This is a guest post from my friend Kevin Donlin, in Minnesota.  More on him after the post.

“How can I find the best companies to work for?”

That’s a question I hear almost daily from job seekers.

It’s hard to answer … because it’s the wrong question.

Here’s the real issue beneath that question: “I don’t want to have to think hard about finding the best companies to work for.”

Admit it. You — like me and all humans — hate to think.

It takes time. You have to pick and choose. You might make a mistake. And it can give you a headache.

But unthinking behavior is a sure way to stay unemployed.

So, let’s re-phrase the query, because a well-phrased question is half-answered.

If you’ve been job hunting for more than 4 weeks, ask this question instead: “What have I NOT been willing to do to find the best companies to work for?”

That’s better. And easier to answer. In fact, I can think of 4 things you can do TODAY to find the best employers to work for …

1) Look at your connections on LinkedIn.

I mean really look. Pick 5 people you admire, view their profiles, and look for the following:

• Where do they work now? (Could you work there?)
• Where did they work before? (Could you work there?)
• Who are their clients? (Could you work there?)
• Who are their competitors? (Could you work there?)
• Who are their vendors? (Could you work there?)

Do this for 5, 10, or more people, and you’ll surely find 5-20 prospective employers.

2) Make connections at your last employers.

Specifically, think about everyplace you’ve worked before. Now ask yourself the following questions:

• Could you work there again? (Could you work there again? Don’t snicker — getting re-hired happens every day.)
• Could you work for your former clients?
• Could you work for your former competitors?
• Could you work for your former vendors?

3) Find companies in the news.

Spend 15-20 minutes researching the Business section of your local newspaper, looking for fast, smart, growing companies. Can’t find any? Consider moving (or looking harder).

4) Ask 5 people you admire.

I saved this for last, but it really ought to come first. Because, the more conversations you have, the more people will know about your job search — and the faster you’ll get hired.

So, ask the 5 most-connected people you know for advice.

Tip: Take them all out for coffee, bring a legal pad, take notes. In 30-45 minutes, you’ll surely come away with answers that will shorten your job search. Total cost: Less than $30.

Resource: If you’re in the job market and want to try something new, you can see Guerilla Job Search secrets caught on video and learn more here.

Kevin Donlin has partnered with Dave Perry, one of my all-time favorites in the job search world.  I had dinner with Kevin last year in Minneapolis, and got to know him pretty well – he’s a very cool guy, and quite passionate about helping people get results in their job search.  Kevin and Dave have a Guerilla Job Search Boot Camp and I hear great things about it from people who have finished it.

Also, here’s a P.S. from Kevin’s email: If you know anyone looking for a job in the Detroit area, please tell them to come meet David Perry and me in person on Sept. 17 — http://www.PutMichiganBackToWork.com. Doesn’t that look cool?

(some of the links in this post are affiliate links)

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Amy Franko, a business coach out of Ohio.  We had a very nice interview where we talked about a number of things – you can get a download of the interview (as well as a transcription) from this page (I’m #4).

Some of the stuff we talk about (her audience is not job seekers, it’s entrepreneurs):

• thoughts on being an entrepreneur,
• stuff about my book and how I’ve used it as a marketing tool,
• the name of a movie that had a major impact on me as an entrepreneur (I saw it on my way to a speaking gig in Turkey),
• and a number of thoughts on using LinkedIn.

If you have a few minutes and any entrepreneurial inclination, check it out

A month ago Jacob Share wrote a blog post on the Personal Branding Blog titled “30 Personal Branding Experts on Twitter.”  I was curious to see who was listed, since I’ve kind of been in the personal branding space for a couple of years.  I was surprised to see a bunch of people I had never heard of, or people who don’t seem to write about personal branding at all.

In the comments of that post Walter Akana says:

“I think you have omitted people who have exceeded your criteria of 30 tweets on personal branding. So, I’m wondering how, specifically, did you do your research?”

