Trainings topics / modules:

As a consultant / coach for career, applying or new/outplacement you know the requirements in various industries/regions and know exactly the paths how companies fill their vacancies. You will actively open up the official and in particular the "hidden job market" for your candidates in various ways.  

1.  Orientation Phase: The clear and fair separation from the former employer

• Review of the termination agreement
• Review of the work certificate / reference
• Creation of a new work certificate

2.  Goal setting: The Active Career Strategy (ACS)

• The separation analysis: How your candidates learn from the
  termination and release
• The Active Career Strategy (ACS): Identifying the strengths and
  achievements in the potential analysis
• Salary-analysis and salary-coaching: How to negotiate adequate
  salaries professionally

3.  Positioning: The market presence (branding) of your candidate /
     Application Consultation & Self Marketing

• The other side of the desk: How HR managers / recruiters /
  headhunters think and act
• The marketing / application documents of your candidates
• How to contact the new target group of employers / Planning
  the application campaign / Active Application Strategies (AAS)
• Job interview and self-marketing: How your candidates convince
  with self-promotion and receive good job offers

4.  JobHunting: How to hunt new vacancies and best job offers for your candidates

• The JobHunting Strategies: How you secure your candidate's
  success with a systematic approach
• Evaluation of job offers
• Counselling the candidates on their employment contracts
• Coaching during the probationary period
  
  

Once your candidates or their employers have decided to terminate the employment contract, your candidates should dissolve as fair as possible, but also quickly from their former employers. Your candidates need to have a clear head to start something new. You support your candidate in this separation process. 

A) Review of the termination agreement
In cases of doubt you or a specialist in labor law should check the termination or cancellation of the contract in legal, tax and pecuniary terms.

• Does your candidate keep the full entitlement to unemployment benefits? 
• How attractive is the severance from the perspective of the industry, company affiliation and individual situation?
• Is there a fiscal optimization potential?

This results is a recommendation to accept, to negotiate or to reject the offer.

B) Verification of work certificates/references
Your candidates received a certificate/reference from the former employer? Check what effects this testimony will have on the future career of your candidates! Many HR managers focus a lot on the certificates of applicants. In addition to the content structure and the hidden legal "secret codes" are primarily statements of the person of the candidate, the assessment and also the achievements in the last mission of importance.

As a consultant you give recommendations for changes and refer to veiled criticism. You also give suggestions to the candidates for talking with their employers.

C) Creating a new certificate
Often candidates have the opportunity to submit their own testimony proposals. An excellent opportunity! In personal conversation you create a suitable testimony which gives a positive and appropriate image to the candidate.  

Separation as a clear opportunity: The loss of a job is a painful experience for your candidates. They are usually involuntarily removed from a secure environment and face an uncertain situation now. What will happen? What will be the next job? How long does the financial resources last? 

With some distance to the separating situation your candidates will have a clear chance to give their professional life a new direction.

• Do they want to focus on the tasks they prefer most? 
•  Do they now want to realize their long-cherished plans for
  professional independence / self-employment? 

With your professional support the vast number of candidates will be happier in their new position than with their former employers! The precondition for this is that they get to know themselves, their tendencies, strengths and weaknesses better with your critically analyzing help.

Support your candidate by this way:

A) The separation analysis: How to learn from the termination and release

To get the candidates head clear for a new position you and your candidate need to indentify and understand the reasons that led to the termination or re-orientation.

A termination can hurt the self-esteem even of the strongest candidates. Many often turn in a circle of trying to analyze the situation. Yourexternal view as a consultant will help to process what had happened. 

Latest when candidates are released from work and don't drive to work every morning their neighbors, friends and family will come to them with questions. Many candidates find it hard then, to tell the truth about their situation.  

Help your candidates to ease this situation by developing a "separation story" with them. This separation story will give a short, true and convincing information about the (awkward) situation for your candidate. Is raises no compassion, but widespread optimism.

• Practical exercises and implementation of termination-/re-orientation motivations

B) The Active Career Strategy (ACS) / Discover the strengths and achievements by the potential analysis
We humans are naturally endowed with different talents and abilities. Our experience shows that candidates, who focus on their strengths (instead of trying to compensate the weaknesses) are more successful and happier in their professional and private life.

• What are the unique talents of your candidate?
  
• Which tasks are torturing them?
  
• In what tasks will they be more successful and happier?

Your candidates should seek a job that requires their strengths as often as possible. They will cope better and faster their future tasks than other people. The things they don't like should be a smaller part of their duties.

By using the ACS as potential analysis your candidates will know their own profile of strengths and their professional achievements. This allows to determine the future career development of your candidates and the right target companies.

The Active Career Strategy more in detail:

ACS-Phase 1: Analysis of the current situation, professional stations, specific strengths and achievements: The basis of self-marketing
Discover with your candidates the strengths they are actually using with success. The written and verbal presentation of the abilities with concrete achievements gives your candidate a decisive edge in the application process. Together you will develop a number of success stories that are shown in the candidate's CV/competence profile and in interview situations.

• Practical exercises and implementation to ACS 1

You will also identify the qualification-/training-needs of your candidates and will look for and select suitable training providers.

ACS-Phase 2: The most promising fields of activity, target positions, alternatives and employer target groups

Only those who have clear goals can reach them: The findings from termination analysis, SWOT analysis of the profile and professional stations and successes lead to the determination of one/several target positions and future employers.

From now on your candidates will appear confident and more authentic than other candidates in the application process and the job interviews.

Additionally your knowledge of market developments and the feasibility of the desired position is needed. And despite all procedures, methodology and a large network of contacts a little bit of luck is required, too.

• Practical exercises and implementation to ACS 2
• Task: Market research on potential employers target groups to assess the job opportunities

ACS-Phase 3: The problems of employer-target groups
Show your candidates how to discover the problems and challenges of future emloyers and they will develop a further big advantage compared with their competitors for interesting jobs.

• Practical exercises and implementation to ACS 3

ACS-Phase 4: Set up a "benefit offer" for potential employers

• Practical exercises and implementation to ACS 4

C) Salary analysis and salary negotiation: How your candidates achieve adequate salaries
A realistic assessment of the expected salary helps your candidates in the interviews with new employers. They should know their "market value" and how they can realize it.

As part of the Job Hunting's it can be your goal to discover how much an employer is ready to pay before your candidates express their own ideas later.

• The "other side": salary negotiation seen from the employers view.
• The secret rules and deadly sins in salary poker.
• What really convinces bosses. 
• How your candidates are confident and relaxed in salary negotiations.

(In this module you can also qualify yourself as an independent application consultant!)

Applying = Advertising: Candidates must learn to see themselves as a "product" or "service provider" and to do marketing for themselves professionally. Products and services are communicated by sales documents. For your candidates this is mainly an excellent CV / "competence profile". Additionally they need a good "sales training" and good "selling points" for the job interviews.

• Why should a company just invite your candidates for an interview? 
• Why exactly should your candidates be hired?

A) The other side of the desk: Think like HR managers / HR consultants / recruiters etc. do
Employers / decision makers often think and act very different from what candidates guess. Therefore you make your candidates familiar with:

The view and actions of employers

• Exercise: Create a hiring plan (define requirements / search paths) 
• Exercise: Define selection criteria (application / interview) 
• Exercise: Live Search - What are hiring managers expecting?
  (= first opportunity to establish a network of contacts as a future consultant)

How employers analyze applications (including 3-step method) 

How candidates should do job advert analyses:

• Exercise: Mandatory / optional keywords, copy strategy  
• Exercise: Job advert analyses

Establishing first contacts with employers/recruiters by phone (current status check)

B) The marketing/application documents of your candidates

• Exercise: Short-brainstorm about deadly sins in applications

The cover letter (CL): How candidates immediately attract interest!

• Exercise: Optimize your own / colleagues CL from employer's fiew 
•  Exercise: Formulating various CLs from employer's fiew (initiative, advert, hr consultant, for specialists, managers, trainees etc.) 
• Exercise: Formulating important text modules / problem areas (dismissal, salary, starting date, career change, job abroad) 
• Exercise: Optimizing CLs of live candidates
• Real success stories and examples of good practices from different professions

The professional CV/resume/competence profile: The most important "sales document" of your candidates and the decisive "B3" strategy!

