Use your Champion Strategy to find Mentors to give you direction in your Career

We talk a great deal about the importance of Champions at CardboardResume. Champions people who can connect us to the hiring manager for any job, and will give you a much better chance of getting an interview.

Champions are great because they can:

• Give you insight into what the hiring manager is really looking for.
• Send your resume directly to the hiring manager to keep you off of “the pile.”
• Recommend you to the hiring manager.
• Warn you away from jobs that are a bad fit.

In fact, we believe that you will get very few interviews without some direct connection the the hiring manager.

Two Kinds of Job Seekers

Skills Holder Irene Krasnoff runs the Austin Marketing Job Club. She has observed that there are two broad groups of job seekers:

1. Those that know exactly what they’re looking for
2. Those that don’t

If you’re still trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up, join the crowd. There are a lot of us.

So, how do you find out what role you want to play in an organization? You do some research. This is where the power of the informational interview comes in.

Champions are often in the same line of work as we are, or can introduce us to those who are. Anyone who works in the industry, profession or department that we think would fit us is a potential mentor.

The Mentor Strategy

The Mentor Strategy works like this:

1. Contact the people in your network asking for connections at companies you think you would like to work for.

2. Contact those connections and ask for a little of their time to better understand what they do and how you might fit into such a role.

3. Thank them and keep in touch.

Those contacts whom you click with are potential mentors. Ping them before you apply for jobs. Ask them to critique your resume.

And be sure to thank them when you land that perfect position.

Image courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha