Candidates can double their job interviews by leveraging recruiters, online profiling, and advanced LinkedIn techniques. Many of my readers get their next job without applying using keyword-stacking.
In today’s interview I’ve been joined by Karen Gurney, the professional recruiter behind ‘Stacked: Double Your Job Interviews, Leverage Recruiters, Unlock LinkedIn’. Karen, thanks for generously spending a little time with me today to help unlock how today’s readers can improve their job searching techniques. First, things first can you let us in on what prompted you to start working on this book?
I am a recruiter and executive search consultant and in 2015 a job candidate that could barely get a call on his resume came to me for career coaching. I checked his LinkedIn profile and it was horrific. He only had 23 connections, his profile picture was a bad selfie, his headline was meaningless, and his industry setting was wrong. I got his logins for all his online profiles and changed everything to match the job search goal. Within one week he had over 500 connections and he had four interviews. The most important part — he had not applied for one single job. This changed everything about how I coach my job candidates and resulted in this book and 5-star rated online class.
Wow, those results are fantastic! It’s amazing that you were able to make such progress for him in such a short amount of time. Can you tell us a little more about the techniques that you outline in this book?
The methods are what I use every day for my candidates and also to manage the frustration of not being able to find talent when I am recruiting. I also run test accounts for my candidate profiles to make sure they are performing.
Did you also find it essential to perform additional research in addition to your test accounts?
Yes, I have a Ph.D. in Economic and Workforce Development. So research is a part of good method development.
And what do you hope job seekers can discover when they use your combination of research with your proven methods of concepts like keyword-stacking?
There are recruiters hunting for job candidates every day but they cannot find them. Once you know how to keyword-stack your resume and profiles for the job you want, you will double your interviews.
Doubling the number of interviews must be exciting for both yourself and the job seekers themselves. Overall, what do you feel is the most gratifying aspect of publishing your advice?
Getting people calls for job interviews, helping them achieve career changes and promotions, and helping my recruiter colleagues gain access to more great talent.
After providing amazing success for both recruiters and job seekers alike, I have a feeling that you’re working on a new book project to guide others. What is your next project about?
A Back to Work Mom book.
There’s a huge audience of women wanting to rejoin the workforce, and I’m sure that the advice that you will be offering in that book will be fantastic. Now, one thing I was wondering about was what pushes you to continue writing your techniques down and sharing them with others?
I like to capture and communicate my knowledge to reach a wider audience.
Now that we’ve captured some information about you as an author, I’m hoping to steal a few more minutes of your time to explore our quick fire round towards capturing titbits of yourself outside of the author mindset. Let’s start with: what is your zodiac sign?
Libra
Are you left or right handed?
Right handed
Are you introvert or extrovert?
Extrovert
And finally, what’s the most unusual name you’ve ever come across?
Cuauhtémoc – The last Aztec warrior-leader. I met someone 25 years ago named after him in Mexico.
That is an awesome name. Speaking of all things awesome, I hope that your promotion goes fantastically and I hope that you can impart this marvellous knowledge that you have for attracting recruiters new jobseekers.
Want to find out more about Karen Gurney? Connect here!