The CV is the one document that leads to job interviews. In less than 30 seconds it positively should influence and present the most important arguments to the hr decision makers.

Achievements & responsibilities: As a consultant, you will develop with your candidate CVs / competency profiles that show the professional stations, responsibilities and achievements of your candidates. We will show you how to make "tailored" CVs to the targeted positions and demonstrate personal strengths with success stories.

Demonstrate career development: Help your candidates to show a "red thread" and their personal development. Breaks or gaps in the career require your special attention as a consultant.

Structure, layout, time information, B1-B2-B3, gaps, unemployment, breaks, frequent/rare changes etc.

Different careers require different representations. Although the "ideal" layout does not exist, you will learn to achieve the optimum with our help.

• Exercise: Optimize of own CV / consultant profile 
• Exercise: Optimizing colleagues CV / profiles
• Exercise: Optimizing live candidates CVs

The Europass CV: Its strengths and weaknesses

Graphology

• Exercise: Search for its importance in the home country

Employment certificates (structure, content, secret codes, phrases)

• Exercise: Search for its importance in the home country
• Exercise: Formulating of references from employers

Reference checks

• Exercise: Doing (live) reference checks with employers

Final test

• Main task: Doing 1-3 complete application checks for live candidates (detecting all errors / optimizing)

C) The AAS - Active Application Strategies: Employer target groups / planning of the applying campaign

Your candidates should reach as many HR managers of the target group as possible. Depending on the target position and target companies you will show them the best entryways to the open and hidden job market. 

Planning recurring activities: Your candidates will create a weekly work plan and reserve times for application and leisure activities.

Checking the feedback from the labor market: You follow and document all initiated activities. Integrate the feedback from the market into your coaching activities. Specific trainings and coachings wil help to correct identified weaknesses in the self-promotion of your candidates.

Some topics in detail:

• The "iceberg" labor market:
  - Exercise: Research how employers search and hire
• Active and passive application strategies in detail
• Phone calls to job adverts
  - Exercise: Live calls to employers
• Speculative Application
  - Exercise: Pre-formulating of speculative applications (e.g. entry)
• Unsolicited phone calls
  - Exercise: Search the employer / Live calls
• Online search + online application
• HR consultants & recruitment agencies
  - Exercise: Contacting of HR consultants & recruitment agencies
  

D) Job interview & self-marketing: How candidates convince professionally and receive contract offers
In personal conversations your candidates must embody the "marketing claims" of their application documents and present their achievements in a convining way.

The verbal CV: The 1-minute spot / presenting success stories
Candidates often only have very little time to present themselves in important conversations or phone calls. They may not be lost in details, but must quickly get to the point and attract the interest of decision makers. You will prepare them with the 1-minute spot, a verbal resume, for this situations. Together you practice the presentation of their success stories.

More topics:

• What HR manager / hr consultants expect in job interviews
  - Exercise: Brainstorming expectations and fatal errors
  - Exercise: Short survey of employers /hr consultants
• The "elevator pitch": How candidates present them optimally
  within 60-120 seconds
  - Exercise: Preparing own elevator pitch
  - Exercise: Coaching colleagues /candidates
• Interview questions of employers
  - Exercise: Discussing employers questions and formulating
    candidates answers
• Anxiety / stress reduction with NLP:
  - Exercise: Relaxing quickly and how to be confident in job interviews
  - Exercise: Phobia technique, MoE
• Body language of the candidates with NLP
• The 1st impression of the candidates: What face, hands and feet tell ...
  if they are not watched careful!
• Body language of the HR Manager ... and how to lead them
• Live coaching of candidates

Coaching for tricky interview questions: Depending on the individual situation and your candidates targeted positions there are a number of sensitive issues that you should prepare your candidate for well (reasons for temination, strengths / weaknesses, change reasons, career planning, etc.). With your candidates you will prepare a catalogue of possible questions and answers that will avoid critical situations and increase their chance of getting job offers.

