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.

Recent studies show that the average time a person is unemployed comes in at a whopping 6 months. Other studies suggest it could be even longer depending on your industry. These studies haven’t given the unemployed much hope for the future. As their bank accounts diminish before their eyes hope is steadily falling right along with it.

However, we are starting to see a trend among the unemployed. Some have caught on that their industries are going to be slow to return to a steady market and they are making their own way. Some people with selected skill sets are starting to freelance while they wait for a promising long term position.
There are a few positives to freelancing while waiting for gainful employment. Freelancing will help you keep your edge in your current industry. Staying on top of trends will allow you to use your skills rather than getting rusty. It will also allow you to network. If you’re freelancing you must be working with someone or some company that requires your talents and skills. It also doesn’t hurt that freelancing will help keep you a float while waiting for your next promising position.

When a person is investing all of their time and energy in a failed job search, they risk burning out. Freelancing helps the unemployed keep they mind busy on something they can see firsthand that is productive. Plus, you never know where freelancing can take you! Some freelancing professionals are taking it to the next level and starting their own company. What better way to gain employment during this recession than by creating your own job?

It may not be your first choice when it comes to obtaining a job, but it surely is something to think about. The benefits weigh in when it comes to freelancing in your industry. Seeing how most companies are not able to hire full time workers just yet, we are noticing a trend for companies seeking freelance workers or contractors.

Freelancing is a productive way of dealing with unemployment. You just have to make sure that you allow time to continue your job hunt. Well that is unless your goal is to start your own company! Freelancing also allows a job seeker to explain gaps in their resume. Most hiring managers will ask about gaps on a resume and what you have been doing during that time period. It looks much better if you can tell them that you are still dabbling in your industry and that you haven’t came across full time employment just yet.

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.