'Cracking the New Job Market' has helpful job-hunting tips

— -- With 6.1 million Americans now unemployed for more than six months, there's a ready market for Cracking the New Job Market: The 7 Rules for Getting Hired in Any Economy. Author R. William Holland delivers a step-by-step guide, sort of a paint-by-numbers approach to job-hunting.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the best-selling Nickel and Dimed, wrote the book's preface. She points out that, unlike many outplacement counselors who serve up the same advice decade after decade, Holland delivers timely tips that work in this era of online applications and company Facebook pages.

Cracking the New Job Market is no easy read, but applicants who read every word will mine hundreds of job-hunting hints. They'll learn how to crack the online application quagmire. Most readers will experience a couple of light-bulb moments, when they recognize situations they've unwittingly mishandled.

For those who wonder if all the jobs are hidden, Holland quotes a CareerXroads survey showing where larger companies find their new hires:

•Internal transfers and promotions account for 38% of all full-time positions.

•Referrals from employees, alumni, vendors and others constituted 27% of all positions filled.

•Company career sites supplied 22% of all outside hires.

•Job boards represented 13% of external hires.

Holland begins with how to tailor your résumé for the job you want. He says an unfocused résumé is like fishing without bait — if you catch something, it is strictly by accident.

His primo rule of résumé writing: It's not about you.

"Your résumé is not just a summary of what you have accomplished. It is a promise of what you can accomplish for someone else," he writes. That's where value creation comes in.

How to create value? Put yourself in the shoes of the employer, Holland says.

If your résumé isn't written specifically for the job you're seeking, a do-over is in order. Here are Holland's tips:

•The school you attended and your college major are much less important to an employer than what's in it for them. Because the job market is overcrowded, allowing your credentials to speak for themselves won't work any longer.

•Ask yourself what you can do to create more value for the employer than your competitor can. In other words, translate your background into what a company needs.

•Never assume that the connection between your experience and the company's needs is obvious. Connect the dots for the hiring managers. Learn what skills they seek by trolling the company website, reading industry magazines and checking the job posting carefully. Look for key words in the job description and on the company website — verbs and adjectives that describe the person they are seeking and the values the company espouses.

•Use active verbs to state your accomplishments, and include the result of your work. If you did it "in a limited time" or "short-handed" or "on a limited budget," make sure they know that.