The hiring process can seem a lot like a Cinderella story sometimes – with hiring managers and recruiters running to and fro looking for just the right fit.  It’s time consuming, and the only thing worse than not finding your fairy tale prince or princess, is having to comb through a thousand duds.

Time is money, and if you’re a small startup, you might not necessarily have a lot of experience handling recruitment. That’s problematic when you’re predisposed to being picky, since each new talent you bring in has a massive impact on your company’s success.  So what can you do to streamline the process and better filter incoming candidates?  Well, it all starts with your job posting.

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Whether you are in Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal, the start of your career’s journey is the same wherever life takes you. It is the right of passage as one becomes a young professional. Many have made what may seem at one point, an endless hunt. The good thing is that it gets easier after each time. The bad part? It really, really sucks the first time around.

This blog post is dedicated to those who have decided to take on the daunting task, or for those who realize it is time to give your career a boost. Though in the end, it is sheer persistence which will push you over the top, here are some things you can do to which will help significantly.

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It turns out great bosses have a fundamentally different outlook when it comes to managing people, the workplace, and dealing with the competition than the average ones. In fact, according to Inc.com’s Geoffrey James, they have eight core beliefs that separate them from the pack.

Coexistence is crucial.
Most bosses see business in terms of a zero-sum game, where conflict is inevitable. Great bosses realize the delicate ecosystem they inhabit and are more likely to adapt as necessary.

A company is the sum of its part.
While average bosses see a company as a machine and its employees as dispensable, great bosses believe in their people and inspire them on an individual level.

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As a field, marketing has grown to encompass a wide variety of responsibilities over the last ten years. From some of the more recent additions, such as search engine optimization (SEO) and community management, to more traditional roles like communication and research, today’s marketer is expected to be proficient and knowledgeable in a range of skills.

This guide is intended to provide tips on how to sharpen your current skill-base and resources that you can leverage in order to expand it.

Leverage The Right Tools

Depending on your role, you might find some of the following tools useful. Most have free options available and all are extremely valuable.

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Week In Review:

Toronto - Project Manager (Marketing and Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Digital Strategist (Marketing and Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Operations Manager (Consulting) Details / Apply
Toronto - Account Executive - Online & Technical Projects (Market Research) Details / Apply
Toronto - Copywriter (Internet) Details / Apply
Montreal - Manager, Customer Development (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Victoria - Customer Support Representative (Internet) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Lead Digital Marketing Strategist (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Small/Medium Enterprise Account Executive (Internet) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Great Writer (Internet) Details / Apply

For the full rundown, log-in to Vestiigo.com

Some weekend reading
Career Savvy: The Key Steps (And Missteps) on the Path to Success
Career Savvy: Interview Your Interviewer
TED Talk: JP Rangaswami: Information is food

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After hours slogging through job postings, uploading resumes and firing off e-mails, it’s hard not to feel a bit dehumanized by the impersonal nature of the modern job search.  Human faces rarely pop up until after you’ve been considered for a position, and until then, your only interactions with an employer come from the little dropbox you upload your resume into. 

On top of that, continuously re-configuring your qualifications for every new role can leave you feeling less like a person and more like a robot.  Robots are devoid of any personal goals or passions, and last time I checked, we hadn’t gone all C-3PO just yet.

Remember, at the end of the day, most jobs have a large human component to them, especially at smaller companies with tight-knit teams.

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“Describe a time when you had a conflict with a colleague”, one of the common questions to prepare for when going in for an interview. It’s good to have a nice story to showcase how you handled a difficult situation. However every other good candidate would have theirs as well.

So how would you stand out after you told them a story of identifying a problem and proactively going about solving it? Well, a good place to start is when the interviewer asks you “Do you have any questions?”

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We used to have an informational problem. It was difficult to track down the companies that were hiring – sometimes it meant going through the phonebook and calling them all or paying close attention to adverts in the newspaper.

Generation Y has quite a different problem – too much information. We now have access to company profiles, the backgrounds on their leaders and team, and in some cases their detailed financial reports all from the palm of our hand.

It’s now a case of too much information – a paradox of choice of sorts.

This guide is intended to help navigate these choices and help you ask the right questions when it comes to making a career move in Toronto.

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Recently, a Forbes article discussed “The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)” and labelled them as the principal factors that can erode even the grandest and most well-meaning of plans. They’re intended as a warning to those who only dream big, rather than do.

