Justin Brazelton has been looking for a job for about a year without any luck.

“There’s a bunch of dead ends,” said Brazelton, a Buffalo resident who now

works at the Heritage Centers but would like to begin a new career in law enforcement or

corrections. “I get discouraged. It seems like there’s no hope sometimes.”

With unemployment in the Buffalo Niagara region at 7.8 percent — the second-highest

for any April in more than 20 years — finding a job takes more work and more diligence

than ever.

“It’s an employer’s market right now,” said Christopher M. Beckage, a

vice president at Superior Technical Resources, an Amherst-based staffing firm.

But Beckage also sees signs that the job market is starting to get better, including a

slight improvement in the April job statistics released last week by the state Labor

Department.

Those numbers showed that the pace of job losses has slowed to an annual decline of 0.2

percent, the slowest year-over-year decline since the local employment market began its

decline in November 2008, but still 1,200 fewer jobs than in April 2009 and the least for any

April in the last 16 years.

While 2,600 fewer people were counted as unemployed in April than a year ago, there still

are 45,500 people looking for work in Buffalo Niagara, the second-most for any April in the

last 20 years.

Beckage and other experts offered tips on job-hunting and career changes to several hundred

people who attended the Western New York Career Resource Expo at Erie Community College’s

City Campus on Tuesday.

Most important, Beckage said, is to treat the job hunt as a full-time job itself.

“You’ve got to be proactive,&#8221 he said. “If you’re sitting and waiting

for the phone to ring, you’re going to be waiting a long time.”

Even in the midst of a recession, companies still are hiring, largely to replace workers who

retire or leave on their own, said John Slenker, the Labor Department’s regional

economist. Hiring typically doesn’t pick up until many months after the economy has

started growing again.

But with most companies thinking long and hard before they fill any of those vacancies, the

competition for those openings is intense, giving employers the upper hand in setting the

wages and other conditions that come with those coveted jobs.

That’s why Beckage said job-hunters need to find ways to stand out, and avoid mistakes

that knock them out of the running right off the bat. His advice includes:

Have a good resume. Superior Technical Resources, for instance, gets 300 to 400

resumes a day, Beckage said. That sheer volume means that most employers will look at a resume

for about 15 seconds, so it takes a good resume to stand out.

Spelling and grammar mistakes are an easy way for employers to toss a resume in the

“no” pile. “I’ll disqualify you because you’re lazy,” Beckage

said.

Customize your resume to the job you’re seeking. In other words, an applicant for an

engineering job should emphasize skills and experience related to engineering.

Don’t list the reason for leaving your last job. Don’t lie, and be sure to

include previous jobs in retail or other unrelated professions, since those help build up a

base of work experiences.

“Our first pass-through is to find a reason to reject you, not to hire you,”

Beckage said.

Prepare for the interview. Do research about the company before you arrive. Prepare

for questions about your work experiences.

Be aware that interviewers also may pause after the answer to a question in an attempt to

get a job-seeker to volunteer more information than they might otherwise care to divulge.

“Awkward silence: Give it right back to them,” Beckage said.

Use job fairs to meet employers in person. “These are a good chance for people

to have face-to-face time with employers” when many firms only accept applications

online, said Carolyn Bright, the Labor Department’s business services manager in Buffalo.

Google the company, and Google yourself. Do an Internet search to find out the latest

news about the company, both good and bad. And check yourself out online to see if there are

any negative comments or inappropriate photos at social media sites such as Facebook or

MySpace that could turn off a potential employer.

Consider contract positions. These task-related jobs often give people a foot in the

door at companies that aren’t ready to hire people full time, said Lauren Johnson, a

University at Buffalo career counselor.

Try an internship to develop new skills or gain experience that could help you branch

out into a new career, Johnson said.

Go out on your own. Consider your skills and your passions, and balance that against

your willingness to take a career risk by starting your own business. If you love to garden,

maybe that passion could lead to a new business growing plants, selling floral arrangements or

doing floral design work, Johnson said.

Get out and talk with people. “Networking is huge,” Beckage said. “Go

to every networking event you can, and don’t be a wallflower.”

Be realistic. Long periods of joblessness can raise questions among potential

employers. The tough job market also may force job-hunters to lower their pay expectations and

settle for positions that are below their skill and experience levels.

“You can be picky, but you don’t want to be stubborn,” Beckage said.

“Sometimes you have to take a job to get a career.”