Turning Your Job Search into Career Success

By Eric Von Jares

Whether you are a new graduate, between jobs, underemployed, searching for something better, or a seasoned veteran who has lost his passion - Turning Your Job Search into Career Success will lead you through a journey of rediscovering yourself, resolving old hurts, reclaiming your personal power, and giving yourself permission to allow the good you seek to come to you. You will learn how to take control of your work life by planning your career and greatly improving chances of your career success. The crucial topics of interviewing and networking will be covered to help mold you into a candidate that employers seek out on their own. You will learn unique job search techniques that will provide the impetus needed to make your move into the career of your dreams. Many feel that things have changed for the worse in the workplace with advent of the Great Recession and now with the COVID pandemic, and you may have lost hope. Following the practices of this book will help you believe again. Turning Your Job Search into Career Success is an inspirational guide to career planning, job hunting, interviewing, and career change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Starshine Solutions LLC
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201373085

Eric Von Jares

Eric Von Jares is the founder of Starshine Solutions where he has used his operations expertise helping small business owners achieve their goals.  After attaining a graduate degree in business management at age 21, he has had diverse experience as a hiring manager for Fortune 500 companies for over fifteen years and as an entrepreneur. Eric has worked also as a professional writer where his writing has appeared in publications such as the Southern Business Journal, Parents Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post.  He is a former chapter officer of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and the Austin Writers’ League. Turning Your Job Search into Career Success is his sixth book. Eric is a proponent of the New Thought movement and encourages others to pursue their dreams by offering practical advice. This Ohio native resides in Texas with his life coach wife and adopted daughter, and enjoys baseball, traveling, photography, and visiting family throughout the United States.

Book preview

Turning Your Job Search

into

Career Success

An Inspirational Guide for Career Planning,    Job Hunting, Interviewing, and Career Change

Eric Von Jares

A Starshine Solutions Book

Copyright © 2021 Eric Von Jares, Starshine Solutions LLC, Houston, Texas

All rights reserved.  Published in the United States of America.  No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners.  The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. 

Audiobook edition created 2021

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered.  It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice.  If legal advice or other expert assistance is required; the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

-  From the Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

The author or publishers shall have no responsibility or liability with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, by application of the information contained in this publication.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publications Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

I dedicate this writing to Family who we all treasure and would be lost without their love and support.

Special thanks to the love of my life whom I have shared the depths of my soul, and have received so much in return.  Time stands still when you hold my hand, even after all these years.  Here’s to more memories for cherishing in the future.

I am grateful to my sister for sharing a wonderful childhood together.  Everyone should be so lucky to have lived with your best friend while growing up, and continue to receive their love and support to this day.

Table of Contents

1. Finding Yourself and What You Want

2. The Mind Makeover

3. Creating a Vision Statement & Master Plan

4. The Guide to Gratitude

5. Marketing the New You & Asking for Help

6. The Winning Resume & Accomplishments

7. Getting Linked In Online

8. Networking and Support

9. The Interview That Creates Value & The Offer

10. Achieving Career Success

11. Bonus: Doing What You Love & the Side Gig

About the Author

Recommended Reading

About This eBook

Turning Job Search into Career Success  is what every new graduate, career changer, unemployed person, and worker over 55 needs to know about breaking through and finding gratifying work in today’s job market. 

This book has been revised and updated to further help job seekers in the current world dramatically changed by the Covid pandemic.

We have included great job techniques to help you land the opportunity of your dreams, but we strongly encourage you to work this unique  process by not skipping ahead, but reading the first few chapters on examining and reinventing yourself first.  Once you address both the internal and external issues you deal with on a daily basis, you will be surprised and delighted with the results.

Preface

Imagine having a vocation that you are proud of, feel satisfaction, and don’t view as work, but as a way of expressing yourself in the world.  The purpose of this audiobook is to provide a comprehensive path from the inside out to obtaining the work that you love.

First, we will examine what you value most, and then we will break down barriers that have limited your progress in the past. Next, we will give instructions on how to recondition your mind to allow yourself to dream big, and the unique steps you will take to perform a successful job search to find your rightful place within the working world. 

Whether you are a new graduate, between jobs, underemployed, searching for something better, or a seasoned veteran who has lost his passion – Turning Your Job Search into Career Success will lead you through a journey of rediscovering yourself, resolving old hurts, reclaiming your personal power, and giving yourself permission to allow the good you seek to come to you.

