Restarting Your Job Search When All Else Fails – Vol 1

“If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance.” – Andrea Boydston

I remember really early in my career (probably before most of you were out of diapers) when we were living in the modern world of IBM XTs (with an Intel 8088 processor at 4.77 MHz, a hard drive of 10MB and 640kb of memory) and Lotus 1-2-3. Spreadsheets were taking off, replacing all of that green ledger paper and handwritten analysis. You would spend hours building your spreadsheet (no tabs in those days) and every once in a while you would display your masterpiece (which showed profit growing by 600%!) to your boss only to find out that there were major formula errors. And you know what that meant? Yes, you would need to start over. All of that hard work down the drain (not to mention the impact on your ego). Sometimes job search is much the same. You spent countless hours building your resume, gathering contacts, calling friends and posting your resume only to find out your resume is a disaster and you need to start over. So while that is the last thing that many of us want to do, sometimes you just don’t have a choice. But not to worry, the next product will be far superior to the previous version. You know what they say – “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”.

• Change The Pattern For Your Work And Life – Sometimes timing is everything. While I started writing my post several days ago and decided to finish today, this article appeared in my inbox (perfect timing) today. Posted on Timsstrategy.com (I’m a regular reader and you should be too), it perfectly matches today’s topic. Take a read, it is worth the time.

The best place to start is always the beginning, and my view is making a list of what needs to be done is the best place to start:

• Research – You need to decide what you want to do when you grow up. If you already know this, great. If not, time to get started thinking about it. In either case you will need to do some research.
  • Fins.com -  This  resource is from the Wall Street Journal and provides links to a number of company research resources. You should spend some time researching the companies you would like to work for prior to starting your search. Click on Research Sectors & Companies to find the industries and companies you would like to work for. Click Manage Your Career to get strategies on finding a job, get the job and excel at the job. Finally, click Find a Great Job to link to a powerful job search engine.
  • Careers and Industries – Don’t know where to begin? Wetfeet.com provides two lists:  Industry Profiles and Careers. The first provides background on trends, markets and the companies involved. The second list provides requirements for each career type as well as salary trends the the outlook for that particular career choice. Each item on the items links to a full page resource.

• Making a Plan:
  • Find a Job: Create a job search plan – This is a great article (provided by the U.S. Department of Labor – Careeronestop) for making your job search plan. There is a general overview with some some pointers, followed by a day by day (for 5 days) list of what you should do. Additionally there are a number of great links both, on the left hand side of the page as well as links on top of the page.
  • Job Search Checklist – This article from quintcareers.com provides an excellent guide for developing a plan of attack.The article has 5 parts with quite a few links, but the very first section (Part 1) focuses on planning and preparation with 10 or so points (understand the process, understand the jobs that interest you, creating your list and more).

Good luck in your search.

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Related posts:

1. Hired Help – Job Search Made Easy
2. 5 Steps to Making a Fresh Start for Job Search
3. Top Picks for Job Search – Companies on “The List”
4. Reinvent Your Career and Job Search – Part 2
5. 5 Reasons Why You Need More Than a Good Resume to Stand Out from the Crowd