- By Kim Thompson, Seattle PI Blogs

Habits can be a double-edged sword, some are great and others can be your worst enemy, keeping you from achieving your career dreams. This is a good time to look at your habits and jettison those that do not add depth to your career growth and enhance your job search.

When you think of a job search, think in terms of many pieces that are combined with a personalized touch to form your introduction. These include: Chemistry, work experience, and a communication style that makes you unique. While everyone has a unique job-search experience, there are core habits that create a solid foundation that every successful job seeker has in common.

The top five job-search habits that you should keep this year are:

1. Be persistent: being persistent with your job-search goals helps keep you focused and on track. It’s easy to let your job search go by the wayside when employers are not responsive, but the one habit that will energize your search is persistence. Having a tenacious attitude keeps you moving forward.

2. Follow up: Following up is one habit that can make the difference between those who land a great opportunity and those who miss out. There are so many ways to follow up with people including e-mail, texting, phone calls, social networking, in-person meetings and letters. Remember that following up is a powerful way to keep your name in front of a decision maker and the perception you send is one of motivation.

3. Be resilient: Staying resilient will keep your attitude in check and help you thrive in a competitive job-search market. While resilience is partly a trait one is born with, it can be developed, and it helps you cope with the unplanned events life often brings. Being able to regulate stress and bounce back is key component in a good job search.

4. Stay connected: Keep yourself in the loop by maintaining a good presence online as well as in person. Stayconnected to the trends in your field by attending professional association meetings and reading trade journals that discuss current and future trends in your field. Those who stay connected increase their chances of uncovering a great opportunity.

5. Give back: A successful job search is made up exchanging information. It’s a two-way street of sharing conversation, time and information with people. Volunteering is a great way to help people and keep your skills current. Giving back sends a message of goodwill that comes back to you in unexpected ways.

Keeping these five habits will help your job-search efforts and your career in general. Success in life largely depends on the habits you keep, and developing awareness of what works for you is crucial as you move into 2011. Good habits free you from an unproductive job search, and at the end of the day these habits will give you a sense of achievement.

- Posted by Kim Thompson

After many years in the hsopitality recruiting business, I’ve learned that candidates often lack preparation when facing a career transition or job change.

Here are six simple steps to take before an interview to help you land the job.

1. Prepare Your Story
Throughout your hospitality career, you may pursue different directions. Be prepared to discuss the reasons for which you’re taking your career in a certain direction.

Organize talking points that help you tell your story. It’s important to touch on reasons why you may have left a company without bashing your former co–workers or supervisors. Explain with confidence the reason that you are making or have made a career change.

Remember that a lack of conversation reflects lack of interest. Be prepared to incorporate the storyline of your background into their organizational challenges.

2. Calculate Your Compensation
Know the difference between your needs, your value to the company, and market trends. Your financial needs are of no importance to the hiring manager or the hiring company. They care about your success, but they are not accountable for your financial responsibilities.

Investigate the market trends for the position for which you’re interviewing. The dollar amount is usually defined by what the market will bear for your position. This information can be collected from a variety of websites and market research. Keep in mind that this will also depend on the company’s size, revenues, headcount, geographic location, etc.

The value that you bring to the company is one that only you can define and present to your prospective employer. This will be based upon your demonstrated experience as determined by contributions you’ve made in previous roles. Capture and reflect revenues that you generated, incorporate costs and expenses that you managed, and/or numbers of people or clients that you have supported.

Understand acronyms such as OTE and MBO.

• OTE = On Target Earnings. This is what your total compensation package is, including annual base salary, bonuses etc.
• MBO = Management by Objective. This is typically used to identify a percentage of your annual base and may be paid quarterly or once a year.

3. Articulate Your Value
You need to be able to address the value that you bring to the company. Be prepared to share your skills and accomplishments and discuss how they benefit the company. Articulate these accomplishments in a problem–action–results sequence.

• Problem – This will reflect the specific problem, challenge, or situation that you are faced with. The way you would describe this is in the form of an overview or summary.
• Action – This represents the steps that you took to address the problem, challenge, or situation. Describe the methodology that you followed to drive results and deliverables.
• Results – This is where you define the success or accomplishment of your action. Use this as an opportunity to share how you evaluate the end result.

4. Determine Your Commute Threshold
Estimate how far are you willing to commute to get to work every day. Some candidates will use this threshold to represent miles and some will use it to measure total road time.

5. Determine Your Willingness to Travel
This will usually depend on the position for which you’re applying. Your previous experiences with work travel will be a true indicator to consider. You should also carefully consider the impact that this will have on your family and personal lifestyle.

6. Articulate Your Management Style
Be prepared to share and discuss the environment or culture where you can be the most productive. Are you most effective in a chaotic, fast–paced, high–stressed environment? Do you bring a calming influence in a chaotic setting? Are you detail oriented, driven by reports in a micro–managed structure? Be prepared to describe your typical activity in a normal work day.

If you do your homework well, you will be extraordinarily successful in your job interview. It will become easy for you to open new doors of opportunity toward landing the job of your dreams! Go get ‘em!