Below are some thoughts on best practices surrounding your upcoming job search. You may already be doing some of this, some of it may be new- but i assure you- it’s time tested and it works. Change the way you are looking for a job, focus on where you WANT to end up and you will find yourself there, if you follow these tips.
Good Luck, stay in touch and please let us know how things are going.
Once you have your target list of places you believe are a good fit for you, let us know and we will let you know if we have direct ties to those organizations.
- Spend 85% of your time on networking, building your LinkedIn network and going to professional organization meetings in your area- that is where you will find your next job
- Ask the organizers of each Professional Organization (local chapter) to introduce you around to members who are particularly active in the community.
- Spend ONLY 15% of your time online looking for a job (i.e., on Indeed or Monster, etc)
- Create a spreadsheet after doing your homework on companies you want to work for (don’t worry about who is hiring) and track 10-20 companies. The columns should include Contact, Phone Number, Website, Notes and Dates you called, etc. Track this actively and adjust priority on each depending on your interest level in each.
- Use Hoovers.com free version to determine who decision makers are in your target orgs and cross reference each on LinkedIn and hook up with them there.
- Never decline an invitation to connect on LinkedIn- it doesn’t matter who the person is, it matters who they know
- Contact at least ten local recruiters / executive search firms and meet with them once and stay in touch with them every two weeks.
- Use Indeed.com to start search agents to understand what is going on and get alerts on jobs and companies you want to target.
- Create a business card you can carry with you to meetings
- Use TweetDeck to monitor your target organization’s twitter feed and see what they are up to (it allows you to create endless columns where you can track each company individually)
- Join 50 groups on LinkedIn- you can then contact people directly who are in each group (though I recommend you just pick up the phone and say you found them on LI) and monitor the Jobs discussions in each group.
- Figure out which groups your decision makers are a part of on LI and join those groups
- Take an active part in one or two organizations – i.e., volunteer to be the Marketing Chair and you will meet a ton of people through organizing events or taking over membership
- Polite Persistence is key- use the phrase when you are calling people (decision makers) for the sixth time “Forgive my polite persistence but I am eager to chat with you about how I can make a difference for your organization…would you be open to a cup of coffee on the X of January…my treat?”
A note from our CEO:
Every week, seemingly almost every day, I get a request from a client or a friend or a friend’s friend to help them find a job. It’s a great feeling when people refer their friends to us. Most of the time, I can help. Unfortunately- a lot of the time- I simply don’t have the time to help every single person. As you can imagine, our client’s needs come first. That said- we try to help as best we can.
A lot of what I talk about when I do sit down with people is succinctly documented in this commencement speech given by Robert Krulwich (of NPR, CBS etc) last week. It’s a lot about checking your gut and listening to your heart- all things you’ve heard before- but have you really listened lately? You may say- I’m 38 (fill in the blank on your age)- so why the hell would I want to read a commencement speech? “Well”, I would say, “Because, a lot of people still don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, and as Robert says, “You can’t always name the thing you’re going to be”.
Great article if you hate your job, can’t decide on which fork in the road to take, if you are looking for a change, or if you just need to reconnect with who you might actually be.
It’s a longer article, so make a note to come back to it if you can’t read it now- but I promise, it’s well worth it.
Enjoy.
