Sending a thank you or follow-up letter within 24 hours of an interview is not a new idea, but it is still a good idea. A key reason to send a thank you letter is to nurture new and existing relationships. Plan to send a thank you letter to all the people that assist in your job search.

This group includes the people that you meet during an interview; your existing contacts that provide written recommendations, and any friend (or friends of friends) that offer career related leads or information.

Thank you is a good place to start relationships that will greatly contribute to your ability to secure the right job in record time! Unless you have a good reason for sending a card or a handwritten letter to your target reader, plan to send an e-mail that is easy to produce. Use the subject line to note "thank you for the interview". This action demonstrates a respect for their busy schedule and an understanding that they may want to read this e-mail after they have read all their urgent e-mails.

In the best of times responding to a job listing can feel like sending your resume out to sea in a bottle. But at least you received a call or an email acknowledgement. Now, with the volume of applicants higher than ever, you're more likely to hear nothing.

If there is a resounding silence from your queries, keep looking and networking. But you can also do some sleuthing to give you a better chance of standing out next time. Recruiters and career experts agree that, if you didn't get an interview or phone call -- or even a thank-you email -- it may be due to at least one of six reasons.

1. They're just not that into you.

You're good, but someone else more closely met the qualifications. In a tight job market employers can usually get exactly the type of candidate they want. A polite "thanks, but no thanks" letter or email would be nice. But don't expect it these days.

2. They may be into you, as soon as they get to you.

Companies receive so many submissions these days that they don't even have time to send out letters or confirmation emails. "I know a major software company that's taking more than three weeks just to send out acknowledgement notes, and some companies are spending months sifting through resumes for just one opening," workplace etiquette expert Sue Fox tells Yahoo! Hot Jobs.

It might be a real challenge to find a desired job within normal circumstances, but what if you are looking for a job in the situation of the world economic crisis? Enterprises are getting rid of the old stock, slowing down production rates, trying to lower costs, and consequently, cutting down the workforce. Many companies around the world are reducing their staff. Hiring? Not really.

It might look like a completely hopeless situation – how can anybody get a job, when so many are being fired? But this is not exactly like that. Yes, it is most likely that you are not going to find vacant positions openly advertised on the companies’ web pages or anywhere else. However, Human Resources are looking for people – full of fresh ideas, talented, bold people. People, who will bring positive changes, invent new techniques and rewrite the history of the business development. Who told you, that you cannot be one of those people?

Please, consider the following:

Career transition.

There should be something you have always wanted to do for your living, but never got down to it, because you had another job, because you did not have relevant experience to do this kind of work, because, because… This is the time! Just be bold and go ahead!

Visiting a job fair may significantly increase your chances to get a job even faster than you might have thought. You just need to be prepared to “hit” the potential employers. This article will give you some useful tips on how to be a success at a job fair.

Resume.

Review and update it, making sure that the contents reflect the kind of job you are currently looking for. Even if your previous working experience is not too much relevant to it, adjust your resume to your needs – stress out the points that could give you an advantage in job hunting in the desired field. Make many copies of the resume so that you can take a bunch of them to the job fair – you are going to meet quite a lot of prospective employers there.

Introduction.

Think of a brief presentation, that you could use to introduce yourself. It should be like a 40-60 seconds’ commercial, outlining the main points and aimed at making a good impression. A fresh, bright, upbeat presentation will help you grab the recruiter’s attention and get them interested in employing you.

Daily millions of job seekers browse the Internet in the search of the vacancies to apply for. Thus, the World Wide Web has become an effective tool for finding an appropriate job, and has also facilitated the recruitment process for the employers. In this respect, a successful job-hunter should take into consideration some crucial issues that can aid in the task:

1. Build Your Web-site.
Beware, that just posting your CV on multiple Internet sites will not necessarily bring the expected fruit. You can do much more than this. Build (or have it built) your own site which will contain your resume, body of work, contact information. The fun thing is also to add the Google Talk’s gadget to your web-site so that your visitors can reach you online. Attach the http reference to your resume and post it in different job-search databases. It will definitely contribute to your success.

2. Google Yourself.
Make sure you check Google in order to find out what your potential employer will see in case he does the same. It is extremely important since you will have a chance to eliminate the unwanted risks and clean-up the information on you available online.

3. Use the Advanced Search Options.
This is very important, because usually job-search engines have too many job ads. Narrow the choice by the region, industry, type of employment (part-time, shifts etc.). The helpful thing here is the key-word search s well.

1. Define the direction. Hopefully, you had enough time when studying at college to figure out what you would like to do for a living. Otherwise, take some more time and make up your mind about the field in which you would like to build your career. Now. You cannot put it off any further.

Make sure you take all your strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, interests and talents into consideration when deciding on that point. It is also a good idea to search for information on the fields that interest you and people who are involved into working in them. This will aid you in creating a better vision of the prospective job, and decide whether it appeals to you or not.

2. Research. Since you are already aware of the career you wish to take, you can proceed to looking for tangible companies that could offer you the employment you long to. It is extremely important to discover as many of those as possible, and scan all the available information on what exactly each company does, and whether it is stable or not.

You can find out much from the companies’ websites. However, each company strives to present their business in the best possible way as well as from the management’s perspective. Thus, specialized forum discussions and news archives should not be neglected – they often contain ‘real people’ opinions and light the things up from a different angle. The more you know – the better. Your part here is to shape your opinion as a third party’s one.