With an additional 85,000 people joining the ranks of the unemployed in December, more than 15 million Americans are currently looking for work in a marketplace that is growing exponentially competitive, especially when it comes to the top two percent of jobseekers—executives. Used to corner offices, high pay, and lavish perks, they’re now facing a harsh reality in which many are unemployed for months, if not more than a year, and the jobs are harder to find.

Portfolio.com enlisted the help of career expert Vicki Brackett, president and CEO of Make It Happen Consulting and Make It Happen for Women, for tips on what executives need to know about the changing terrain of job searching and what hiring companies are seeking. The conversation has been edited for brevity.

How is this unemployment crisis different than past ones?

We haven’t had one like this in a very long time. And executives who are now being hit were at a different level on the corporate ladder in the 1980s when this last happened.

The government’s heavy involvement in this—whether on the compensation front or on the finance front—is making executives very uneasy because they see this involvement as a potential threat to their business.

And because so many companies went out of business, there are a lot of senior VPs, VPs, and other levels of executives on the market. What they need to understand is that the way to approach a job search has fundamentally changed.

And what are the big changes that you’re seeing?

First of all, companies that are hiring right now are looking for someone who can meet the needs of a business during a recession. Executives going for these jobs have to look different on paper. Having 10 to 20 years of experience running a business is not going to get them in anymore if they can’t articulate how they can—or have—helped others navigate through a downturn. Think about it this way, do you want an executive who has no turnaround experience practicing on your company?

So what can they do to address the new concerns of the marketplace?

They have to realize that the traditional, chronological résumé no longer works. The bias companies have when they’re interviewing out-of-work executive candidates is that these people were not successful when they left their companies, and now they’re also dealing with a gap on their résumé because finding a job is getting more difficult.

From the candidate perspective, they have to interview differently. The days of being chummy over years-past accomplishments are gone. Candidates have to talk to what edge, and skill set, they have that will help the company they’re interviewing with. They have to talk productivity, cost control, and market share.

How would they approach doing that if they’ve never had to alter their résumé and interview style before?

I would never do my own résumé, and I’ve been in the industry for nine years. The problem is that résumé becomes a mirror of who jobseekers are, and that means that they’re not talking to what the market needs. By going to an independent, objective source, like a career expert, they can take the subjectivity out of the process and learn how to market themselves in a way that will entice interest.

Another major change that’s hitting executives is that their old job-getting methods no longer work. Many of them have networked for their entire professional lives and don’t understand why a tool that may have worked for 30 years isn’t applicable anymore.

Their networks aren’t working because they’re not as extensive as they used to be or they’re in the wrong industries. It's critical that executives stop telling themselves which sectors they're looking at. What they need to do is whiteboard what their skills are and match those to the market demand, not a specific area of their interest.

Another problem is the expectation of finding work through a job board. Only four to 10 percent of people get a job that way, and that percentage is even lower for executives, hovering around two percent.

Finally, copying and sending off a zillion copies of their résumés to human resources professionals and recruiters is not going to work either.