Conversely, and perhaps more interestingly, it also implicitly helps to identify the key steps on the path to success. For instance, what factors influence greatness and happiness? What elements consistently place you in a position to succeed?

Rather than focus on what we shouldn’t, the following compares the original list of “enemies” (found in brackets), with their polar opposites in order to generate a useful guide to achieving success and happiness.

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Week In Review:

Toronto - Manager, Kobo Index (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Digital Engagement Manager (Finance) Details / Apply
Toronto - Junior Art Director (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Business Development Associate (Market Research) Details / Apply
Toronto - Account Coordinator (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Montreal - Snr. Front-End Developer (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Vancouver - SMB Enterprise Account Executive (Internet) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Jnr. Front-End Developer (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Partnership Manager (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Customer Service Representative (Design) Details / Apply

For the full rundown, log-in to Vestiigo.com

Some weekend reading
Career Savvy: What’s So Different About A ‘Calling’?
Career Savvy: What Would Barack Obama Do?
TED Talk: Rory Sutherland: Perspective is everything

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Office politics – some people love it, some really dislike it, and some withdraw from it. Fact is, it’s here to stay. If you grew up in a large family you may already be familiar with the dynamics. It won’t take long to spot the parents favorite and least favorite child. If either child wanted a candy, who would you think is mostly to get it between the two?

Though in theory the ideal workplace is one void of politics and personal agendas – reality is that humans are social creatures, and office dynamics will always exist for good or for bad. Learning how to navigate the “game” could make a difference between a highly rewarding time at a company or a dreadful memory.

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For those with little work experience, the dreaded “references” list is usually the least enjoyable part of crafting a resume, and even for those who have a good number of footprints in the working world, it can be tough to know how to utilize references effectively.  Luckily, Forbes’ Jacquelyn Smith wants to help. 

Know who your best references are
Before you add someone to your list, ask yourself whether they’ll be seen as a key or credible individual because that will decide whether your reference has any real impact on an employer.  If you decide that they are the right kind of people, make sure they’re actually going to say something good about you.  Seems obvious, but just because you had an amiable relationship with a supervisor or co-worker, doesn’t mean they’re going to paint you as a star worker when pressed over the phone.

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We spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what it is we should be doing. Whether trying to define a specific career path early on or looking to make a switch in emphasis part-way through, it’s a consideration that never seems far from our mind. All the more reason then to make sure we’re getting exactly what we need from our work, aside from simple monetary considerations.

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review by Bill Barnett entitled “Make Your Job More Meaningful” pointed to three distinct attitudes about work – jobs, careers, and callings. According to the article, identifying your own perspective can help you better define what it is you want from your own professional life.

Those that see their work as a “job” are working more for the money and derive less satisfaction and meaning from it.

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Week In Review:

Toronto - Intermediate PHP Developer (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Online Marketing Analyst (Finance) Details / Apply
Toronto - Product Manager (Computer Games) Details / Apply
Toronto - Project Manager, Professional Services (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Toronto - eReader Product Manager (Internet) Details / Apply
Montreal - Music Marketing Assistant (Computer Games) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Account Manager (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Business Analyst (Market Research) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Account Development Rep. (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Marketing Intern (Internet) Details / Apply

For the full rundown, log-in to Vestiigo.com

Some weekend reading
Career Savvy: The Death of Downtime
Career Savvy: 3 Ways To Avoid Sabotaging Your Job Search
TED Talk: Michael Norton: How to buy happiness

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The job search is already hard enough on its own without us unknowingly bungling our chances somehow.  Sometimes, it’s tough to know whether you’re taking the right approach, but at the very least, the Wallstreet Journal’s Sarah Needleman has a few pitfalls that we would all do well to avoid. 

Don’t claim that every job is “the one”
People tend to roll their eyes whenever they hear someone talking about “true love”, especially when they seem to use it to describe every attractive person they meet.  Hiring managers are just as likely to face-palm when your cover letter describes one position as your “dream job”, only to find out that you said the same thing in your cover letters for two or three other positions.  Only apply to the roles that really speak to you, and if you truly do believe that several of their openings are the best thing since rainbow unicorns, condense it into a single cover letter that addresses all of them rather than copying and pasting a single template multiple times.

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