Applying yourself: Landing a new executive job takes work.

• Author: Cantwell, Rebecca

While soothsayers promise that better economic times will sprout with the spring tulips, thousands of Coloradans who were making big money a year ago are still trying to dig out of a winter of unemployment.

Experts who find and fill jobs for a living have some crystal-ball advice of their own for the executives and managers hit by tidal waves of layoffs: Look for jobs where you can help a company grow revenues or cut expenses. Find ways to package your skills to meet the current demands in industries such as health care. Network with everyone you know to get past the stacks of resumes and in the front door. And, perhaps most fundamentally, figure out what you really want from a job and what you do best.

MARK MOSES FOUND A NEW JOB AS part owner and manager of an Outback Steakhouse restaurant in Aurora after going through personality tests to make sure he was right for the job, part of a process used by DeCotiisErhard Inc., business consultants in Colorado Springs.

Moses advises job seekers to evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses before going for an interview, even if it's through a less formal process.

"It would be very valuable being able to say what you're doing to enhance your strengths -- and how you're working on your weaknesses," said Moses. If you're doing that, Moses said about interviewers, "They get impressed pretty fast."

In the current job climate, executives and managers looking for jobs are more likely to succeed if they offer tangible skills that will help employers prosper, "When times are better, there's room for more chiefs and less Indians, but now there is room for more Indians and less chiefs," says Vicki Pike, president and owner of FBC of Greenwood Village, an executive recruiting firm that focuses on consumer packaged goods and is part of a franchise network of about 100 offices nationwide.

In Pike's industries, that means people who can contribute to the output of a plant and increase its production will find jobs, and so will people who know how to increase efficiency to save money.

Sometimes, job seekers have to persuade a company that they have what it takes to improve market share, even if it means creating a position for them.

"A good businessman is not going to look at cutting costs until he's resigned to not increasing revenues -- usually they look at increasing revenues first," said Larry Dudman, the regional CEO in charge of career management firm Bernard Haldane Associates' Colorado operations.

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