I am on a Yahoo Group of people who have become certified as “Personal Branding Strategists” from Reach CC.  This Yahoo Group is one of my favorites… the people there are superb, and have some level training in personal branding.  I asked that Group who is on Twitter, and this is what I got… I would suggest the following people as experts in personal branding:

Reach Personal Branding Experts on Twitter who are JibberJobber Partners

• Annemarie Cross, @annemariecross, Career Coach & Radio Host, powerful resumes & interviewing strategies to secure the interview and job offer. Get tips at: www.careercommuniqueradio.com
• Gayle Howard, @GayleHoward, Multi-award winning Master Resume Writer & Personal Branding Strategist. Promoting talents of bold, authentic, audacious senior executives
• Cindy Kraft, @cfocoach, Career & personal brand strategist for CFOs … re-packaging, positioning, & marketing in order to land that next, right opportunity.
• Deb Dib, @CEOCoach, Unabashedly passionate about propelling visionary, gutsy, ethical corporate leaders and entrepreneurs to land faster, earn more, have fun, and change the world!
• Wendy Terwelp, @WendyTerwelp, I help entrepreneurs and execs be rock stars at work. Are you ready for your next big gig?
• Walter Akana, @WalterAkana, Walter is a Life Strategist who works with mid-career individuals who want to achieve more self direction in their careers and lives.
• Paul Copcutt, @paulcopcutt, Use UK wit and realism to help leaders in F1000 companies express their success
• Kristen Jacoway, @kristenjacoway, I’m a Certified Personal Branding Strategist and Career Coach helping people uncover personal brands to leverage on Web 2.0.
• Megan Fitzgerald, @expatcoach, Megan Fitzgerald helps fellow expats worldwide use their personal brands on & offline to build a career or business to support their life abroad.
• Beverly Harvey, @BeverlyHarvey, Certified Personal Branding and Career Coach empowering senior-level executives with branded career marketing materials and job search strategies.

Reach Personal Branding Experts on Twitter who are not JibberJobber Partners

• Krishna De, @krishnade, Award wining digital influence and online reputation speaker, author and commentator focusing on employer branding and personal branding “
• Lethia Owens, @LiveYourBrand, I work with enterprising Speakers helping them define their niche, personal brand strategy and powerfully promote their million $$$ Brand
• Harp Arora, @harparora, Help professional service firms and entrepreneurs discover & communicate what makes them unique & desirable to their ideal clients.
• Jann Watt, @jannwatt, Jann is a Personal Branding Strategist and leadership coach living in Wellington, NZ. I am passionate about helping people find their career mojo.
• Meg Guiseppi, @megguiseppi, C-Level Executive Branding by a Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist and Master Resume Writer — Your unique personal brand message in your own voice.
• Phyllis Shabad, @phyllisshabad, Chief Branding Officer coaches, brands and writes for CEOs, Board Directors and Business Innovators to break through to the boardroom.
• Randi Bussin, @myreinventure, As a career reinvention and personal branding strategist, I collaborate with professionals seeking purpose with passion to bring them clarity, a renewed sense of direction, and an actionable career reinvention plan.
• Diana Jennings, @Diana.Jennings, Deepening the knowledge of knowledge workers to increase awareness & understanding of how they’re perceived, and helping them to develop & communicate their brand
• Rachel Gogos, @RachelGogos, Marketing & Personal Branding expert focusing on female entrepreneurs and women returning to the workforce – www.thebrandID.com.
• Kirsten Dixson, @kirstendixson,
• Valerie Sokolosky, @valsokolosky,
• Winnie Anderson, @winnie_anderson, works with small to mid-sized service businesses and solopreneurs to establish, grow, and communicate their brand online using social content marketing strategies and tactics.
• Marieke Hensel, @hensel, supports business owners in creating their personal brand online to attract a loyal fan base.
• Maren Finzer, @marenfinzer, As a personal branding and inbound marketing strategist, I partner with high achieving professionals to excite, ignite and bolster their personal brand to become the only choice.
• Jill Kelly, @Gillian_Kelly, Expert in Marketing You. Capitalize on Your Talents. Realize Your Potential. Live Your Dreams. www.careeredge.com.au

This obviously is not an exhaustive list … I’m sure I have other JibberJobber partners who specialize in pesonal branding… know anyone who should be on this list?  Leave a comment… !

I frequently get emails asking for recommendations on job coaches who are in or around the city where the job seeker is.  For some reason they want to be close enough to meet with the job coach in person.

My response is “send me your resume and I’ll pass it on to my coach partners.  My coaches usually specialize in a profession/area (like Project Managers or CFOs or CEOs) or an industry (like retail, banking, etc.).  If any of them see a connection between your resume and their specialty, they’ll get back to you.”

I think ALL of my coaches have virtual clients… which means they are all virtual job coaches.

It’s more important, when you look for a job coach, that they understand your profession and/or industry than whether you can meet with them, face-to-face.

