ATLANTA — If you need work, make looking for it an eight-hour-a-day job, suggested Elizabeth Gill.
Gill, owner of an Atlanta office of Express Employment Professionals, advised job seekers to take every aspect of the search seriously, from hitting the Internet boards to writing resumes.
"If you have a typo, you are immediately eliminated," she said. "Young people, without experience, put it at the bottom and your schooling on top. If you have a lot of experience, put it down, but don't go back to the 1970s."
Networking is a cliche for a reason — because it is effective, she said. "Get up in the morning and call people. 'Who do you know?' 'Who do you know?'"
Skip Freeman, author and president of the HTW Group in Lawrenceville, Ga., said that a job seeker's efforts are wasted if they aren't cleverly crafted.
"You have to know the current rules of the game, and I mean not the rules you think the companies play by, but the rules they really play by."
When companies receive hundreds of resumes, they use software to screen them. Figure out which words the computers are looking for — and use them, Freeman said.
A job seeker should always be looking for ways to "bubble to the top," he said. "Find someone who is in the company where you are applying. Call them up, introduce yourself."
Michael E. Kanell writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: mkanell(at)ajc.com.