Video training of interviews: Simulate and practice concrete interview situations with your candidates on camera. This helps to detect weaknesses in the self-presentation. Almost all candidates can improve their presentation in the following areas:

• Training and optimization of interaction with the interviewer.
• CV related questions and confrontation with typical sensitive issues.
• Presenting of the strengths and achievements in relation to the potential employer.
• Research about the employer to ensure an optimal preparation.
• Develop a strategy paper, which includes initial ideas for solving curent problems of the new employer and positions your candidate as a pragmatic doer.
• Preparing and asking their own list of questions.

By your targeted preparation your candidates gain sovereignty and self-confidence. As their consultants you can greatly increase their chances of getting job offers.

Once you and your candidates developed a clear objective and appropriate positioning you will hunt for top vacancies for your candidates and contact with potential employers and recruiters. These activities can be started approximately 2-4 weeks after the start of your consultation.

A) How you will ensure the candidates success systematically
The 'magic bullet' in JobHunting is the direct contacting of decision makers in companies or recruitment agencies. This way is the most complex, but also will lead 80% of your candidates to success. Of course you consistently use all the other ways in the labor market.

1st step: Perform a target company search. This includes all the potential companies that could provide the target positions for your candidates. Depending on the preferences of your candidates you will expand or limit this research.

2nd step: Identifying the (real) HR decision makers. Whom should you contact in the target companies? Depending on the target position this may be the company personnel department, a department manager, a director or a board.

3rd step: Define the ways of contacting. Now you decide for each target company, which way of targeting these decision makers is the most striking. This can be done by:

• direct anonymous approach: In some cases you should present the profile of your candidates anonymously. Especially if they want to hold a top position, they will not be able to contact specific companies and executives (very exposed position, high profile, good contacts in the industry, current employment, non-competition clause etc.). 
• Contacts in your / your candidates network 
• Contacting headhunters & recruiters: Thousands of consultants are working in recruitment. Companies which want to fill positions with special knowledge often engage headhunters. You will advise your candidates in selection and appropriate dealing with headhunters. The candidates profile should be placed in the internal databases of 20 - 50 headhunters.
• Searching job adverts: In addition to the hidden job market also the open market offers many opportunities of course. With the right application strategy you can enourmously increase the chances of your candidate to get one of those positions.
  4-6 weeks after the start of consultation you start the job hunting in public databases, meta-databases, paid databases and inform your candidates about all vacant positions.
  You also train your candidates in interpreting job adverts and making profile-matchings. Non-matching ads are sorted out. For further questions about the ad you interview with the potential employer. Then together you create customized applications and prepare your candidates by researching the target company prior to the application.
• job wanted notice: Although only 2% of your candidates will find a new job in this way, it is worth the small effort, when the target position has sufficient market breadth.
• Targeted use of social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.): The "social networks" are becoming increasingly important for job search. Discuss with your candidates which networks should be used and how their representation should be optimized (key words) in these networks.

All these job hunting strategies bring your candidates the first interviews and contract offers. In case more interviews are needed, the strategies should be reviewed with the candidate.

B) Evaluation of contract offers / Choosing the 'right' and new employer

Ideally your candidates can choose from several contract offers. Usuallay the offers arise at different times. Together you will discuss the offers, compare them with the developed career strategy and the candidates decide how to proceed with the offers. You advise them whether and how they can delay an acceptance or rejection of offers.

C) Advising on the formation and influence on the contract offers
Your candidates should understand what they are going to sign. Discuss what points should be renegotiated and areas in which your candidate can show courtesy.

D) Coaching during the probationary period

If possible coach your candidates during the critical first 100 days in the new position. With every job change your candidates will face a new company culture, new colleagues, new tasks and new challenges. Especially their new employees will critically compare them with their predecessors.

The adaptation and performance pressure in a new position is significant. Accompany your candidates at this time and support them also on the weekend or evening by phone.
Help them in the first 100 days to find the correct, proper balance between "listening, waiting, learning and performing". Advise them in difficult decisions.

• Telephone Coaching (exercises are possible)
• Online Coaching/Webinars (exercises are possible)
• Classroom Seminars (exercises and live teaching are possible)