But it affects every job seeker I’ve met.  And their spouse, kids, parents, neighbors, etc.

This is the pink elephant of the job search… not many talk about it, or know how to deal with it.  I’m thankful to Alison Doyle, the job search expert at About.com, for pointing me to a colleague’s post: Top 8 Tips for Living with Depression

Normally, when I write a post like this, I share the 8 tips…. and ask you to go read the original post for more details.  My fear is that sometimes people read the 8 tips and think “oh, I know all about that, I don’t need to read more details on that tip…”  That’s what I do, anyway.

I hope that you really, really click through and read the entire post.  This is a life-saving concept.  It can save you, your sanity, your marriage, your relationship with loved ones, your career… and probably more.

With hesitation, I share the 8 tips.  But please, please click through to read the post – don’t just assume you have a grasp on any of these 8:

1. Join a support group,
2. Reduce your stress,
3. Improve your sleep hygiene,
4. Improve your eating habits,
5. Learn how to stop negative thoughts,
6. Beat procrastination,
7. Get a handle on your household chores,
8. Learn how to forgive

You knew about those, right?  And you know how to deal with each one?  I am sure I do too… but please, go to the original post to see more information on how to do each one better than you are now.

One of the most common issues that comes up is discrimination – specifically, age discrimination.

Chris Russell, at Secrets of the Job Hunt, wrote a post titled How to fight age discrimination.  It is a collection of four posts… here are my two favorite:

How to Fight Age Discrimination, from a legal perspective (on eHow).  There are four steps, including have documentation (see the post for what to document), find the EEOC office nearest you, file the complaint in person, and then file the complaint (aka, charge) by mail.

Fight Age Discrimination in Your Job Hunt – Manage Your Digital Footprint, by Keppie Careers.  With regard to social media, Miriam says: “It can help keep you looking young in a job market with a tendency to discriminate against older workers.”  I agree.  Having some kind of activity, or strategy, can make it look like you are current in today’s world.  Check out this post on LinkedIntelligence, about a guy who met someone in marketing who hadn’t heard about LinkedIn… if you are in marketing, you better know what LinkedIn is, don’t you think??

We all face discrimination of some kind … it might be age, it might be race, religion, accent, size, height, hair color, lack of hair… how can we get around discrimination and really show who we are? (hint: there is a way!)

A huge lesson she learned is that she can “do hard things.”   With time, persistance, dedication, the right tools, the right peers, the right mentors, she did it.  She did hard things.  That is a lesson she’ll take with her the rest of her life.

I am writing this from an airport (Phoenix) after what might have been the hardest week of speaking of my speaking career.  It was fun, and rewarding, and exciting, but it was HARD.  I gave 13 keynote presentations in 4 days.  Some of them were new.  Two of them were with a copresenter who I hadn’t even met before this trip.  I didn’t have internet access, and I had other pressing business with other parts of my business.  It was hard, but I did it.

My job search was hard.  Networking, communicating (30 second pitch), creating the right job search documents, was HARD.  I wasn’t good at it, but I did it.

You HAVE TO do the hard stuff in your job search.  It isn’t meant to be a “fun” time, but it can be a rewarding time, and a time that you can look back on and say “I proved I can do hard things.” This can be a great experience for you, like it was for my daughter.

Do not shy away from the hard things – meet them head-on, and do them!

People spend a lot of time and energy on things like LinkedIn, their resume, networking, getting ready for interviews, applying to jobs online, and much, much more.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve become convinced that the job search is almost completely about COMMUNICATION.

Whether it is written (resume, email, cover letter, social networking) or verbal (interviews, Me in 30 Seconds pitch, general face-to-face networking) or visual (body language, the clothes you wear, how you sit or walk, smiling, etc.), you are continually saying “hire me” or “pay attention to me” or “stay out of my way.”

So… how is your communication?  Can you improve on anything?

I challenge you to honestly look at what you are saying, regardless of how you are saying it, and think about how you can improve it.  I learned to write better by blogging regularly… over the last five years my writing has improved.  You can learn to speak better through Toastmasters, or by studying comedians.  Here’s a post to polish your speaking skills.

Whatever specific thing you need to improve upon for better communication, do it.  It will serve you well the rest of your life!

This is from the HR Technology Conference, so it’s not totally about job search, but there was a lot of talent management talk, for sure.

Chris talks about video interviewing (with a shout out to my buddies at @HireVue – I hope you get to do an interview through their system, which is very cool stuff).

Check out this quote (from his post):

“Will need to rethink how we think about talent. In next 5 years, will have 5 retirees for every 1 entrant.” – @jasonaverbook

There’s in Chris’s post – if you are interested to see what HR thinks about, at a strategic level, check it out!

One of Mark’s messages has had a significant impact on how I run my business.  It is deceptively simple, yet is really, really powerful.

In a business, he says, we need to identify three “high value activities.”  Those are activities that will lead us towards our monthly goals, or target numbers.  Organizing your desk is NOT a high value activity.  Working on a new product is.  Doing research is not necessarily a high value activity.  Making a phone call to a customer or prospect, with a purpose, is.

What are high value activities for job seekers?