Let me take that back just a little… some of my coaches prefer the face-to-face, and some clients prefer the face-to-face.  There is great power in face-to-face, whether it’s with coaching or with networking or with sales or with __________.  But I think that having a virtual job coach is totally acceptable.

To put it simply, would you rather meet with someone face-to-face who doesn’t understand your profession/industry, or meet with a job coach virtually who has helped dozens or hundreds of people who have similar career paths to yours land a job?  Getting the best of both worlds might make you lucky, and I’m not against it, but I think it’s more important to be aligned with their specialty rather than just be in the same city.

When you look for a job coach, consider WHAT they specialize in, not WHERE they are.  With that perspective, a virtual job coach makes sense, doesn’t it?

My JibberJobber Partner Brad Attig wrote a post in reaction to my Job Search Tip: Get A Coach (someone who will hold you accountable) post from last week.  It’s a great peek into the mind of a professional job search coach – spend a few minutes on his post – it’s worth your time!

I got this tweet a couple of weeks ago from Craig Murden:

I have blogged about this before in the following posts:

• The Professional Job Search Creed – 1 of 10 (November 17, 2006)
• I Have A Coach – Do You? (July 16, 2007)
• I Hate My Coach (August 21, 2007)

A job search coach would have significantly changed my job search… here are two reason why:

1. I was doing the wrong stuff in my job search, but I didn’t know it.  I spun my wheels, and got frustrated, but didn’t know I should do something else.
2. I had no accountability to anyone.  Everyone treated me with kid gloves since they didn’t know how to ask if I was still unemployed.  It’s a touchy subject that many don’t ask about.

Now, you can PAY for a coach, or you can find a “buddy,” as Craig suggests.  Either are okay options, in my opinion.  During my job search I didn’t think I could afford a coach, and I’m not sure if I was ready to be a good client of a coach.

I have seen, however, many job seekers find someone they can be accountable to from job search clubs – essentially their job search peers.  Some of those relationships lasted beyond the job search, which I think is pretty cool.  I think there are two keys to a coaching relationship:

1. Principle-based methodology. If someone is your job search coach and they tell you to do bad stuff (like spend all your time on job boards, or apply to newspaper ads 100% of the time), you have the wrong coach. This is where a professional job search coach comes in – not only are they principle-based, they have a lot of experience with their other clients that will help you keep your job search as short as possible.
2. Accountability. You must be accountable to someone for your weekly (daily?) goals and targets.  This CANNOT be your spouse, as your spouse is TOO close to the emotional outcome of the job search.  I know career coaches who won’t coach their spouses

Do you have a coach?  If not, go get one.  In the link above, the first point in the Job Search Creed is to get a coach.

A while back I met Paloma, who was here in Utah for a while and had gotten involved as a volunteer at a church-sponsored employment “agency.”  Paloma heard about JibberJobber and wanted to meet me, so my family had dinner with her and her husband and a friendship began.

Paloma and her husband came to Utah on a lucrative contract that fell apart shortly after they arrived. They found themselves as clients at the employment agency, and then volunteers helping others.  Paloma has a big heart, and a big desire to help others, and is a very smart person.

Eventually, her husband’s job search took them to Maryland.  Paloma has evangelized JibberJobber and reached out to Joshua Persky (his LinkedIn profile), of NYC sandwich board fame, to see what we could do to help.

In Joshua Persky’s blog post he acknowledges Paloma’s help:

It’s been a fantastic first 2 days at Weiser LLP. Thank you again to my family, Paloma Bowland of www.jibberjobber.com, Richelle Konian of www.careersonthemove.com, and Elliot Ogulnick, Director of Business Valuation / Corporate Finance at Weiser LLP who hired me.

Pretty cool!  Of course, it would be cooler if he said “JibberJobber was so indispensible in my job search, I don’t know what I would have done without it!” or “the only reason I landed this dream job was because I a sandwich board on my chest and JibberJobber on my computer!” or “I owe JibberJobber everything, as it was the real key to going from unemployed to dream job!”

Oh well   It’s supercool that Paloma had a lot to do with helping Joshua land! Here are some online stories about Joshua Persky:

Joshua Persky gets hired: What’s the craziest thing you’ve done to get a job?

Joshua Persky: desperate and alone (Wallstrip)

Joshua Persky (on Mahalo)

BETTER SIGN OF TIMES – FROM SANDWICH BOARD TO DREAM JOB

I hear this stuff works… notice in the picture… A SMILE!

