Are you job hunting? Do you have a game plan? Or are you shooting in the dark, almost literally?
A job search is almost as important as a love partner search. What are the decisions you must make? You will need to decide what area of the economy you plan to target - and in what potential roles you could find a great fit. Working with a skilled and thoughtful career counsellor might well be worth the investment as there are many issues to think through and to work through.
So, what are these things you must knuckle down and do for a professional job search in 2021?
- Tell your friends and contacts that you are looking for work and be on the watch for you for certain kinds of positions.
- Immediately get your resume updated and in top form - and an adaptable format for you will still need to apply an ATS scan and work in the missing key words for each position that you apply for. Having that adaptable resume format will save you time, making it possible to render your magic in that format to target each particular position you apply to.
- Get your Linkedin updated.
- Be sure your photo is professional, with a relaxed smile - a headshot.
- Use your backdrop space intelligently, using that real estate to develop your brand. What is your brand? This is what you want to develop with all elements: resume, cover letter, Linkedin.
- Learn how to effectively use Linkedin as a marketing tool. You are marketing you.
- Learn how to effectively use an ATS system. This is critical: you must know how to use it and effectively apply the ATS-detected missing key words.
- Target the places you want to work.
- Try to link to people in those organizations to be sure it is a good place to work and to find out if any openings are coming up.
- But it is in your daily selfcare that you will find that it is most important to support all these above steps. If you are working as you apply, you will not be perhaps as stressed, but you will become exhausted. It is best to have clear objectives, either way, employed or unemployed.
- Celebrate your gains - no matter how small. Celebrate your interview(s), even if a job does not emerge from one - interviews are good as they are learning opportunities.
- Record them if remote, and if not remote, ask if you can record it: you will learn from this and be sure you listen afterwards to that interview and critique yourself. Be objective. What was good? What was excellent? What was not so …good? Why was it good - why was it not so good? Be specific.
The secret to knuckling down is to take the time and energy to think through a strategy, but keep that strategy adaptable, flexible, and check in on your strategy regularly. Should you be changing anything you are doing? If you are not making progress, maybe you do need a consultation with a career counsellor or a resume specialist. Opportunities can come up suddenly. Be ready.