I remember a problem my job seeker buddies and I had: we had ALL DAY LONG to do whatever we wanted.  Sometimes we’d do things to “take a break,” and that break could last hours.  We would send one email, or apply to one job, and then we’d reward ourselves with the break.  By the end of the day we could have spent hours on breaks, and the things we did that “merited” rewards were really not that significant.

Differentiate between a productive activity and a HIGH VALUE activity.

Mark says we need to do 3 high value activities each day.  3 * 5 = 15 at the end of the week.  I bet most job seekers are doing 1 – 3 each week right now.  Can you imagine if you do 15 each week?

Do you think that will get you closer to your goal?  Since I’ve been working on getting my three in each day I know I get closer to my goals.  I’m not just feeling productive, I’m seeing results.  And that’s what we need to do.

This is a skill that we can carry with us throughout the rest of our life, whether we do three high value activities in a job search, in our marriage, in our personal life, in our job, for our house, for our body, etc.

What do you think high value activities might be for you?  Here’s a list of some activities… which are high value?  (for sure, one is NOT)

• make phone call to someone you sent a resume to in the last 6 months
• schedule an informational interview for sometime in the next 7 days
• go to a network meeting and make and follow-up with 3 contacts
• go to an informational interview, and follow-up
• apply to ___ jobs on a job board
• introduce one of your contacts to another contact
• Find 3 relevant contacts on LinkedIn and communicate with them
• Review your LI Contacts and find 3 to reconnect with
• Find a blog in your profession and leave a comment on it, linking back to your LinkedIn Profile
• Help a new job seeker get started in their job search, ensuring they avoid the job search pitfalls

Make your own list and then do three, every day!

You’ve heard the job search is a numbers game, right?  It used to be, for sure.

Julie writes:

I had someone apply for 15 of our job openings the other day. Fifteen! And all the job openings called for completely different skill requirements. Before even opening this person’s resume I’m thinking: What a waste of my time. Just seeing those 15 messages in my inbox, I was completely turned off.

Read the entire post here – excellent advice from someone who knows!

Are you working HARD?  Or, are you working SMART?

I worked really, really hard, doing all the wrong things. But I worked hard, and at the end of the day I could say “wow, I did a lot of work today!”  But it was the wrong kind of work.  And it got me nowhere, except depressed.

Crystal T wrote a post on Recruiting Blogs called Top Ten Interview Blunders.  You must read it.

As I look at these ten points, I think “I am pretty sure I’ve violated all of them.”  Part of this is because I like to “wing-it,” which is a lame excuse for not preparing for the interview.  Another part might be because I think so much advice doesn’t apply to me… so I disregard it.

I’ve come to realize it does apply, to all of us.  Whether we are interviewing for the $400k executive job, or the $10/hour step job, the mistakes show we don’t care enough to do it right.

One of my favorites is #7, because this concept is applicable in so many places (networking, interviews, branding statements, LinkedIn profile, email signature, etc.):

Don’t riddle your answers with vague terms like ”hard worker” and “successful” without explanations of why and how.

What do you think? Are you making any of the mistakes on the list?

I expected to get a lot of advice, and have a lot of tasks to accomplish.

But when we were done, I realized he had consistently shared just one thing:

I need to go to the local landfill (aka, dump) and get some compost from them, and then mix the compost into my dirt.

I need to do that every year.

I was surprised nothing else was a “need to” task.  Not even putting in fertilizer or manure.

As I’ve thought about his advice since then, I’ve realized his focus is on providing the best possible environment for plants to grow, and that all starts with the right soil.

I wonder, then, how right your soil is for your job search?

I can list 20 different tactics you can do today in your job search, but if your foundation (or soil) is not strong, and healthy, and appropriate, then you might fail miserably.

Here’s a gardening example: If I plant tomato plants in clay, what will happen?  Eventually they will die.  If I have prepared the soil, though, as he directed me, they have a much better chance of thriving.

Here’s a job search example: If you make 10 calls a day, and say all the right things, but have the wrong attitude, what will happen?  People on the other end of the phone will feel your negativity drip through the phone line and will be anxious for the call to be over.  If you have prepared yourself, though, and have a positive attitude, and don’t reek of negativity, you will have completely different results.  Same words in both examples, but different results, right?

What is the foundation for you?

It could be your attitude, as I mentioned.

It could be your marketing materials, including business cards and resumes and cover letters.

It could be the way you dress, or other characteristics of your personal appearance.

Different people will need to do different things to prepare their foundation… I can’t tell you what yours is, but you need to figure it out, prepare it, and then do the other (more tactical) things.

Here are some questions he’s asked recently – check them out… the answers are awesome:

• Is your answering machine message driving people away? (11 answers so far)
• LinkedIn connections: Quantity vs. Quality? This old debate has been had many times. I want to gauge my network on where they are at. (21 answers)
• Are you using Facebook as a job search tool? (22 answers)
• Two questions: What should a job seeker never read/watch during a job search? What one thing should a job seeker read/watch regularly during a job search? (14 answers)
• Do you have advice for 99ers? (15 answers)
• What’s a great gift for a college graduate (getting ready for a job search)? ( 35 answers)
• Does a person’s email service provider say anything about them? (34 answers)

There’s more where that came from – go to his Profile, then click on that See all Q&A link from the box above.

Are you using LinkedIn Answers? You should!