Help for the Mortgage / Finance Job Market

Because of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, a growing number of mortgage and finance professionals are hitting the streets, looking for jobs. Yet, these layoff victims largely lack the most important career skill of all: How to market themselves.
“The moves most mortgage and financial professionals have made to advance their careers to this point are probably exactly the wrong things they should do to find work in the current job market,” cautions recruiting professional David Perry, managing director of Ottawa, Ontario-based Perry-Martel International.
Here are 3 typical wrong moves most mortgage/finance job seekers are making now:

• Networking with colleagues
• Searching on Monster.com
• Reading help wanted ads in the newspaper

None of these techniques address the real problems in finding a job today, according to Perry and job-search expert, Kevin Donlin, President of Edina, Minn.-based Guaranteed Résumés.
Donlin and Perry are offering a free job-search webinar Thursday, September 13 at www.MFjobsearch.com. Attendance is at no cost or without obligation, but limited to the first 1,000 participants to sign up at the webinar site.
During the webinar, mortgage professionals hit by the sub-prime meltdown will learn how to:

• Google for the best jobs
• Craft a compelling resume that cuts through the clutter
• Apply “job search judo” techniques in the interview
• Get more job leads using Social Networking tools like LinkedIn and ZoomInfo

“In today’s job market, if you don’t actively sell yourself to employers, you don’t eat,” says Donlin. “Odds are you’ve never thought of yourself as a product that must be sold, like a vacuum cleaner or a set of snow tires. Good news: You’re not alone. Bad news: You’re part of a whole generation of people who don’t know how to ferret out career opportunities.”
Donlin points out that employers are interested in only two things. “Can this job candidate make me money, and can this candidate save me money?”
“To get noticed and get hired, you must get inside the head of your future employer and do a rain dance. Specifically, you must show that you can make it rain profits,” urges Perry. “How? You match employers’ needs to your detailed achievements. By detailed I mean exact dollars, percentages and numbers. It’s that simple. And that difficult. Because 90% of job seekers — even those in the financial sector — have never been trained to understand their true, specific value at work.”
For more information on the free job-search webinar visit www.MFjobsearch.com.