What a Difference a Decade Makes

As recently as the mid-1990’s, getting a job, starting a business, or switching career paths were not considered to be overwhelmingly difficult challenges. The jobs were out there but you had to spend lots of time using the increasingly popular Internet job boards to ferret them out and then electronically submit on them.

Since then, however, the global jobscape has changed dramatically. Economic pressures have forced companies to cut staff in order to keep their budgets in line. Achievement payouts, merit awards, bonuses, raises, and benefits have been relentlessly trimmed back in what began as a trickle but which today is a torrent. The available pool of jobs has dried up to such a point that if you need a job badly enough, the pressure of competition now forces you to prove your value and unique talents in an almost spectacular fashion.

In an era in which jobs have become unbelievably scarce, it’s regrettable that the majority of job seekers still rely on submitting generic resumes to Internet job boards with the belief that they can compete successfully with an ever-growing population of job seekers. The real problem with this approach is that it delivers miserable results involving little or no human-to-human interaction, networking, relationship-building, etc… — skills that, in the real world, are at the root of all successful business ventures. It is very much like tossing your resume into an immense “black hole” and watching it vanish forever with zero opportunity for acknowledgement or follow-up.

Today, there’s a dynamic and intelligent alternative. Shape My Career has partnered with the ETP Network (Empowering Today’s Professionals) to engineer a whole new job search system for professionals who want to manage their careers in the same way a CEO manages a company.

The system is logical, precise, and driven by business ownership logic. It leverages the power of advocates — people who will help you get connected to decision-makers or contacts who know those decision-makers — within a company that interests you. It requires you to develop a powerful value proposition which, if designed correctly, will compel any reasonable decision-maker to grant you an interview.

Happy New Year,

Rod Colon