Fixing two of my mistakes = Less Job Search Frustration

Greetings and welcome to what is hopefully the first of many posts on job search from a candidate’s perspective. My thanks to Jason Barrett for the invite!

A quick background, I have been in job transition twice and have run a job transition group since April 2007 – which has led to 600+ networking contacts related to job search and creating the site www.candidateschair.com to share tools and advice. (The site also landed me my current job!)

I made loads of mistakes in my search, so let’s start with two that once I corrected helped me really reduce the frustration in my job search.

Having proper expectations for a job search:
A job search is making a sale. You are the product. So think, act and expect to be treated like a sales person. You need to work hard to get a meeting, harder to get them to move forward and even harder to make a close. So expect to hear ‘no’ more often than ‘yes’. Even the best salespeople (or rainmakers) hear ‘no’, but they expect it and keep on knocking on the next door. If you always expect to hear ‘yes’, then it’s hard to keep going. Don’t take a ‘no’ personally, it’s hard not to, but not everyone is a fit for every role.

Make a plan with a purpose:
There are plans for activity and plans which focus on getting you in front of the hiring manager. You want the latter.

I could easily fill my day with search activities. However, activity does not equal progress. Each step should be moving you closer to meeting and influencing the hiring manager. Even after you apply, the work still needs to continue on researching the firm, getting prepped to interview, etc.
The best rainmakers make the best plans – and they adjust their plans after each experience to get better.

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We’ve just started the journey – loads more to share. I will be posting some tools on the TwitJobs site.

Best regards,

Mark Richards
www.candidateschair.com


http://TwitJobs.co.uk - Jobs Fed Into Your Life