Today’s unemployment rate remained devastatingly high at 9.6% for the 3rd straight month. This also marked the 18th straight month it has been at 9.4% or higher, which is an all-time historical record! Despite the creation of 151,000 jobs, most economists believe that employers would need to add 400,000 net new jobs every month for the next 3 years to fully recover from the effects of this recession! As a result, job seekers need to employ unique strategies to stand out among the sea of unemployed. Two areas that offer hope for both jobs and job strategies are the twin fields of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).
Recently and for the 5th straight year, I covered the annual SES show (Search Engine Strategies-http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago/) for several clients and media outlets. This conference provides the world’s most advanced expert information on SEO and SEM. This is important because search engines are the new Yellow Pages and hiring companies are increasingly using search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to discover candidates.
All during this show I discovered state-of-the-art techniques which job seekers can apply to landing a job. Two that stand out are:
1. Developing and listing expert videos on You Tube, which is now the #2 search engine (behind Google) and becoming increasingly more valuable to gain attention for you! With all the inexpensive tools that exist, one can inexpensively develop and post a video. The key is to provide useful information that others crave and show you as an expert.
2. Blogging and contributing to social media sites. With all the cutbacks in media, news outlets and blogs are hurting for original content. They scour social media sources and blogs for expert opinions. This can provide a rare opportunity for job seekers to contribute, be found by search engines and stand out among the sea of unemployed!
