A woman I met recently shared how she had been laid off, and was able to get a great new job in slightly over a month.
Her experience defies the conventional wisdom about job search. She didn’t search for one month for every $10k of target salary. She searched for one month. Period.
Lesson: It can be done.
What brought her such success?
She set aggressive productivity goals for each day, and she met them. We’re talking 15-20 new networking contacts every day, several online job applications, activity on online networks, networking events and more. She put in 12-hour job search days. She just cranked. And she got what she wanted.
She wasn’t paralyzed by the order of the bullet points on her resume or the correct phrasing of her cover letter. She made action the priority, and tweaked her process as she went.
And did you hear? She got what she wanted.
If a job is a direct result of your job search activity, and you’re not getting a job based on the activities that you’re doing, then there are one of three things wrong:
- You’re doing the wrong activities,
- You’re doing the activities wrong, or
- You’re doing everything right, but not enough of it.
Let’s assume you’ve been reading here and elsewhere a while and you’re generally on the mark with what and how you’re doing with your job search. That leaves one variable — volume.
For one week, put some serious oomph behind your efforts. Set stretch goals — double your current productivity — and work your butt off for seven days. You may be tired, but you’re almost guaranteed to also be closer to your job search goal.
Related posts:
- How to get the job: Incremental choice and job search
- Too much networking: Is there such a thing?
- 15 minutes a day to more productive work
- Coping with job loss: Don’t let job loss interfere with job found
- The secret of success: Make your job search very part-time
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting post, but there is a saying “if you are in a hole, stop digging”. I would modify this to “if what you are doing to find a job is not working, then try something else”. Don’t simply ‘work harder’ without thinking about what you are doing. This is the most common mistake I find in job-seekers. They don’t ask questions about why they are doing things, instead they simply ‘try harder’. Bad idea because if you look at how most people search (resumes/job-listings) against how people ACTUALLY FIND JOB they are two very different approaches. Specifically, people find work through job-boards/listings less than 10% of the time whereas using networking/target companies yields about 75% of how people find jobs. Therefore, if you think that you are not being efficient in your search, I would challenge people to take a step back and think about their “search process”.
Will: I think this is an excellent point. You can work all day but if you’re not doing the right work, you won’t get results. I’ve noticed that many people get tied up in online applications and tweaking the resume, as you mentioned. How much time do you recommend that people spend working on networking into their target companies to find success? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I am still working on the data, but most studies put the number of people hired through networking is 50-70%. So if you want to find a job the way most people do (the easiest way, based on results) you should spend at least 50% of your time networking. If you spent 100% of your time doing this, you would be much better served than spending any time with job-boards.
Great information, Will. I don’t know that we can ever really know how many people get jobs via networking, but I don’t know anyone who disputes that it’s the most effective way. I have clients who use job boards, and clients who don’t, and it’s really related to how they feel about job boards as an avenue. Some like the feeling of accomplishment of continued applications, some find no value in it. But my general recommendation is to spend no more than 2-3 hours a week on job boards. The numbers are astronomically against you.