Should job seek­ers mail a shoe or a tick­ing timer to a prospec­tive employ­er?  Lisa Evers, host of Hot97’s Street Sol­diers Top Rat­ed radio show ques­tioned a pan­el of experts as to the best meth­ods  to get a job.   Issues addressed include what to say if you’re overqual­i­fied and whether cre­ative ideas like send­ing incom­plete Piz­zas are effec­tive ways to get the interview.

One pan­elist sug­gest­ed a strat­e­gy reject­ing the ongo­ing send­ing of resumes in place of a strat­e­gy that gets employ­ers to find and ini­ti­ate con­tact with the job seeker.

You can lis­ten to the entire show here cour­tesy of HOT 97 Street Sol­diers with Lisa Evers

Led by Lisa Evers, the pan­el includ­ed a diver­si­fied group of experts and a job seek­er;   Roy Weiss­man Founder and CEO of MediaJobs.com,  Adam Sin­gol­da, CEO of  Taboola, See­qku Kell­man from East Riv­er Devel­op­ment Alliance,  Abbey Kohut of absoutelyabbey.com, LaTonya Staubs, fash­ion blog­ger and job seek­er Don­tae Thomas.

Get­ting a job is hard­er today than ever before with tech­nol­o­gy mak­ing it eas­i­er to apply,  com­pa­nies are inun­dat­ed with thou­sands of appli­ca­tions and there­fore new strate­gies and tac­tics are necessary.

Roy Weiss­man, of Medi­a­Jobs talked about a strat­e­gy to dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self from oth­er can­di­dates.  With the objec­tive of “start­ing the job before you get the job”, Weiss­man spoke of using Social Media to build a strong per­sona,  track record, rep­u­ta­tion and author­i­ty online.    “Put up a blog and start writ­ing, writ­ing about the things that you’re an expert in.” accord­ing to Weiss­man this is the start of build­ing an online rep­u­ta­tion that will attract read­ers and poten­tial­ly employers.

Anoth­er impor­tant con­cept that Weiss­man dis­cussed was the sig­nif­i­cance of employ­ee refer­rals in get­ting inter­views and jobs today.  “It’s hard­er and hard­er to get into a com­pa­ny unless you know some­body.”   Weiss­man sug­gest­ed that job seek­ers should spend time attend­ing some of the many groups and events avail­able in New York that are spe­cif­ic to your field and indus­try.  One valu­able source of spe­cial inter­est groups is Meetup.com which fea­tures thou­sands of groups nationwide.

Adam Sin­go­la of Taboola agreed with Weiss­man and added…” I think in the tech envi­ron­ment, it’s less about can­di­dates sell­ing to their employ­ers and send­ing …  “ and went on to advo­cate Mee­tups as  a great way to con­nect with employ­ees at com­pa­nies.  As Weiss­man not­ed more and more com­pa­nies are rely­ing on inter­nal refer­rals to fill jobs.  At Mee­tups there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet and to get know employ­ees at com­pa­nies that you might want to work at.

Being pre­pared and pro­fes­sion­al in an inter­view is crit­i­cal.  See­qku Kell­man of the East Riv­er Devel­op­ment Alliance talked about what her orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides to job seek­ers.  ERDA pro­vides “New York City pub­lic hous­ing res­i­dents with the tools and resources for eco­nom­ic mobil­i­ty and self-reliance” accord­ing to See­qku.  ERDA pro­vides career plan­ning, resume writ­ing and even mock inter­view prac­tice to help its con­stituents improve their chances of suc­cess in the job market.

But can send­ing a timer to a prospec­tive employ­er get some­one a job?  Cre­ative ideas were pro­posed by Abby Kohut as an effec­tive way to get an inter­view, get noticed and pos­si­bly get a job.  Abby sug­gest­ed sev­er­al ideas includ­ing send­ing in one shoe to “get your foot in the door” and a Piz­za with one slice missing.

Lisa Evers, host of the show, expressed con­cern as to the effec­tive­ness of such ideas.  “Food that’s being deliv­ered from nobody, it’s either going to secu­ri­ty and they’re run­ning the name of the per­son that sent it or it’s going to the police depart­ment or it’s get­ting tested.”

How­ev­er Abby was able to pro­duce a suc­cess sto­ry of some­one get­ting a job with such a cre­ative strat­e­gy.  A for­mer client sent an egg timer to the hir­ing man­ag­er at Moodys for an ana­lyst job at the firm.  Accord­ing to Abby, the ana­lyst wrote “If you give me this much time, I’ll prove to you that I can be the best finan­cial ana­lyst you’ve ever had,” and the per­son not only got an inter­view but got the job and now he’s a vice president.”

Final­ly Abbey encour­aged job seek­ers were to demon­strate pas­sion in an inter­view.  “peo­ple don’t have enough pas­sion when they come in for their inter­view.  They don’t know their why, they don’t know the rea­son why they’re real­ly inter­est­ed in this posi­tion.  They have to be able to tell me that.  They have to have great body language.”

The over­all sto­ry of the hour long pro­gram was be cre­ative, be dif­fer­ent, “start the job before you get the job” and research com­pa­nies and demon­strate pas­sion so that the employ­er will be impressed with you in the interview.