Don’t Start a Job Search by Applying for Jobs

Once you’ve decided you’re searching – or maybe it was decided for you – I don’t think the best place to start is to apply for jobs. It may feel like the right thing to do, to get on the horse if you’ve fallen off, but this is not a leisurely ride on a nature path. This is a path where you spend most of your waking hours. This is a path where the core of you – your craft– is expressed, and if it’s not, you begin to feel uneasy or restless. This is a path where you are rewarded for getting as close as you can to finding work that is fun and easy because it matches your best skills.

If you want to apply for a job online for research, there’s no harm in that. Maybe you want to practice aligning your resume and a cover letter to the job requirements. Maybe you want to see how the company responds to applicants who don’t make it through to interviews. Or maybe you want to see if they’ll respond if you are an exact match to every qualification listed.

If you’re employed, see below for your first step. If you find your self suddenly unemployed, there are several first steps to take to ensure your basic needs are met while you search:

• Take time to process the anger, judgments, sadness or other emotions that arise. If you were to meet with an important contact and all that comes out are these emotions, you will not be effective. Give yourself time, talk it out, and journal. Pray and/or meditate or whatever else you do for calmness and comfort.
• Evaluate your financial picture. Do what you can to relieve it. Unemployment benefits are not enough to cover your old spending habits, so make new ones. Sell some stuff. Cut off cable TV or other services. Rent a room. Do odd jobs, for neighbors or online. Once your finances are streamlined, you’ll eliminate thoughts of worry, and have the mental capacity to move forward on your job search.
• Evaluate your daily routines. Develop time blocks for job research, networking meetings, one-on-one coffee meetings, self-care, relaxation, and restoration time away from job search and the house.
• Find an accountability partner. This is SO important. Not that you wouldn’t do the tasks by yourself, but find someone to brainstorm with, share research with, and to share support in the common goal of job search. Otherwise, you might end up feeling like your efforts are just efforts that go unseen. Your partner will see them, give you constructive feedback, and be a listening ear!
• Volunteer. If you’re not already volunteering, immediately begin pro-bono work in your field or volunteer for a cause or charity to avoid gaps in your resume. There are other good reasons, too. A few include: helping a good cause, getting out of the house, keeping your professional “juices” flowing, learning new skills, and networking.

Now you are ready for the next step. Whether unemployed (and having done all your prep tasks) or employed, take the step of evaluation, even before you begin updating your resume or LinkedIn profile.

What’s going right in your career? What do you always wish you could do? What could be better? How did you turn ordeals around in your favor? Clarity at the beginning will flow through each step and make them much easier. Strengthening a vision for yourself will carry you through each rejection and dead-end.

Review your accomplishments, your skills, your strengths, and your desires. Make some lists of what you’re good at. Read job trends and research job titles and descriptions at Indeed or LinkedIn to help clarify where you want to go next.
Here are some more ideas:

• You are not a bundle of tasks. You are a unique perspective that gets those tasks done, smarter, faster, in 99% quality, in your people-focus, etc. So write out tasks you do, but then next to them write out why you’re good at them.
• Look up articles in your industry or field for the types of jobs you’ve done. What are the top skills required there? Do you have those? Write a list of them and the ones you want to strengthen.
• If you haven’t already, take the Strengthsfinder test, now called CliftonStrengths. Go to their site and pay a small fee to learn your top five strengths and receive an assessment of those strengths. (I am not affiliated with them.) Contemplate how you’ve used your strengths and how you can leverage them in your next position.
• Another assessment, which can be found for free, is the Myers-Briggs personality test. Review your four aspects and note your natural tendencies. Again, think about how you can leverage those in a position. You can find resources about the 16 types and what kinds of jobs fit them. One I like matches the Jungian archetype to the 16 types. It’s a small ebook called “Jungian 16 Types Personality Test: Find Your 4 Letter Archetype to Guide your Work, Relationships, and Success” by Richard N. Stephenson.
• A valuable resource to create for networking and interviewing will be a collection of your “SAR” stories. SARs are descriptions of your Situation, Actions, and Results. Write up a few of those, with the situation or challenge you faced, the action you took and why, and the outcome.
• Meet with people and ask questions about your interests, their skills, and their perspective. Professionals love answering questions about a passion-filled career. People close to you might have a perspective about you with special phrasing you wouldn’t have thought.

When you write your marketing pieces after researching and writing the above, you’ll be able to easily add more clarity, benefits, and value statements to the descriptions on your resume, cover letters, LinkedIn profile, networking communications, and elevator pitch. When you finish your evaluation, reward yourself with something fun!

In great craftsmanship, the practice is “measure twice and cut once.” In great career searches, the practice is similar. Be clear, double clear, on your unique perspective before beginning your search campaign. You’ll create leverage and be able to “cut” through the distractions of general job search with specific contacts, organizations, job leads, and next steps befitting of your craft.