This came from a survey developed by Robert Half Finance & Accounting, the largest specialized financial recruitment service, and published April 12, 2007. It included responses from 150 senior executives with Fortune 1,000 companies.

So what does this mean for you as you approach your future job interviews?
Max Messmer, chairman and CEO of Robert Half International, sums it up when he says, “The interview begins the moment job seekers arrive, so applicants need to project enthusiasm and confidence from the start. The opening minutes of the conversation often set the tone for the rest of the discussion, making it wise to prepare especially well for the first few interview questions.”

As a foundation to your overall reference plan, get written references. As an option, you can offer to write the recommendation as long as they agree with the information and essentially sign off on the reference letter. By doing this, you have a proactive way to combat a reference who is less than prepared, distracted or unenthusiastic on the phone.
Remember to get permission from your former human resources department to provide you with your employment evaluations. In fact, you can – and probably should – find out exactly what your current and former employer’s reference policy is. Written information can be a powerful testimonial and may negate more lengthy phone calls to your current references.
Also, ask your reference how they would like to be contacted – at home, by cell or by e-mail.
Incorrect phone numbers will waste time and hurt your credibility. Even with a correct phone number, if a reference calls and does not respond quickly it can hurt you. It shows they may not care enough to respond quickly or give you high marks. Silence can be deadly here.

Lastly, make sure you review a few questions your references might want to know. Focus on some of the following topics with your references so you agree:

• start and end dates of employment
• the reason for leaving
• salary
• positional responsibilities and achievements
• work ethic
• communication skills
• team focus
• promotions
• willingness to re-hire
• general strengths and weaknesses

Do what you should do to anticipate how important references become in your search. They are important. Silence and mere neutrality can be fatal in the world of references. Your investment of time, energy and preparation for interviews should not be derailed by bad, lukewarm or silent references. Don’t get off track during your next, critical career move. Ride the rails. Be proactive and prepared when it comes to references.
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This is just one of the 110 tips in a new eBook called “101 Tips Every Job Seeker Should Know” from our friends at ItsNotYouItsYourResume.com. For more about the job search and career development process, including resume information, the most important interview questions, appropriate interview attire and creating your online presence head over to the store here.

Lesson: Do not assume anything. Closely coach and counsel your references to ensure you both agree on what will be said if someone calls. Get agreement on key achievements and resume points. Make sure you take time to copy the reference on your latest resume.

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This is just one of the 110 tips in a new eBook called “101 Tips Every Job Seeker Should Know” from our friends at ItsNotYouItsYourResume.com. For more about the job search and career development process, including resume information, the most important interview questions, appropriate interview attire and creating your online presence head over to the store here.

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.

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This is just one of 110 tips in a new eBook called “101 Tips Every Job Seeker Should Know” from our affiliates at ItsNotYouItsYourResume.com. For more about the job search and career development process, including resume information, the most important interview questions, appropriate interview attire and creating your online presence head over to the store here.

Base your salary expectations on what the market will bear. Rather than projecting based on what you earned in a previous position, check current industry rates. All a salary suggests is what someone was willing to pay you at a particular time. Past salary generally has little relevance to current market value.  Discuss your salary expectations in terms of what is fair and reasonable.

Don’t ask for a certain salary because that is what you think you need to earn in order to pay your rent. Instead, give an explanation for why the salary you are questing is directly correlated to the value you will bring to the organization. Ask if HR agrees that your estimate is reasonable, not if it is their standard practice. Getting them on your side is half the battle.

Uncover your competition. Before there is an offer on the table, ask the interviewer questions such as, “Can you tell me where you are in the hiring process?” or “How many people are you interviewing for this position?” to determine your competition. If you discover that you are their only current candidate, you will have more leverage during the negotiation process and you may be able to command a higher salary.

Think outside the box and be flexible. If an employer can’t offer you the base compensation you had hoped for, maybe they can offer you a compelling performance bonus, a signing bonus, or additional stock options.

Do your homework. Review sites such as Salary.com and PayScale to help determine your market value, calculate the value of your benefits package, and assess the overall quality of your offer. Supplement this research with salary information you source through MyOnlineCareerSpace.com‘s job postings, conversations with recruiters, and industry professionals to further validate the accuracy of your findings.

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For more interview tips, including what the biggest interview mistakes are, how to phone interview and typical interview questions (and answer recommendations) click here and get our interview eBook which is a 20 page expose on how-to interview.

The other lesson is that seekers who connect with employers and recruiters the same way they do with recognizable companies will have a rude awakening. If you take anything from reality TV, you know that people care about authenticity and not acting. You need to start treating everyone like real people even if it is a virtual landscape and not face-to-face.  This will greatly benefit your online presence and being nice to people you do not know, might turn out to be helpful somewhere down the line.

