When I say "hiring manager," I don't mean the people in Human Resources and I don't mean the people in recruiting agencies. I mean the managers who are actually managing some part of an organization – these are the people who have job openings to fill.

The hiring manager is the person who makes the final hiring decision. In your job search, this is the person whom you will have to convince to give you the job!

Given this fact, the hiring manager - not the big generic job search sites and not professional recruiters – is the best person to give you advice on how to obtain a new job in the shortest time possible.

I'm currently a hiring manager in a large (13,000 employees) organization and I know what hiring mangers want to see from a job applicant. Plus, I "eat my own dog food". That is, I've used the advice you'll find on this site in my own job searches to successfully find and land a job, so I know it works.

Case in point. A while back, after 21 years with the same company, I was reorganized out of my upper-middle management job. Everything at that time said it took an average of six months to find a new position. I found a new, higher paying job in four weeks.

Several months later I lost my job again when that company unexpectedly went under....and I found a new job in five weeks. So can you.

What you'll find here is a hiring manager's perspective on how to find a job. Much of this advice will be different from what you'll find elsewhere because it's not based on traditional theory about how to find a job. It's based on what hiring managers are actually looking for and where they are looking for it.

To find a job as quickly as possible, you need to know several things:

• How to best organize your job search
• The best ways to find open positions
• The best ways to write your resume and, just as important, your cover letter
• How to increase your chance for an interview when you apply
• What hiring managers are looking for once you're in the interview