If your job search is going perfectly, then this article isn’t for you.
No, really.
Choose a different article. Or close this tab.
But don’t stick around and waste your time — because this article can only make your job search better. And if it’s already going perfectly well…well, there’d just be no point.
Ok? Great, goodbye!
…
Phew! Now that they’re gone, you and I can get down to business!
The truth is, most people would love to speed up their job search. And the secret truth is: you can!
With just a few basic precepts in mind, you can bolster your efforts substantially. Here are 4 ways you can fast forward your job search today!
- Renew your resume
The best advice is often the most obvious. But you’d be surprised how many people still need to hear basic tips like this:
If your resume is out of date, then UPDATE IT.
When networking with professionals to help secure yourself a position, there are always going to be things outside your control. People will lose your business card. Someone else will get the job this time. Traffic will make you late to an interview.
But your resume is 100% entirely an element within your control. So if you want to do your utmost to take back control of your job search, start with what’s already in your domain.
Not having a recent resume ready to go at a moment’s notice whenever opportunity strikes is like going to war without a weapon.
- Use your resume to show value
As long as you have your resume out, let’s talk about how you should be using it.
So besides having your latest and greatest work experiences included, you need to explain why your experience should matter to an employer.
For starters, if it’s not relevant, it doesn’t help your resume get seen. Recruiters nowadays have access to tools that filter out irrelevant resumes by comparing your text to what’s written in the job description.
That means in order to be seen, you have to align with their verbiage.
It also means that recruiters aren’t concerned with reading through a list of your features (since you’ve already passed that phase). They just want to know about the benefits you’ll bring. So, when writing your resume, speak to the value you have added to employers in the past.
Don’t just say you were a salesperson. Tell them you helped increase gross profits by 3% from your sales alone.
Don’t just say you were a quality assurance rep. Tell them how the company saved $200,000 annually by having fewer product returns while you held your position.
Don’t just say you did something. Tell them how you could be doing something to help them.
- Stop making it about you
This advice is twofold.
FIRST, learn to let go of the things outside your control (remember the things we were talking about earlier?), because your job search is affected by your outlook. And when you let every negative thing affect you, your outlook is going to be pretty negative too.
It’s a bad cycle, where you get bad news, so you feel worse, so you do worse, so you keep getting bad news…
Learn that the world isn’t out to get you. And while you might be the central character of this article and your job search — you are not the central character of the planet. Which leads us to the next point…
SECOND, you should start acting like your potential employers are central to the plot. Ask yourself how you can help them, not just how they can help you. When your mindset shifts to helping others instead of just helping yourself, others will open up to you.
It’s a strange phenomenon where as soon as you stop making it about you, you’ll make it!
- Ground yourself with goals
Your goal isn’t just to “find a job”, is it?
Of course not! You need specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals. And you need to break down that overarching goal into smaller goals that fit those descriptions.
You don’t just want to find a job, you want to complete the applications for 5 jobs as a journalist in the employment services sector by the end of the week.
Or you want to give a link to your blog portfolio to 10 people by the end of the job fair.
Or you want to follow up today with the recruiters at the 3 copywriting firms you interviewed with last week.
Ok, ok. Those probably sound more like my goals than yours, but the point is: you have to give yourself targets you can hit. Which means a) knowing exactly where your target is, and b) having the ability to reach it.
Once you have a particular goal in mind, every aspect of your daily activities will, in some way or another, help move you towards it.
Conclusion
There, that wasn’t so hard was it? You just learned 4 ways to take your job search off pause, and put it in fast forward.
That’s 4 ways to put some spring in your step and help you create a career you can be proud of.
So now the only question left is why are you still reading? Once you put this advice into action, you’ll start turning yours into a perfect job search. And you know this article isn’t for people with a perfect job search.
So get out of here, and good luck!