When to consider relocating for a job

Willing to relocate? That phrase in some job listings — and often uttered by placement counselors — sticks in many a job seeker’s mind on days when the phone isn’t ringing. These days, when it looks like you can’t find a decent journalism or related job in D.C., you might be tempted to look elsewhere — others do, and somehow survive.

Relocation — either permanent or temporary — as a way to end unemployment is becoming a fact of life for some D.C. area job seekers. But before taking your show on the road, experts say you need to do some serious thinking and some research. Despite the tough job market here, the D.C. area actually has more opportunities for transitioning journalists than many other regions. (See Dec. 7 blog post “Why D.C. is a relatively good market for job hunters”) Also, other places may not be as inexpensive as they seem and you may not have the same network for free-lancing and part-time work while looking, not to mention a necessary support system to keep up your spirits.

Yet career counselors say job hunters should consider relocating when:

Making initial contact — the inquiry letter

Now that journalists are being advised to proactively reach out to employers as hiring improves, an obvious question arises: How should you best make initial contact with someone you don’t know and who you aren’t even sure has an opening? This is similar to the dreaded cold call that salesmen and public relations professionals learn how to make early on in their careers. For job seekers, it’s known as the inquiry letter.

This letter is similar to a cover letter except that you aren’t really applying for a specific job and you are sending it uninvited to the contact. Before sending an inquiry letter, you should research the company and come to the conclusion that they are likely to be hiring soon. And if you’re fortunate, you may have gotten their attention before they run an ad for the world to see, and will contact you before others. At the very least, you may have impressed them enough to keep your resume on file for future openings. Most recruiters and hiring managers like to help people when they can — keep this in mind.

While you want to impress, remember that you are contacting someone who owes you nothing, so be careful. Give them a reason to want to get back to you and above all, don’t be a nuisance. Experts offer the following tips for crafting an inquiry letter:

How to take advantage of 2010 hiring plans

It’s starting to look a lot like 2010 will be a better hiring year — okay, okay, I know, how could anything be worse than 2009? But there are some definite signals that hiring may be picking up substantially: outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas anticipates a significant increase in hiring in many fields in 2010. And a recent survey conducted by a business economics firm showed that while only 6 percent of companies said they were adding jobs in July, 12 percent answered affirmatively in October and even more expected to be hiring next year.

Obviously, this is a national, general picture and journalism organizations will likely remain slow to hire — and some (especially if the grim past few weeks are any indication) will still be shedding jobs. Yet even journalism organizations that axed jobs recently may be looking to hire next year. Some cut too much, others are figuring that the worst is over and they can slowly add jobs they had waited to fill until the economy got better and still others are expanding in certain areas and need staff for new projects. And there are online start-ups that need to staff up.

The big question for job hunters is how to find these organizations and positions, especially as competition for each opening remains fierce with the huge number of job seekers on the market. Recruiters and experts offer a few tips on how to position yourself to take advantage of this uptick in hiring:

What to avoid on your resume

Resumes are a preoccupation of many job hunters and no wonder — a polished, effective one is a ticket to landing a good job while a resume that misses the mark can quickly remove you from hiring managers’ callback lists. Most job hunters get good advice about what to list on their resume. What they’re usually not told is what to avoid — and listing too much can often cause a job hunter headaches as well.

So here are a few resume pet peeves of hiring managers and recruiters. Attempt to avoid these pitfalls:

Grab bag — do’s and don’ts, collecting on free-lance and some leads

‘Tis the season to be flooded with lists (one I’d really like to see would be: the worst dopey list stories of ‘09) so I thought I’d compile a quick job hunters do’s and don’ts list, based on actual tales from the hunt from email correspondents and friends. If you have some to add, please share.

Let’s start with the don’ts, as those tend to be more interesting:

How to survive in a fiercely competitive job market

The one thing most job hunters can agree on — besides that it takes forever to get one’s phone calls returned! — is that this job market is brutally competitive. For every good opening, there are hundreds of interested candidates. And until hiring substantially picks up, especially in journalism, it’s likely to remain that way.

But what can you do to not only survive the competition but to beat it and capture a job when the odds seem to be against you? Experts say job hunters can take some advice from sports coaches and psychologists and learn how to compete. Their tips include:

Settling into a job-search routine

One of the toughest things about a job search can be structuring one’s time. For journalists who are accustomed to non-stop deadlines, meetings, constantly chirping mobile phones and pulsating BlackBerries,  places to be and people to see, the deadening silence of a job search can seem cruel. No other person or outside force is compelling you to do things, so you need to come up with your own structure and make that phone ring.

Experts say successful job hunters mimic the structure of their working lives through self-created deadlines, routines and networking. Though it’s not easy and at first may seem somewhat made-up, developing a structure that works for you will move your search along and help keep loneliness and self-doubt — a job hunter’s enemies — at bay.

Here are some tips:

Tips for analyzing a job offer even when you really need a job

These days, any legitimate job offer is a good one, right? Unemployed journalists who want to stay in the field can’t afford to be picky, right? Well, that’s certainly the conventional wisdom. But as a few email correspondents recently told me, they wish that they had been a bit more careful in analyzing their offers as just weeks into their positions they had buyer’s remorse — all for different reasons, but all wish they would have done more research before taking the job.

Experts say that part of the complexity of examining a job offer when you’re unemployed is that you can’t compare it to your current job as you usually would — you lack a baseline. Also, obviously there is a great deal of pressure — especially if you have been unemployed for many months and especially if your savings and severance is running out — to be in the working world again. But experts say that’s no reason to ease off on asking good questions of your potential employer and doing some further research. You don’t want to be job hunting again in a few months because the position is a poor fit. And you don’t want to fail to negotiate well on your behalf just because the economy is lousy — a fair employer that is eager to have you join their team will want you to feel good about accepting the position.

Here are some tips on how to examine a job offer so you’re making the best deal you can and making sure the position is a good fit for you:

Making a decision on a buyout

Though layoffs are a reality for many journalists these days, others may have a trickier decision to make (as at least a layoff isn’t voluntary so there’s no decision!) — whether to take a voluntary buyout from your news organization. Thousands of journalists have been faced with this decision in recent years and with news about buyouts at the New York Times and other organizations in the news lately, it seemed a good time to look at what to consider when deciding whether to take a buyout.

Experts say the first rule is to use the time between announcement of the buyouts and the deadline for making your decision (often 30 to 60 days, sometimes more) to do some serious research, not only into the financial implications of a buyout but what this could mean for your future career. Also, they say checking into what could happen to your job if you don’t take the buyout is an important part of your research.

*Financial and career experts say these are some calculations one should make when figuring out whether to take a buyout:

How to tell when employers are “just not that into you…”

Some recently laid-off journalism friends were remarking the other day how job hunting can be much like dating. For the long-married, we’ll clue you in: That means waiting for a call; wondering whether it’s too soon for you to call; wondering if the silence is because they’re busy or traveling or if it’s that they forgot who you are or remember who you are but aren’t interested; or if it’s simply that they’re really married or engaged and didn’t bother to tell you.

In the job-hunting world, that translates to: Waiting for a call (or actually multiple calls); wondering if it’s too soon for you to call; wondering if the silence is because the hiring managers are busy or traveling or forgot who you are or remember but aren’t interested; or it’s that they have an internal candidate or another candidate they prefer and likely won’t hire you but prefer to slowly torture you by not telling you that just yet.

Taking a page from the (silly yet cute, and it’s set in Baltimore which somewhat redeems it!) recent movie, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” here are some signals as to when hiring managers just aren’t interested or actually may be interested, and tips on what you can do about it: