Wondering if you should hire a career coach? How about a “virtual career coach?” These are coaches that are trained to help you “virtually” – meaning you don’t have to get in a car or hop on a plane for them to help you! Here are seven benefits you stand to gain from hiring one:

Benefit One: Virtual Consulting WORKS!

You receive coaching via phone and information either through e mail or hard mail. Resumes, career assessment tests and custom coaching guidance is easily delivered through these mediums.

Benefit Two: It’s Super Easy and Convenient

You simply cannot beat having instant resources and support delivered to you– in the comfort of your home or office!

Benefit Three: It Saves You Time

Get the information – right when you need it!

Benefit Four: It’s Flexible

You gain your coaches expert advice, motivation, tools and resources consistently – no matter where you are or where you relocate to! No need to find another career coach you can trust if you move!

Benefit Five: It’s Affordable:

Most executives gain distinct career advantages in the form of meeting their professional goals including salary goals and securing key positions as a direct result of the help they gained through a modest investment in themselves (i.e. hiring a career coach, resume writer or marketer) Working “virtually” yields a tremendous value and immediate help. Additionally, career services are often tax deductible – though you will want to check with your CPA on this!

Benefit Six: Nationwide and Industry Expertise

Most “virtual” coaches have loads of experience virtually in all areas of the Nation and in a multiplicity of industries.

Benefit Seven: It’s GREEN!

You are using a limited amount of natural resources through hiring a “virtual” coach!

A job search can quickly become a time consuming and frustrating experience, without the right tools, planning and resources. Making one mistake such as using “surfing the internet” as your main medium for job hunting, can lead to countless hours of wasted time each week. Here are five simple steps you can take to save yourself time, frustration and wasted energy:

Step 1: Create your system

Use a simple system to map out (yes, actually write it out – so it’s “out of your head” and on paper!) your job search goals. Where you are going, what is motivating  you, your thoughts on how you are going to get there and what your ultimate goal is. Mapping out your plan and your strategy will keep you on track and focused – thus, saving you potential wasted time and energy.

Step 2: Use a job aggregator

In other words, a beta search engine for jobs. This way you can use one site, for one search to find almost all posted jobs. This one step will save you from hopping from one job board to another – and endless hours of frustration. Understand that responses on any job board vary from 2% to 6%. With those odds, this is one critical area you really want to look to streamline your search and save yourself time.

Step 3: Set up an e mail alert

Set up an e mail alert on the job aggregator of your choice. This saves you even more time as your matching jobs will automatically be sent you!

Step 4: Invest wisely

It’s easy to figure out where best to invest your time. Simply identify the top three areas where you are most certain to penetrate your market. It could be “like companies” in a technology business park, or a trade association, through social networking sites or through a portal such as the top 10 executive recruiting firms. Once you have identified where to invest your time for the biggest payback, you can minimize the time you spend on other job search activities while you maximize your time in your key areas.

Step Five: Create a schedule

Create a modest “job search schedule” for yourself. Specifically, dates and times each week you are going to devote to your career move. Why a “modest” schedule? Because you want to create a schedule you can actually keep and feel a real sense of achievement as you reach your weekly goals. You can always increase your commitment later! This technique works wonders during a career search. You will be amazed how feeling yourself accomplish your job search goals in real time will motivate you as you move forward!

Sign Up For MORE Free Career Search Tips NOW at http://www.maryelizabethbradford.com!

Most executives are excellent at what they do, but struggle to market their skills when it comes to finding and capitalizing on better career opportunities.

You CAN be quickly respected as a powerful source of wisdom and authority in your areas of expertise to (people in) companies that don’t yet know who you are. You can do this by communicating to them in a way that positions you as an expert in areas that match the challenges of that company. 

So where do you start?

Step One: Know where to find fr*ee sources

Fr*ee sources of information on companies that are moving and growing that is! Industries that are growing and companies that are moving and growing, being acquired, going public or launching a new product or service offering are most often primed for new company hires.

Sources of this information include your local weekly business journals (fr*ee online), local chamber of commerce’s and economic development associations and trade journals. Find two sources that work for you and commit to reviewing them. In committing just an hour each week to doing this, you should be able to easily find two to five interesting articles that intrigue you.

Step Two: Write a letter

Write a cover letter to each company stating why their particular situation impresses or interests you. Tell them authentically why. If they are positioning themselves to “go global” and your background includes helping companies successfully do this, then tell them so and remember to give them an example of how much revenue this generated.

