. In the subject line, say “Visit Dashboard”. In the body, paste the URL to the Dashboard and, if needed, your password. Once again, you will have used the concept of creating a reminder email containing everything you need to accomplish the task.

After you visit the Dashboard, forward that same email again to 1w@iTickleMe.com. In only a few keystrokes, you have programmed yet another future activity.

Uses for iTickleMe Email Reminders in other Realms
When you land that all-important job, you will find that the uses for iTickleMe Email Reminders actually increase. The business world is filled with tasks that require well-timed follow-ups. Here are some examples of ways current users are amplifying their effectiveness with iTickleMe Email Reminders:

Reminders to start new initiatives/programs
Reminders to make appointments
Follow-up on service calls
Legal case management
Scheduling payments
Tracking deliveries
Project management
Follow-up on collections
Tracking purchase orders
Follow-up on sales quotations
Reminders of scheduled maintenance

Back to the tasks at hand. Your job search program is an intensive, targeted system. It will produce results only if fully applied. If you really use the program, you should expect to see a job offer in four months. You may even get multiple job offers, and you will have the luxury of choice. And all within only 4 months!

Don’t be discouraged. Persist, persist, persist and you are sure to achieve success with iTickleMe! Guaranteed!

iTickleMe Job Search GUARANTEE:

Follow this plan for 4 months, initiating at least 10 new contacts every day (this is easy once you get the hang of it). If you don’t have a job at the end of 4 months of implementing this program and you wish to discontinue service, simply notify us at support@iTickleMe.com and we will refund your $19.95 in full! You have nothing to lose, and a lifetime of rewarding employment to gain. You owe it to yourself and your family to sign up right now!

The most powerful tool you can have in your job search is iTickleMe Email Reminders.You can try it free.