Are you an executive in the job market? Executive-level job changers seem to have the most difficult time out in the job market. Their reasons range from never having to actively look for a job before to simply not knowing where to start.  Typically executives begin by contacting a recruiter, connecting with one or two industry peers and maybe answering a few executive job ads they found on a major job board. Because these efforts rarely produce any significant results, they soon begin to feel a range of negative emotions and the downward spiral begins.

So where are the executive jobs? Well, that’s the million dollar question. In short, to receive multiple, high quality interviews for key executive positions you must have a clear plan followed by a significant level of market exposure. Here are several highly effective techniques and  resources to get your phone ringing in no time:

 et Focused

Every successful project starts with a great plan. Focus on one or two industries and one or two positions that interest you. You need to know this information before you can penetrate your market, design a compelling resume or know what you are going to emphasize in your interviews…it all starts with your focus of direction. If your target industries are in significant growth mode, you stand to do even better in the job market.

 Get Noticed

Now you need to figure out where to invest your job search efforts. If you plan to remain in the same industry and/or function….recruiters are well worth contacting! And since recruiters are generally driven by industry vs. geography, don’t forget to connect with those recruiters that match your industry, but may be out of State.

Resources:  For FREE you can find recruiters by industry at www.i-recruit.com. For a relatively small investment you can access lists at The association of executive search consultants www.aesc.org. And for top executives try www.ritesite.com. John Lucht is the author of Rites of Passage at $100,000 to $1 Million+…  He has an affordable and easy system for connecting with the right recruiters.

 Get Informed:

Did you know approximately 80% of key positions are filled before they are ever advertised? Contacting companies and their respective decision makers is a great way to gain in roads and initiate discussions that lead to interviews. Better yet, contact companies who are in a growth mode. Want to add some rocket fuel to that? Introduce a value proposition (letter) to help them in their growth mode. Are you a turnaround or start up expert? Send your resume to venture capital firms. Here is another tip: nationwide, the industries expected to generate the highest number of future executive-level jobs are high-tech, healthcare, business services, pharmaceutical/medical/biotech, and     energy/utilities.

Resources: For FREE you can find articles about growth companies at www.findarticles.com. To find or research smaller companies; www.manta.com is a great source. Want an expert to run custom company research FOR you? Try: Fast Track Transition Career www.fttresearch.com. For Venture Capital and Private Equity firm lists check out my services here: http://www.maryelizabethbradford.com/products.php

 Get Online

There ARE benefits to searching on line as long as you aren’t spending hours and hours each week surfing for that lone executive job! Save yourself a whole lot of time and use a combination of  job aggregators and niche executive job boards to locate senior level jobs quickly and easily.

Resources: For FREE – try job aggregator www.indeed.com. For a modest monthly fee

you can try www.excunet.com or www.netshare.com. Both are good executive

membership sites with exclusive member-only job listings .

Landing a great executive job is a combination of timing, common sense strategies and

the right resources. You will increase your success with these powerful tips and tools!

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By Joel Kotkin and Michael Shires

Throughout the brutal recession, one metropolitan area floated serenely above the carnage: Washington, D.C.  Buoyed by government spending, the local economy expanded 17% from 2007 to 2012. But for the first time in four years, the capital region has fallen out of the top 15 big cities in our annual survey of the best places for jobs, dropping to 16th place from fifth last year.

It’s a symptom of a significant and welcome shift in the weak U.S. economic recovery:  employment growth has moved away from the public sector to private businesses. In 2011, for the first time since before the recession, growth in private-sector employment outstripped the public sector. More than half (231) of the 398 metro areas we surveyed for our annual study of employment trends registered declines in government jobs, with public-sector employment dropping 0.9 percent overall. Meanwhile, private-sector employment expanded 1.4 percent.

Instead of government, the big drivers of growth now appear to be three basic sectors: energy, technology and, most welcome all, manufacturing. Energy-rich Texas cities dominate our list — the state has added some 200,000 generally high-paying oil and gas jobs over the past decade — but Texas is also leading in industrial job growth, technology and services. In first place in our ranking of the 65 largest metropolitan areas is Austin, which has logged strong growth in manufacturing,  technology-related employment and business services. Houston places second, Fort Worth fourth, and Dallas-Plano-Irving sixth. Another energy capital, Oklahoma City, ranks 10th, while resurgent New Orleans-Metairie places 13th among the largest metro areas.