Congrats Joshua!

Last weekend I got an email from a longtime virtual blog buddy that he was going full-time with his social media consulting business.  Here’s the email from Ari:

In response to recent questions about my new venture, I’d like to share with you what I’m doing – and ask for your help.

With my 10 years of experience in digital media, community journalism, and government administration, I merged my skills into consulting. I have a small but growing list of clients who reached out to me after wanting to hear how social media, interactive marketing, and online branding could help them.

If you visit http://ariherzog.com, I list some questions that every CEO should be able to answer and identify with. You can read about the value I offer in social networking, blogging, search engine optimization, online branding, lead generation, and much more.

With the economic downturn, social media is all the more relevant because it’s downright affordable, and in many cases is free. Can you think of a better way to sell your products and services?

If this strikes a chord, I’d enjoy hearing from you — or anyone you can recommend. I’m available for either consulting or speaking opportunities with larger groups.

Scary… to get away from steady paycheck, health insurance, matching 401k, etc.  I wrote about having guts to do it here …. my guts came because I had no other choice, and admire anyone who makes the decision when they already have a job!

If you are looking for help with your social media or social marketing strategy, I encourage you to check out Ari Herzog.  He’s been a frequent commentor on this blog and he and I have corresponded quite a bit over the time we’ve known one another.  He’s a sharp guy!

Finally, if you are looking for guts to do something like this (start your own gig), go follow Pamela Slim, author of Escape From Cubicle Nation.

What do all these things have in common?  The JibberJobber radio show!  Today I spoke with Karen P. Katz, owner of Career Acceleration and blogger who has some terrific thoughts on the job interview, and what we can learn from Obama and McCain in the ultimate job interview.

Karen P. Katz

We started talking about why Obama has the position he has, even though he doesn’t have the credentials McCain has.  I’m not interested in a political discussion, so don’t go there, but think about it… doesn’t it seem that McCain has a lot of the “right things,” according to what a job description of the President of the United States (POTUS) would contain?

As job seekers, do we sometimes look at a job description and think it’s unatttainable, even though we might have done the same stuff somewhere else?  Yup, you guessed it, transferrable skills.  Karen talked a lot about transferrable skills on this one-hour job search radio show.

The Recruiting Animal

We got onto a very interesting point about age discrimination, and how to deal with age discrimination in a job search.  It was cool to have the Recruiting Animal on the show, as he provided a recruiter’s point of view.  What does an older job search candidate do if faced with discrimination in the interview?  We talked about that at length, and some great ideas where thrown around.

That’s all I’m going to tell you – you can listen to the hour long show here

Today I am honored to have Susan Whitcomb join me for our BlogTalkRadio show.  It’s TODAY at 12:15 EST (15 minutes later than normal), and you can listen on your PC or we can take a few callers (last time I didn’t get to any callers, sorry).  Here’s the info to get on the call (or hear the archive):

To listen live through your computer, just go here at 12:15 EST: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JibberJobber (you can also here past episodes there)

To call in and ask Susan question, call: (718) 766-4825

I’m thrilled to have Susan Whitcomb join us today.  I met her at a conference last year and see here at about every conference I go to. Aside from being a successful author, she runs the Career Coach Academy… she trains career coaches!  She is the one who teaches them systems, techniques, skills, etc. to help YOU find a job faster, or find the right job for you.

She recently shared a list of twelve tips for job hunting in a tight economy.  I can pontificate all day long about how to conduct a job search, but let’s face it: when I was in my (failed) job search, it was a “job seeker’s market,” and I still couldn’t get a job!  I think it’s great we get to hear from a career veteran on how to go through a job hunt in this not-so-fun economy.

Susan is a JibberJobber Career Expert Partner – if you can, join us live.  Otherwise, you can always download the interview (along with all other interviews) at the BlogTalkRadio JibberJobber page!

Next week we’ll talk with Karen Katz, of Career Acceleration, about Transferable Skills and the National Interview… she’s done a lot of thinking about the current election and has some brilliant ideas on what we, as job seekers and career managers, can apply to our own careers.

JibberJobber ONE THING has 98 subscribers… and we’ve sent out a ONE THING email every day (except one).  You can join here.  Today’s ONE THING had to do with starting your Job Journal… yesterday’s ONE THING had to do with easily nurturing relationships with three contacts… the day before was… I’m not telling.  Go sign up to get this small email sent to you daily