You will learn unique job search techniques that will provide the impetus needed to make your move.  Many feel that things have changed for the worse in the workplace with the advent of the recession from COVID-19, and you may have lost hope.  This audiobook will help you believe again.

Prologue

We first start with the certainty that everyone is entitled to performing meaningful, satisfying work that they feel a sense of pride and passion.

Yet a 2010 survey by Deloitte’s Shift Index concluded that 80% of people dislike their job.  Furthermore, the recession caused by COVID-19 has changed the landscape of American businesses and the lives of its workers profoundly. 

That was the bad news, but there’s more.  Because of economic conditions, businesses, especially Fortune 500 corporations, have purged millions of jobs to the tune of 14.7% unemployment which peaked in 2020.  These employers now have learned to do more with less (less employees, that is).  Some employees are performing the duties of two or more jobs. And that hasn’t changed much lately. 

Larger employers are adding jobs at nearly the same pace as banks were lending money to new home buyers – exceedingly slowly. Corporate America is more concerned with maintaining and growing company profits, driving up stock prices, and delighting investors than increasing payroll costs by adding more employees. 

These same corporations collectively have stockpiled over $3,400,000,000,000.00 ($3.4 trillion) in cash that could be used to add to their payrolls, instead sits idle according to industry experts.  This is disturbing news for the nearly 30 million Americans who were at some point either unemployed or underemployed (working part-time, but desiring full-time work).

But there is good news!  For the savvy job seeker, these facts or statistics are immaterial, and will not determine or limit your success.  Remember that you are not a statistic.  You are a unique person who has a unique blend of personality, history, and talents that no one else has. This audiobook will show you how to position yourself to be one of the next hired, and actually getting the work you want by programming yourself for success.

Employers want you for being you – a special individual who highlights his previous successes and demonstrates his future value.  We’ll show you how to do just that.

If you haven’t marketed yourself for a job in the past five years, even before the economic decline started, we’ll give you an inside out approach to the basics of knowing who you are, identify what may be holding you back, and work the issues in your tissues. 

We strongly suggest that you work through the early chapters to recondition your mind from perhaps one of defeat, frustration, and fear to one of embracing hope, possibility and limitlessness.  Performing the convention and mechanics of job search is easy, and you will learn the new rules of the day. 

Doing the work internally on yourself is the hard part and requires some effort, but with great rewards to your career success and also to all areas of your life – financial, social, emotional, and spiritual.

Chapter 1

Finding Yourself and

What You Want

You are about to embark upon a glorious adventure – one that will be of immense interest and pleasure for you.  Finding yourself and what you want actually is a lifelong process, and there are surprises along the way.

You may already feel that you have found yourself.  At age 5, you knew that you wanted to be a teacher.  You lined up your stuffed animals and were always instructing them on sounding words and proper etiquette.  You easily made that dream happen as a grade school instructor when you starred in English and History as a student.  Somewhere along the line, you picked up playing guitar, and now at age 40, want to teach guitar full-time. You are still in your chosen profession, but you now have a new passion.

There are a few lucky individuals who discovered their life’s work at an early age, but most of us have a story similar to Alexis, the eldest child of an attorney who influenced her career choice.  Before she knew it, Alexis was a practicing attorney herself with the success and accolades to match her parent’s.  Alexis also discovered about ten years into her career that something was missing.  It was no shock to some extended family members when she enrolled in studies to become a psychotherapist to follow her true passion of nurturing others on a personal level.  In a few short years, Alexis was once again a reckoning force in her new field.

You may identify with Michael who loved working with numbers so it was natural to see him graduate with an accounting degree.  It was not long afterwards that Michael found his work to be routine, stale and mundane. He couldn’t wait for the day to end so he could tend to his yard and watch the Gardening Channel at night.  Neighbors always admired his yard and often asked for his advice, and soon he was designing backyard patios, decks, and other projects for money.  Michael now manages his own landscaping company and couldn’t be happier. And that accounting degree came in handy after all as he makes the numbers work for him.

There will be times in your life that will require you to revise, revisit, rewrite and redesign ideas that previously had thought for yourself.  If you are yearning for more than what you have, now is the time to search anew.

Let’s start right now, with where you are at this moment.  It’s actually the perfect place to get started. 

The Big Question

"Three of the hardest things in the world are diamonds, steel, and knowing yourself."– Benjamin Franklin

Let’s start with thinking about the big question; the one that we all want the answers for – Who am I and what I am here for?  This question has a tendency sometimes to stop us in our tracks and freeze up, shrugging our shoulders saying, "I just don’t know.  I have