To determine the best cities for jobs, we ranked all 398 current metropolitan statistical areas based on employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics covering November 2000 through January 2012. Rankings are based on recent growth trends, mid-term growth, long-term growth and the region’s momentum. (Click here for a detailed description of our methodology.) We also broke down rankings by size — small, medium and large — since regional economies differ markedly due to their scale.

The Best Big Cities For Jobs

The Best Mid-Size Cities For Jobs

The Best Small Cities For Jobs

The strong growth of the energy sector, and Texas, is even more evident in our overall ranking, which includes many small and medium-sized metropolitan areas. The top 10 fastest growers overall include such energy-centric places as No. 1 Odessa, Texas; second-place Midland, Texas;  Lafayette, La. (fourth place); Corpus Christi, Texas (sixth), San Angelo, Texas (seventh); and Casper, Wyo. (10th).

The shift from public to private can be seen in the falling rankings of many of the most government-dependent economies. Outside of Washington, D.C. (where federal employment actually has continued to grow), Bethesda-Rockville-Frederick, Md., took an even more dramatic tumble in our big city table,  dropping 34 places to No. 46.There were sizable relative declines in the rankings of many state capitals such as Springfield, Ill. and Madison, Wisc. College towns, which had previously done well in the face of the recession, have also moved sharply lower in our rankings, due to a combination of state budget cuts and better performance elsewhere. College Station, Texas, plummeted from fourth last year on our overall list to 167th; Fairbanks, Alaska, slid from 15th place to 165th, Corvallis, Ore., tumbled from 40th place to 203rd place; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, dropped from 81st to 246th.

Budget constraints have also hurt military towns, which previously had been largely immune to the recession. Last year’s overall No. 1, Killeen-Ft. Hood, Texas, slid to 43rd place; Jacksonville, N.C., home to Camp Lejeune, fell to 102nd from 19th last year; and Lawton, Okla., home to Fort Sill, slipped to 274th from  No. 20 last year.

In addition to energy, the technology sector has been on a tear. After a decade of tepid growth and some years of job losses, Silicon Valley has blown itself another huge tech bubble, this time driven by the social media craze and a surge in private-equity investment. In the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area, the number of information sector jobs is up 36 percent over the past five years; this year the epicenter of Silicon Valley jumped 22 places to No. 5 among the 65 biggest metro areas. The social media boom has also been very good for the San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City area, which rocketed 16 places to a solid 17th this year.

But much of the tech growth in the country has continued to flow to more affordable regions less dependent on venture investment. At the head of the pack is Austin, where Apple recently announced a large expansion,  and Salt Lake City, No. 2 on our big cities list, which is a major destination for expansion for Silicon Valley firms such as Adobe, Twitter and  Electronic Arts. Other big players benefiting from the tech boom include seventh-place Raleigh-Cary, N.C., which has been a consistent top 15 performer for the past seven years; Seattle, which rose 18 places to 14th, and Denver at No. 15.

Perhaps most encouraging of all has been the expansion of the manufacturing sector. In 2011 manufacturing expanded at three time the rate of overall GDP, according to Mark Perry of the University of Michigan-Flint, and the sector added 425,000 jobs, also outpacing the national average.

As a result, the fortunes of some of America’s hardest-hit manufacturing regions are improving. Columbus, Ind., rose from 235th overall last year to No. 3 on our list this year.  Michigan is beginning to see some signs of new life: perennial cellar dweller Holland-Grand Haven rose a remarkable 202 places to 19th on the overall list. A slew of other Michigan cities rose more than 100 places, including Grand Rapids (64th place), Bay City (136th), Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills (199th), Muskegon-Norton Shores (219th), and Jackson (233th).  It is a glimmer of hope in a region that has lurked near the bottom of our Best Places rankings for as long as we have published it.

Another group of big cities that may be seeing light at the end of the tunnel are some of the metro areas hit hardest by the bursting of the housing bubble. Miami, Fla., which ranks 21st among the 65 largest metros, Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla.  (33rd), Phoenix (45th), Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif. (50th), and even Las Vegas (56th) began to show some signs of new life this past year.

