Job Hunting
Jobs today are temporary. You don't know how long your job is going to last. Thirty years ago, before the onslaught of downsizing and such, you could count on spending your working life at the same job. Change is happening so rapidly that you've got to pay close attention and learn. You must find job satisfaction in the work itself. Your self-esteem must come from doing the work rather than from some hoped for promotion, pay raise or other reward—which may never materialize. Fortunately, that dim outlook is not universally true: Some organizations appreciate, praise and celebrate their employees, but not as many as there once were—especially not when an organization has more than 50 employees.
Also, forget about what people say about the economy. If the economy is bad and you have a job, then technically the economy is good for you. If the economy is good but you don't have a job then the economy is bad.
Job hunting is a job in itself. Dr. Phil (Phillip McGraw from Daytime TV) says if you are unemployed and need a job you should spend as much time looking for a job as you would spend working if you had a job. In most cases that would translate to eight hours a day five days a week.
Almost every one of us is out of work at some time and not just once. The average person is out of work four to eight times in their lives. Other than "giving up and waiting for God to prove He loves you," there are certain things you can do when you are out of work.
Most people don’t know what they really, really want to do. That’s partly because we are conditioned from an early age to aspire to what those around us—parents, teachers, peers, the media—define as a good job or career and partly because most of us never take the time really to get to know our own talents and desires.
It is impossible to find a job if you don't know what you want to do. It is the first question you will be asked when you say that you are job hunting. If you don't have a good answer, people will be unable to effectively help you (and they may wonder how seriously you are looking for a job). We spend fully 1/3 of our lives at work. Shouldn’t we put more effort into finding something that we can do that we enjoy?
We each are an individual blend of unique gifts, talents and passions. Combining those together we should be able to find a career that is perfect for just us. The fact is—doing that is a lot of work and most of us do a good job of avoiding work. Thus we end up taking careers that we chose in college because the classes looked interesting.
Finding the right livelihood is a matter of pairing your interests with skills you have acquired in something you have a passion for in a way that generates income for you.
Work should first and foremost be viewed as a vehicle of self-expression. Something we do to express our individuality. Not something we do just to derive an income. The right career is something you can look forward to doing each and every day for the rest of your life. It helps you combine your vocation with your interests.
The first step in finding a job is to write a resume or prepare to complete a job application. Depending on the type of job you are searching for, you will need a resume, CV (curriculum vitae) and a cover letter or you will need to complete an application for employment.
In most cases, you will need a resume to apply for full-time, professional job opportunities. If you are seeking a part-time job or work in a career field like hospitality or retail, for example, you will complete an application for employment.
The next step in finding a job is to find employment opportunities to apply to. While using employment agencies is one of the most popular ways there are numerous other methods to finding a job. The most effective ways include:
- Doing what is called “the creative approach to job-hunting or career-change.” This includes doing homework on yourself to figure out what your favorite and best skills are; then doing face-to-face interviewing for information only, at organizations in your field; followed up by using your personal contacts to get in to see, at each organization that you have interest in, the person who actually has the power to hire you (not necessarily the human resources department).
- Using the phone book’s Yellow Pages to identify fields that interest you, then calling employers in those fields to see if they are hiring for the kind of work you can do.
- Knocking on the door of any employer, factory or office that interests you, whether they are known to have a vacancy or not.
- Asking family members, friends, teachers or professionals you know for job leads.
- Taking a Civil Service exam.
- Job Fairs.
- Answering local ads.
- Answering ads in professional or trade journals appropriate to your field.
- Mailing out resumes to employers at random.
- Using the Internet to look for job postings or to post one’s own resume.
The job hunt requires four families of skills: self-assessment skills, detective skills, communication skills and skills for selling ourselves.
During good economic times, job seekers may stick to the strategies that require the least work: resumes, agencies and ads or job postings.
But during hard times, or if the easier ways don’t work, people who are good at job hunting change their strategy and pursue job hunting methods that require a lot more work. They spend lots of time doing homework on themselves, researching organizations in detail, doing informational interviewing, building their contacts, and other methods that require work.
People who are good at job-hunting always have alternatives up their sleeve (a Plan B if Plan A doesn’t work out). They can name their individual skills, not just job titles they have held. They target small organizations in addition to large ones and instead of just going after vacancies, they go after any place that interests them.
