Wall Street Layoffs suck, let’s face it. I was laid from Credit Suisse in 2007, and it devastated me.
What can you do today? In this 2 part series, we discuss 6 tactics you can use now. Each of Parts I and II will give you 3 steps you can take today.
In this Part I video below, we cover:
• How to get found by recruiters on LinkedIn
• Creating a wow executive resume that will actually get read
• Accessing online courses to build your skillset
For more articles, please check out Why Using a Buddy System Can Be Your Key to Job Search Success.
Transcript:
Summary of Wall Street Layoffs
Hi, this is Mike Mittleman, your personal career coach. I help people get top jobs in financial services. Our topic, how to prepare for layoffs season, will be split into two parts. Part one today will cover three strategies, and in our next video, part two will cover an additional three.
Overview
In this video, we’ll discuss Number one, how to get found by recruiters on LinkedIn. Number two, creating a wow resume that will actually get read. And number three, accessing online courses to build your skill set. What we’re not going to cover is there’s nothing really you can do today to minimize an impending layoff. If you think you might be laid off, there’s not much you can do, at least in the next one, two or three months. So there’s not much we can
In the short term, when your number is up, your number is up. However, the following strategies we are going to talk about will help you bounce back quicker, much quicker if it happens to you in this year, and help you reduce the chance of actual layoffs happening in the following year. So let’s talk about strategy number one, how to get found by recruiters on LinkedIn. When a recruiter does a search on LinkedIn, what they’re really doing is looking for keywords in your LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn’s Search Algorithm to Minimize Wall Street Layoffs
LinkedIn’s algorithm will favor people who have keywords in four specific sections: The first section is your tagline, the second section is your about section, the third section is your experience section, and the fourth section is your skills. So you want to make sure that you have a good combination of keywords and content in these four sections.
Keyword Search Optimization
You never want to sacrifice content just for keywords, but keywords are the key to getting found. Well, how do you even find your own keywords? My suggestion is to search LinkedIn or other job boards for 3 to 5 illustrative job descriptions that you’re really interested in. Paste the text into any program that counts words, like wordcounter.net, and find the top ten words that appear on wordcounter.net.
So strategy number two: How do you create a WOW executive resume that actually gets read? Well, did you know that a reader only spends 12 to 15 seconds on a document that you actually spent hours and hours to create and constantly tweak? So to grab a reader’s attention, don’t have a paragraph for your job
Nobody even reads paragraphs anymore, especially not in 12 to 15 seconds. So try a tagline instead. Use 5 to 10 words that describe your career goal. Then below the tagline, put three summary bullets below the tagline which clearly communicate why you are the right candidate for the job. That’s it. A tagline and three bullets at the top of your executive resume —
Go Beyond the Executive Resume to Minimize Wall Street Layoffs
That’s what could be read in 12 to 15 seconds. The last strategy we’ll talk about today is accessing online courses to build your skill set. Online courses are a great way to increase your skills and they can also be great executive resume builders. Who doesn’t need to learn better Excel skills, VBA skills, SQL, Python, etc? These skills are almost universal in almost all jobs that exist today, especially within financial services.
Well, how do you find the best one since this industry has so many different offerings? Well, I like Coursera or Coursera.org, since it costs $59 a month and has an all-you-can-eat kind of buffet. They’ve partnered with top universities like Wharton and others to give you access to great professors. Their website makes searching for courses easy based on topic, based on whether you’re looking for a basic, intermediate or advanced course.
Some will take hours and some take months, and you also get a certificate that you can proudly put on your executive resume and your LinkedIn Profile. For other sources, check out Moody’s, the CFA Institute, Ed-X, and Udemy. I hope you found part one of this video, How to Prepare for Wall Street Layoffs Season, valuable. Stay tuned for part two. Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel and download my cheat sheet to get found by the right recruiters on LinkedIn.
