Dear J.T. & Dale: After months of job searching, I feel totally stalled. I have responded to every ad, sent out hundreds of resumes and asked all my friends and relatives to look for openings for me, but I have only a handful of interviews and no offers to show for it. Can you please give me a suggestion as to what else I can try? - Noland

J.T.: One technique that could be of value to you is to stop looking for employment POSITIONS and start looking for employer COMPANIES. I recently created a short video post on the subject of creating Bucket Lists for your job search. Here’s how it works - ask yourself and friends: “What are the 10 companies in this area that everyone LOVES working for?” Then, network your way to people who are working in those target companies. (Try using www.LinkedIn.com in addition to traditional networking.) See if you can grab coffee with those people to learn more about the company and what kinds of positions are open. If you show your enthusiasm for the company, people are more likely to recommend you, regardless of whether your experience is an exact match for open positions. Here’s why this works: Companies hire attitude. They know that if you have the right personality, they can teach you the job. If they know you’re pre-sold on their company culture, they’re much more likely to consider you for a job.

Dale: Seeking out companies rather than positions also gives you a good way to expand your base of contacts, and a growing network is the essence of every good job search. Most people ask friends and relatives to “keep an eye out” for job openings and, having made that request, feel that they have exhausted their networking. However, done properly, a network is ever-expanding. So, in addition to getting introductions to people at your new list of target employers, build your network by doing more than attending the meetings of professional associations - get involved, volunteer for committee assignments. Hey, you have the time. Doing so, you’ll get to know a number of new people in your profession. Ask them if they know anyone in your target companies, and you have gracefully opened a conversation about your job search and tapped into the profitable process of contact multiplication.

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Jeanine “J.T.” Tanner O’Donnell is a professional development specialist and founder of Careerealism.com. Dale Dauten’s latest book is “(Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success” (John Wiley & Sons). Please visit them at jtanddale.com, where you can send questions via e-mail, or write to them in care of King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10019.

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