Writing helps share the knowledge you have acquired and can lead to your next job. This approach spreads the message of your job search in a viral fashion. It helps you establish yourself as an expert in a particular field. Then when you get to the interview stage, it helps the hiring manager certify your expertise.

In your professional career to date, you have learned skills or acquired talents / abilities that many people don’t have. While you likely take many of these things for granted, others do not. People with less experience in a given industry will likely gain a lot from reading about the lessons you have learned.

When people gain some new knowledge or a new perspective, they are likely to talk about it. They will often share links back to the site that led to their enlightenment. Further, if the reader is aware that the writer is in need of some assistance, such as help with a job search, they will be more likely to point HR people to your writing and/or website. Each reader has the potential of heralding your needs to a potential employer.

Additionally, the reader then intentionally or unintentionally adds you to a list of experts in the specialized field you have written about. With every regular reader you attract, you expand your field of expertise by one person. Thanks to the joys of the internet, this expansion costs you nothing once the article is published. This frees the writer to continue publishing new information while your following grows virtually unmanned.

One of the biggest challenges any hiring manager faces is the task of verifying the candidate’s claims. Creating short articles, a detailed blog, and/or social media properties make this task easier for the hiring manager. With such stiff competition in the job market today, there is strong motivation for job seekers to “fudge” the facts on their resume. The process of reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates seeks to accomplish many goals in a series of short conversations. One of the biggest tasks the interviewer seeks to accomplish is the validation of the candidate’s skills and background. Pre-existing publications on topics relevant to the job opening allow the interviewer to certify your knowledge without having to conduct extensive interviews or background checks.

Writing creates several competitive advantages in the job search process. It also has the added benefits of helping the business community, sharpening your own skills, and creating relationships within the industry. If you have not had a great deal of luck using traditional job search techniques, you may want to try your hand at writing.

Asking questions during an interview is an important task that should be well thought out, before the interview even begins. When you first get the news that you will be interviewing with a company you should start by researching the company.

Researching the respective company, will help you obtain information useful for the interviewing process. Researching information on a company that you are interviewing with will help in more ways than one. It will help give you an edge in the interview, by allowing you to stay focused and engaged since you will already have the background on the company. It will also allow you to come up with your own questions that you will want to ask during the interviewing process.

You might wonder why you should ask questions during an interview. Well there are a few reasons why you would want to ask questions…

• “Asking questions during an interview will show hiring managers that you are interested in working for the company.”
• “It will also show the hiring manager that you are looking for long term employment.”
• Who wants to hire a person that shows that they will only sit in on meetings? Companies normally seek out “go getters”. What better way to show a company that you are a “go getter” than to show them during the interviewing process by asking questions?

If you get stuck and can’t think of any good questions, here are a few tried and true questions you can fall back on…

• What size is the division?
• Would you mind discussing the company’s culture?
• Is there a certain management style the company tends to stick by?
• What do you feel the divisions, strengthens and weaknesses are?
• What challenges are present in this current position?

Of course you will want to pay attention during the interviewing process and ask questions that are related to what has been discussed. This will show the hiring manager that you are well focused even during the most stressful of times.

Your last questions should always follow with “what is the next step”. This will show the hiring manager that you would like to proceed further with the interviewing process. This question will also give you insight on what you should expect the next step to be.

Asking questions in the interviewing process serves two purposes; first as stated earlier it will show the hiring manager that you are interested in the job, but second it will allow you to get a feel for the company, and see if it is the right position for you.

Just remember to be polite when asking questions. You do not want to come off as a demanding person. There is a certain etiquette that you should follow during the interviewing process. You don’t want to put the hiring manager on the spot or make them feel intimidated while you’re asking questions.

Hopefully you have kept your receipts if you have been unemployed in the past year. Some individuals are going to skip out on opting for a professional CPA to complete their taxes this year and try their hand at this dirty little task. If you are one who is opting out of paying a professional to do your taxes, you need to refresh yourself on what you can write off from your job search.

Hopefully you kept a very detailed record of your job search expenses, because it is about to pay off! Keep in mind that you should refresh yourself on your local IRS laws before you complete your taxes. In this recession the last thing you need is to get hit with an audit or penalties.
Let’s start with the basics:

How much did you spend on your resume? Yes, that is right. You can write off your resume expenses. This includes professional writers you sought to tweak your resume. It even includes supplies like paper, envelopes, stamps, ink, and of course any other related expenses you have when it comes to your resume. Did you pay for resume cards? If so you can proudly write this expense off as well!

Did you pay out of pocket to go on an interview? If you did, you’re not alone. Many job seekers have had to pay for travel, gas, mileage, parking, or at least suit cleaning costs before interviewing for a job. If you had to pay out of pocket and did not get reimbursed by the company, you can claim this as a related job search expense.

Are you paying to stay on job boards? Most job boards are requiring monthly or bi monthly payments to become an active member of their site. If you are a job seeker who has paid to stay on these job boards you can deduct this expense as well.

Are you working from home or have you started to freelance while unemployed? If so, you will have plenty of write offs related to funding, marketing, and starting your own business! However, if you started a business you may want to seriously consider hiring an accountant.

If you had to purchase a new phone or a land line for your job search you can deduct that expense as well.

Remember that you will need proof and/or documentation of all expenses for these write offs to be ligament. Also remember that if you have been reimbursed by a company for any of these expenses, you may not write that particular expense off.

Hopefully you will be able to receive some of the money back that you have invested in your job search!

Necessary Disclaimer: Please note, I am not a professional account or CPA, only a fellow job seeker looking to save money while struggling through a job hunt. That said, the advice in this article should not be seen as a source of accounting advice, but only potential ideas for identifying possible tax write offs. Consult a CPA or current State and Federal tax laws before attempting to use any of the suggestions in this article.