job.search@2009 – The Mindset, The Hunt

Once you have focused some time and energy on Building A Professional Internet Presence and developing your resume, you have a foundation for your search.  Now it is important to prepare yourself for The Hunt.  To do this, you should examine your mindset.

Look at your job search as an opportunity
We have all had jobs that were just that – jobs.  They were ways to bring home money, but they were not really what we wanted to do with our lives.  Even so, we show up, work hard, earn a paycheck, and wait for the weekend to arrive so that we can get together with friends and grumble about how much work sucks.

If you are on The Hunt, you have the opportunity to change that.  First of all, think back to your childhood when grown-ups asked that age old question: What do you want to be when you grow up?  How did you answer then?  How is your answer different now?  What are you passions?  Your goals?  Once you have thought of these answers, then the next step is to ensure that you are prepared to move in that direction.  My challenge to you is to identify your career and move yourself in the direction that will allow you to realize that very position.  Find a way to be financially compensated for something that you love to do so much that you would be willing to do it for free. 

Sight In Your Target.
Identify the companies that hire people to do the type of job that you are looking for.  This might seem like a no-brainer, but it is an important step (this step also ties back to the topic of Building A Strong Professional Internet Presence – once you have identified the companies, find out where their executives blog on the Internet.  Interact with them: Post blogs, respond to blogs, ask questions.  Get your name and your ideas out there).  Target these companies for openings.  Submit your resume for available positions.

It is important to note that I did not suggest that you make a pest out of yourself.  It is not OK to directly follow up with them every day, every week.  If you have done it correctly, they will know who you are.  The goal in setting yourself up with a solid public foundation is to get them to want to work with you, to wantto hire you.  No one wants to hire the guy who is jumping up and down waving his arms and shouting ‘Hire me! Hire Me!”  There are better ways to ask for the job.

No, the idea here is to simply make the companies aware of you, not annoyed by you.

Be Willing To Do Whatever It Takes
There are all kinds of avenues available for job seekers.  Some are no longer terribly effective – monster.com, dice.com, job fairs.  There are thousands - no, hundreds of thousands – of people using these avenues.

They might not be highly effective, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use them.  In fact, you have to use them.  The idea is that you have to use any and all available means available to you in order to hunt down employment.  You might be one of the lucky few who make their way through the unfortunate recruiters who have no positions to fill and the countless parasites who sell garbage work-from-home-just-buy-our-useless-training-software-first offers, you might find a job using one of these avenues.

But don’t bank on it.  Use your growing network (Building a Strong Personal Internet Presence) to hunt down opportunities.  Network with other job-seekers.  They might interview for a position that they are not qualified for but know that you are!  Send via snail mail (or even hand-deliver) your resume to companies that you would like to work for.

Looking for a job isa full time job.  Perhaps you are receiving unemployment, perhaps you are receiving a severance package.  That does not mean that you can relax.  It takes 8-12 hours per day of dedicated searching to find a position.  The quality of the position that you find will be directly proportional to the effort that you put into your search. 

Be Prepared for Rejection
It happens.  You will receive lot’s of letters of regret before you get a position.  That is ok.  You have to dig through the No’s to find that one Yes.  Remember your odds – 1 in 73.  That means that you may have to interview with 73 companies before you get hired.  That could take a while, so what are you waiting for?  Stop wasting time reading this!  Go get started building your professional Internet presence, understanding the job market, writing your resume, and get into the job hunt mindset!

Hard Work Always Pays Off!

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