Tips to get a good job

1. IDENTIFY YOUR BEST CHANCES. Create potential employers most likely to value the qualifications that you have and want to use.
Executive talent agent Debra Feldman (jobwhiz.com), who personally conducts job searches for individuals seeking professional or executive jobs, spells it out for us:

2. ERASE REPUTATION FLAWS. Do you know what others are saying online about you as a person or as a worker? Google your name. If you've got image problems, search online for "reputation management tools," and apply solutions to issues that may be roadblocks to being hired.
 
3. NEGOTIATE YOUR SHORTCOMINGS. When you can do the work but lack the normal industry experience or education, the only way to beat the deficit is to get to the boss for whom you'd be working. Then let the boss run interference with HR staff.
Negotiating skills are key to successfully communicating that what you know is more important than where you learned it. Read Roger Dawson's "Secrets of Power Negotiating, 15th Anniversary Edition: Inside Secrets from a Master Negotiator" (Career Press).

4. REVIEW AND REVISIT. Periodically check back with each earlier contact, including those who turned you down. For all you know, the first pick for a job quickly found something better and moved on. Change happens.

5. DRUM UP NEW LEADS. Just as you can never have too many friends, bulk up your job intel circles with vendors, accountants, bankers, marketing staff and people in your target industries. Also, it's never too late to hire a neighborhood teen to help you master making new friends through social media.

6.COUNT INTERVIEW STARS. Even when you're not trying to nab a marquee role, if you're not delivering at least a three-star (out of five) interview performance, you're blowing your chance to claim an offer.
 
7.Think: Have you developed unattractive, desperate overtones that undermine you in interviews? That can happen to anyone. Line up a pal and practice interviewing with a video recording until you present yourself as confident and competent. My book "Job Interviewing For Dummies" (Wiley) can help.
 
8.STAY AFLOAT. Are you so financially strapped and stressed that your judgment is off? Do any legal thing you have to do -- drive a cab at night, wait tables, moonlight anywhere you can.