So amidst all the good news, which big cities are still doing badly, or even relatively worse? Sadly, many of the places still declining are located in our home state of California, including Los Angeles (59th place among the biggest metro areas), Sacramento (60th), and, and just across the Bay from Silicon Valley, Oakland (63rd). Only the old, and to date still not recovering,  industrial towns of Providence, R.I. (64th), and Birmingham-Hoover, Ala. (dead last at No. 65), did worse.  And the glad tidings in manufacturing have not touched all the Rust Belt cities: Camden, N.J. (57th), Newark, N.J. (58th), Cleveland, Ohio (61st), and Detroit (62nd) still feature prominently near the bottom.

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I was so excited to be invited to Channel 4’s San Antonio Living to do a short segment on job search tips! For those of you who comment that you never “see” me – well here I am!

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My mom sent me this one and i just had to share with you all..

So Grandpa how do you like the new iPad we got you?

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This week only I am offering two of my ebooks on Amazon for FR’EE!

Thank you for the opportunity to help you in your job search!

Here are your two free ebooks:

The Career Artisan Series – The Hidden Job Market – Proven Strategies, Done-For-You Letters & Phone Scripts

http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Market-Perplexed-Artisan-ebook/dp/B0050VRNCC

The Career Artisan Series – Interview Follow Up Guide For The Perplexed (With Custom Letter Templates)

http://www.amazon.com/Career-Artisan-Interview-Perplexed-ebook/dp/B004ZZMIZ6/ref=pd_sim_kstore_5?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Tell a friend! Feel free to pass this on to others!

Review me! If my information helps you please consider writing a quick review and rating on Amazon!

*Don’t have an eReader? No problem! Download Amazon’s fr’ee reading apps (PC, MAC, iPhone, Blackberry etc..) here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_352814002_3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-9&pf_rd_r=127DFZHM64E9R1ZZFKX3&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=1348203102&pf_rd_i=1000426311

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I am so excited to share with you that THIS Saturday at 11am Central time, I am hosting my 3rd free coaching call in my 2012 Teleseminar series.

Our topic is:

Linked In Secrets… How To Use Linked In to Land a Job, Optimize Your Career and More!

Grab your “virtual seat” here: http://www.job-searchsystem.com/teleseminar.html

Remember, these calls are live and not recorded – and limited to the first 250 participants.

These free coaching calls have become quite popular and fill up within hours, so if you are interested in learning about this important topic, then reserve your seat here now:

http://www.job-searchsystem.com/teleseminar.html

“See” you on the call!

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Zintro.com had an interesting blog post on some simple steps to getting paid for consulting. If you have ever wondered about consulting as a part or full time career – I think this is a good introduction..including a general breakdown on how to determine your fees.

You can read more here.

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I was excited to be a contributor to this weeks FORBES careers article titled: How To Avoid The Resume Black Hole.

Kudos to FORBES for including my maverick approaches!

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You know I am always looking out for good ideas for job seekers…even if it means branching out and starting your own business!

In that spirit, I want to share some information with you about owning a franchise.

Owning a franchise can give you more flexibility – without you having to start your business yourself-completely from scratch.

My colleague Larry helps match up people with the right franchises.

He also helps people sell or even franchise their established businesses.

I have networked with Larry for nearly 5 years now…(wow time does fly!)

Here is where you can learn more:

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****HURRY – LESS THAN 100 SEATS LEFT!!****

I am so excited to share with you that brand new for 2012, I am personally

hosting a f-r-e-e monthly teleseminar series on various job search topics.

*all topics were directly selected by you, my e-zine subscribers!

My first info-packed teleseminar is THIS Saturday and it is titled:

How to Brand & Market Yourself to Compete in Today’s Job Market

You can sign up here:http://www.job-searchsystem.com/teleseminar.html

BUT there IS a catch:

these calls will NOT be recorded

and there are only 250 seats on the bridge line.

That means if this call is for you, you must act fast.

Get the call details and grab your seat now:

http://www.job-searchsystem.com/teleseminar.html

Inspiring your success,

Mary Elizabeth Bradford, CERW, MCD

The Career Artisan

www.maryelizabethbradford.com

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