What Color Is Your Parachute? (38 page)

Expand what you’ve learned in this book about effective job-search techniques by reading other good job-search books and consulting online resources. (See the resources sections at the end of preceding chapters.) Talk with successful job hunters and ask what worked for them. Find a support group for job hunters. Your local employment office may sponsor one; some churches do, as well.

4. Ignoring What Others Have Learned

People who succeed in job hunting talk with other successful job hunters. As we suggested in the discussion of mistake #3, it’s important to talk with people who have succeeded in finding a job they love. Learn from people who are job-hunting masters.

I received an email from someone whose most recent job was in microelectronics. He wanted another job in that industry. It took him fourteen hundred inquiries to get the message that the jobs he wanted have almost completely been moved to Asia. If you make ten inquiries and everyone says no one’s hiring, expand your geographic boundaries, or change your target field.

—MARTY NEMKO, career coach and author of
Cool Careers for Dummies

Ask family members, friends, teachers, and others in your personal and professional networks to help you find successful job hunters. Talk to at least four people who have found a job that they like in the last six months. Use every technique that worked for them. If necessary, modify the techniques to fit the job you seek.

Job-search
mentors can also be very helpful. You need more than one person’s point of view for good perspective, so ask two to four people to mentor you through your job hunt. If you know some people who you think are pretty sharp, ask them whether they’d be willing to meet with you once a month to advise you. Each time you meet, update them on what you’ve done and ask for their ideas on how to improve.

5. Playing at Job Hunting

Successful job hunters treat the job hunt as a job, not as a game. Think of yourself as having a full-time job (without pay) every weekday. By 9 a.m. each weekday, be showered, groomed, and dressed in business casual. If you aren’t sure how to dress, visit the places you want to work and see how people are dressed. Then select clothing one notch more formal. If you’re dressed for work, you can be out the door quickly if someone says, “I can see you now.” Job hunters who have great success at getting hiring interviews report that they spend five to eight hours a day in job-search activities such as creating an overall job-search strategy, reviewing skills and experience relevant to the work desired, identifying job targets, making contacts, reading articles on job-search techniques, doing Internet research, setting up interviews, and writing thank-you notes.

6. Being Financially Unprepared

Successful job hunters assess their financial situation realistically—unsuccessful job hunters don’t. Most likely, your job search will last between five and twenty weeks, even if you work at it full-time. Prepare yourself mentally and financially for your job hunt. Assume it will last a lot longer than you think it will. Ask yourself these questions:

• Given the money in my pocket, bank account, savings, piggy bank, or other sources, how long can I afford to live without having a job?

• Can I get help with buying interview clothes or paying for transportation costs, voicemail, and internet access?

• Am I eligible for any assistance from public agencies or nonprofit organizations in my area?

• Am I living at home or can I move back home?

• What support can my parents provide? (Ask how long they’re willing to support you while you look for a job. Don’t assume their financial support will go on indefinitely.)

• Can I lower my expenses? (Thoroughly assess your financial resources and put the brakes on unnecessary spending.)

• Can I move to a less expensive place?

• Can I earn part of my rent in exchange for doing chores or maintenance?

7. Giving Up Too Easily and Too Soon

Successful job hunters are persistent. Various studies on job hunting indicate that one-third of all job hunters give up during the first two months of their job hunt. They give up because they thought job hunting would be simple, quick, and easy. (In times when the nation’s economy isn’t doing well, job-search experts estimate that job hunters will make about two hundred contacts before finding a job.)

Many employers eliminate job hunters from consideration for jobs based on their job-search behavior—particularly any lack of initiative and persistence—so keep going until you find a job. Here are some examples of being persistent.

• Sending an email resume, then sending a resume by mail, then following up a few days later with a phone call.

• Being willing to go back to places that interest you to see whether by any chance their “no vacancy” or initial lack of interest in you has changed.

• Asking yourself, “What businesses need someone with my skills or knowledge?” until you find one that wants to hire you.

• Making the fourth, fifth, or sixth phone call to find someone who knows the people who have the power to hire at the places where you want to work.

8. Having Only One Job Target

Successful job hunters have more than one job target. They are well aware that in this rapidly changing world, jobs do vanish. Therefore, use your interests, experience, values, best skills, and whatever else is important to you in a job to identify three or four other lines of work you can do, and would enjoy doing. Never put all your eggs in one basket.

Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.

—CONAN O’BRIEN

Be open to new possibilities. Don’t label yourself so that you think there’s only one thing you can do. Don’t define yourself in terms of your current or former job title. You are not a fast-food worker, a retail salesperson, or an army vet. Define yourself in terms of the skills you have—what you know and what you can do.

Ironically, defining yourself—and your job hunt—too broadly can be just as detrimental as defining yourself and the job you’re looking for too narrowly. Don’t tell others you’re looking for “anything.” Be specific about the jobs you want.

9. Limiting Your Job Search to What’s “Out There”

Successful job hunters go after the jobs they want the most, even if those jobs aren’t advertised. You can do that too. Remember, you’ll be more likely to find something you want if you look for something you want. (Review Steps to Your Dream Job in
chapter 9
.)

10. Thinking You Must Do This All By Yourself

PARACHUTE TIP

Find a job-search buddy. Do you (or anyone in your personal or professional network) know of someone who is looking for work? You’ll be more persistent, get more support, uncover more leads, and even have more fun if you job-hunt with a friend.