If you are putting on an online act to promote yourself, then let us save you the trouble and say right away that it will not work. People can spot a phony and you will never garner any attention if you do not attribute something worth repeating or reading. So the only way to do this is to do it yourself and not count on copying someone or trying to get by without putting any effort in it.

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For a limited time, you can get a FREE professional website at www.MyOnlineCareerSpace.com. There is tons of content and information to aid you in your job search.

In the book Little Red Book of Selling, Jeffrey Gitomer talks about one of the most essential steps to becoming a good salesman: giving before you sell. He says that if you want to build a reputation as being good at selling, you have to start out giving things away free at first, so people would perceive you as an authority in the field. He started by writing a column for the local newspaper where he gave away what could be considered the best secrets he had learned as a salesman. This garnered enough attention that he could start giving speeches at local events which he did at every opportunity he could. And although it took a while, after some time he didn’t have a problem finding clients, but the contrary – there were so many clients coming to him that he could not help all of them. Because he was perceived as an authority in his field.

Although to most this might seem like too much of an effort and they might even say that this is not for them, if you really want to succeed at what you do, then this is the way to proceed. The possible good news is that nowadays getting your word out there is much easier than it was when Jeffrey was starting out.

The almost default way to go is start your own blog and hope it catches enough attention to stand out at least a little. In a world where millions of blogs are started every day, this is of course easier said than done. But with good knowledgeable content and some promoting, you might be on your way to global recognition, or at least recognition amongst your peers or your community as an expert and go-to guy (or gal) in a certain field.

After sharpening your teeth on your blog, you might have enough chops to tackle a small opinion article for your local paper. From there you can move on to deeper analytical pieces or weekly columns. And although you might not get a very large readership from  a local paper, having been deemed good enough to be published on an actual piece of paper with at least a few thousand readers, will give you much more credibility and help you in your pursuit of establishing yourself in your field.

From there you might have enough from your columns and blog to compile them into a book even. This in itself might get you an invitation from a local morning talk show, first radios then television perhaps. And you just take it from there.

So although this definitely sounds easier than it is, there isn’t much more to it than taking what you know, putting it in writing and starting a blog or a newsletter. See what happens. At worst, you’re still going get the benefit of analysing and writing down your thoughts, which in itself can prove helpful.

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For more interview tips, including what the biggest interview mistakes are, how to phone interview and typical interview questions (and answer recommendations) click here and get our interview eBook which is a 20 page expose on how-to interview.

Becoming visible in your industry is just a way of selling yourself, which is what you need to do in order to get the best positions. You might think that you already are selling yourself. On your resume for example, by highlighting your accomplishments and prior experience. This is true and great, but continuing with the parallels from the sales world, resume selling can be considered hard selling. You are trying to push yourself, telling everybody how great you are.

But when you are making yourself visible in your industry, your approach is more of the soft sell. You are letting people know that you are out there, this is what you do or have done in the past and if they like what they have heard, they might get in touch. People don’t like to be sold but love to buy, is what Jeffrey Gitomer is always saying. And that is absolutely true when building your perfect career as well.

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To learn the biggest resume mistakes, how to format your resume, what the biggest key words that recruiters and employers look for, and much, much more, buy our eBook which is on sale until the end of the month.

And speaking of messages – be sure you are aware of what you are sending out! Sorry, but it does matter what others think when you are looking for your career. It may not in other aspects of your life, however when it comes to your online reputation, it is important to maintain control over it and to make sure it says what you want it to say.

Having a complete understanding of people’s perceptions is essential to building a winning online presence; your online career space helps in this control, however be sure that there are not contradictory images or statements about you which would distort the way people would perceive you. And remember - once online, always online!

If you already have a few career spaces, you need to be sure that your resume is read as intended by everyone you send it to.
To effectively compete you need more than a Word document. To meet online compatibility standards your should put your resume into various formats, including: Word document, a Portable Document Printing (PDF), an ASCII (text), and HTML (web-based) versions. When applying for a job, be sure to follow application instructions carefully, paying close attention to the employer’s requested format.

If no format is indicated then usually we recommend sending a PDF for the sole reason that PDFs are displayed the same no matter where you open them. People usually do not know this, but Word documents formatting and appearence can change rather drastically on different computers with different settings. So take the safe route and send PDF.

Saving as a PDF is usually built into MAC OS X. In Word for example, you can achieve this by going to File-Print and from the menu that pops up, you can choose Save As PDF from the PDF drop down menu on the lower left side.

For Windows you might have to download a plug-in for Word that will enable to choose PDF from the Save As menu. You can find this plug-in for Office 2007 here: Save as PDF

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To learn the biggest resume mistakes, how to format your resume, what the biggest key words that recruiters and employers look for, and much, much more, buy our eBook which is on sale until the end of the month.