8 Tips for Job Seekers

8 Tips for Job Seekers 

1. Job search is a serious process requiring structure and discipline. These are essential. Set targets for # of calls per day, face-to-face zoom meetings, return emails and revise your targets upwards as you hit your stride. Get competitive with yourself.  Have a pre-emptive, risk management mindset: minimize the risk of things NOT going your way. 
2. Be open.  Help comes from the places you least expect.  Do not stay home, do not isolate. 
3. Talk to everyone and I mean everyone: leave no stone unturned. 
4. Talk to folks that you do not know well or are not sure if they like you or remember you. My most recent search took me over 1,200 outreaches via email, phone, zoom, facetime, calls and large events.  My average hours spent per week were usually 45-60 hours over 6-7 days.  Be flexible to everyone’s availability to make it happen.  Be brave, go out on that limb, and assume it will be a better conversation than you expected and usually, you will be right.  And don’t forget to say THANK YOU and mean it. 
5. Make as many new friends as possible,  ASK FOR HELP from as many people as possible. Rely on your new friends who are in the same job search boat. They will help you keep your perspective and stay positive. In my case, people had ideas I never could have come up with on my own.  Help them help you by asking for what you need. 
6. Ask everyone what worked and didn’t work.  Revisit original advice givers as you refine your own approach.  Consider creating or resurrecting your personal board of advisors. 
7. Don't waste time being timid. Don't waste time, period.  Be radically efficient. 
8. Read anything Marshall Goldsmith, Never Eat Alone, 90-Day Plan book and Bring A Dead Mouse to shape your thinking and prep for interviews. Always have “dead mice” ready for the giving.  Have several solid SOAR stories to show the different things you have handled and a specific 90-day plan ready for any interviews – this saved me. 
9. PRACTICE BEING CAMERA READY.  Get in as many 1-1s as possible especially via “Zoom” type platforms - many interviews are done this way, especially today with COVID related restrictions, and it is a great way practice for refining your SOAR stories and pitch to different audiences.  Start every 1-1 with: “Just checking, can you see and hear me OK?”.  I wasted half of an hour-long interview assuming the guy could see me.  Avert those crises pre-emptively. 
10. On interviews, be in listen mode. Get as much from what they say so that you can address concerns specifically.
11. Don't ever neglect your network.

All the best,

Keith Bogen, SPHR/SHRM-SCP/MS/MA

www.LinkedIn.com/in/KeithBogen

Chief Networking Officer - Whine & Dine Networking LLC

www.whineanddine.org