Job Searchers: Stop Kidding Yourself

So what did you do last week as part of your job search?

•    Spent about 30 hours at my desk busily searching

•    Tidied up my resume / CV

•    Took part in an online forum

•    Did research on some companies I’d like to target

•    Emailed a few people

•    Trawled through job sites looking for jobs

•    Spent 5 hours on an application form

•    Read some interesting articles about job searching

You sound like you’ve been working hard. Okay, let’s get specific:

1. How many real jobs did you apply for last week? How many CVs/resumes did you send out?

2. How many follow up calls did you make to chase up jobs or leads that you have already applied for?

3. How many real people (contacts, clients, colleagues etc) did you have a real conversation with on the phone in relation to your search?

4. How many informal one-to-one meetings (breakfast, coffee, lunch etc) did you book in the diary during last week with networking contacts?

5. How many informal one-to-one meetings did you attend last week with contacts?

6. How many face-to-face meetings did you have with recruiters last week?

7. How many interviews did you secure last week?

8. How many follow-up emails or notes did you send to contacts who you have met or spoken to in recent weeks?

Your answers to these 8 questions tell me what you accomplished last week instead of the paper shuffling and web surfing that that you did.  These are the real performance indicators that give an accurate view of how effective you were last week.

If you’ve nothing significant in the pipeline, the activities at the top of the page are just fluff.  Whilst some of them are relevant ways to spend your time,  they are not the best way to spend your time – particularly if you haven’t many open opportunities.

If all you are doing is spending most weeks doing the things at the top of the page, then you are quite probably:

- Kidding yourself

- Wasting lots of time and energy

- Afraid to get out of the door and have real conversations

- Playing safe

- Missing lots of opportunities

If you’re like many people who think sitting in front of a laptop for 7 hours a day is job searching, please stop kidding yourself.

Start judging your effectiveness based on what you achieved (outputs) instead of how many hours you put in (inputs).

When you do that, you can easily spend just 10 hours a week job searching whilst spending the remaining time with your family and your hobbies without guilt. And still you’d be more effective than most people who spend 30 hours a week at their just desk shuffling paper and surfing randomly on the web.

So let me ask you, are you kidding yourself?

By Sital Ruparelia

Comments

[Amanda]

Yea I always hear about how people are fed up with job searching and that they are doing everything they can when in reality they really aren't.. I found these tips interesting and I think more people need to read things like this to understand that, no they aren't doing everything they can. I actually recently found this website called Central Test that focuses on Psychometric tests so I think people should also understand that these tests are being increasingly used during the recruitment process and they should be ready for them. http://us.centraltest.com/

[Sital]

thanks amanda!

[The Franchise King]

Sital,

Great list. I'd like to add one which I heard during a live presentation online from @JasonFried, yesterday, @37Signals...

Job seekers;

Spend some time crafting some really powerful, and very personal,cover letters. Jason said that he ONLY looks at those. Not resumes.

Interesting.

The Franchise King®
@FranchiseKing

[gerry]

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[Sital]

@FranchiseKing

thanks for commenting. My personal experience and opinion is that cover letters are over rated. I explained why in a previous post:

Why Cover Letters Are Overrated
http://www.careerhubblog.com/main/2009/11/why-cover-letters-are-overrated.html

(and have a read of comments section below the article!)

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