Share that you will follow up with them to see if they would be interested in an initial conversation. Use gracious, diplomatic language to get your point across. Include in your letter a copy of the article you are referencing. You can also include your resume if you discern it’s appropriate or not. What important is that you take action to make that initial contact. If you enthusiasm is authentic they will catch that immediately and you will have maximized your potential to generate interest!

Are you wondering who to send your letter to? The person or persons quoted in the article are best. Don’t worry if they are top executives in the industry. Many professions believe it’s not possible to connect with the top executives of a company but in most cases this is simply not true. In fact, you can use this erroneous belief to your advantage as your approach stands to be unique to your competition! If a decision maker isn’t quoted in the article simply imagine what position you would hold in the comply and go two levels higher. Company executives are often sited on corporate websites or sites such as Yahoo finance or zoom info.  

Tip Three: be consistent

When you commit to take action using this powerful strategy to easily find growth opportunities, you are making a wise investment in yourself and your career. Make it a bold goal of yours to find and send out a certain number of letters each week. If you only sent out and followed up on two letters each week (which should take you only a few hours) you stand to generate MORE interest than if you answered 40 online job ads! That’s right! So make a commitment to yourself to be consistent each week – to quickly and easily move forward towards your goals.

I didn’t always love my job. In fact I have had jobs I dreaded to go to each day. Although that was so many years ago I still remember the feeling. I certainly was not operating at my best. In fact, the environment I was in felt so constricting I could barely breathe.

OK, enough of that. As my mom says: “erase erase erase!” I would love to tell I got out of that situation really quickly but actually it took me several years to figure out what was wrong and what I had to do to change it (seriously – where was a career coach when I needed one?!)

Why did I struggle so hard? Well on the outside everything looked great. I had what was se en as a great position that paid really well, I was on the fast track to bigger and better positions and I rubbed shoulders with all the top movers and shakers in the business community. Even though I knew I was supposed to want this, deep down, I really didn’t want it at all. That was hard for me to admit.

Eventually I DID get a business coach AND finally that small voice in my heart reached my ears, and I began to look objectively at my situation and map out a plan of escape to greener pastures. Here’s how I did it in three simple steps:

#1. Define and Write Down Your Goals.
Focus on the long term goals first and resist the temptation to worry about how you are going to get there. The “how” is what usually stops us in our tracks. It’s that fear of the unknown – that place you venture out to that creates that uncomfortable feeling. Yes venturing to these places can be uncomfortable but you will quickly find it also does something else. It gets you moving forward and that too, is a powerful motivator AND a confidence builder!

#2. Assess Your Surroundings
Notice the people you are working amongst and the product or service you offer. Are you like them or do you feel like a square peg in a round hole? Do you feel like you fit in? What about the product or service you offer – do you believe in it? Does it resonate with you? This is how you can quickly come to terms with what might not be right about your current situation. Maybe it’s your immediate surroundings or maybe it’s the industry itself that is not a match for you. I know for me, in the positions I had that didn’t “fit” me – not only did I feel like an outsider I acted like one because something inside me didn’t “buy in” or “fit in” with everybody else. Not a good way to get a promotion is it?

#3: Build Your Job Around Your Life
You can begin to take an honest look at your work/life balance by writing down the lifestyle choices that are most important to you and your family. How many points is your current career supporting? Another powerful step you can take is simply to write down what your job might LOOK like if it was truly built around you life. This is the first step to initiating change in a positive direction. Even if that change may be in the distant future, you will be amazed how much you can and will accomplish by taking this initial action. Sometimes professionals feel that taking this step is a waste of time because they don’t believe they can actually find or create a job that truly supports the kind of life they really wish they could have. Avoid this negative pattern of thinking that will most certainly hold you back and give yourself permission to explore the possibilities. Planned relocations, strategic salary increases, consulting, telecommuting, portfo lio careers and flexible schedules are all improvements that you can put into motion today and examples of career choices I have seen professionals successfully make to build their job around their life!

Here’s an additional *FREE* tip:

If you are ready to do some soul searching a nice compliment to the three steps I have shared with you is a great resource for a free personality indicator test at http://www.keirsey.com/. This test, made available online by David Keirsey, is like a short Myers Briggs Test. Simply answer all the questions, and you will get a 4-letter personality indicator as the result along with a short explanatory document.