Hack your Job Search
Get Your Best-Fit Job, Quickly
Get Your Best-Fit Job, Quickly
There are many interesting professionals in the world and many struggle with getting the right job. Some have been out of work for a month or more and have applied to every company in the market. They are often doing everything right — working through friends, following up and focusing, but things hadn’t worked out. (Want to skip ahead? Find a Sample Search Sheet Here)
Stop applying to more companies. Start following-up with the right companies. How to follow-up and push your application in the companies you have already applied to is an important step. This is one follow-up process that is simple but does take a lot of work.
The Process is 3-Steps: Think, Plan, Chase.
Think: This is often the hardest part. Even jobs which are not especially interesting or you feel you are not qualified for suddenly become appealing when you really need a job. Don’t let this control your choices. Think hard about what you are good at, what you have done before and where you enjoy doing.
Plan: After thinking about your strengths and accomplishments, narrow your focus to a maximum of three possible roles and three possible industries. Focus as much as you can. Then start planning. List out 20 companies from that industry and which you are pretty certain would need someone with your skill-set. Out of that list chose 5 companies which you really want to work for and 5 companies that you are not so keen on. The other ten will fall somewhere in-between.
Chase: Start with the bottom five and identify the senior managers who you would be reporting to if you got a job in that company using free tools like www.linkedin.com, www.facebook.com, and connect.data.com. Prepare a focused profile, CV or Resume and start calling. This is where the chase starts, call the companies, ask to speak to the managers and present your case. Don’t ask for a job. Try to get to know them, be polite and end by asking for their email and their help. The rest is follow-up.
The first five are practice, the in-between 10 companies are backups and the top-5 companies are there for when you are confident.
If you really want a job with that company you have to chase them until they refer you somewhere else or give you that job. You have to be polite and friendly. Never push; chase instead.
Help me improve this and comment on the original google document. A version of this was previously published to the internet via google docs in 2010.