Today while facilitating a monthly Netshare meeting in New York City, one of the participants mentioned the fact that one of the difficulties in job search is that there is often no way to gauge daily success and job seekers often wonder if they are being productive and conducting their search in the most efficient manner.
In order to feel productive and not wonder if you are simply “spinning your wheels” I recommend setting daily and weekly goals for your campaign. These goals will help you remain focused and motivated and will help you realize the small successes that can eventually lead to a larger success in conjunction with your job search. Here are some examples of weekly goals.
- Set up at least 2 networking meetings
- Research 10 target companies
- Follow up on 10 cold calls made the week before
- Search for and follow up on 10 potential contacts on LinkedIn
- Offer at least one hour of your time in a volunteer capacity
- Attend at least one professional networking event
- Attend at least one social networking event
- Spend one hour per week monitoring aggregate and niche job boards
- Complete one marketing document (i.e. resume, bio, personal marketing plan)
- Do at least one non job search activity that is just for you
Keep track of daily and weekly progress either by keeping a journal or using a job search contact and information management tool such as Jibber Jobber. This strategy will help you monitor progress on each activity, make decisions about what is working and what is not, and uncover where you need to spend more or less time.
View looking for your job as your full time job for now and plan to spend 35 hours per week working your search. Stay focused on your activity list and hold yourself accountable for its completion. Partner with someone else in search if you think you need someone to keep you on track and give you a gentle nudge.
If you are consistently incorporating these types of tasks into your search campaign, you are making progress towards your end goal. It is the consistency of the activities that often leads to the opened door, finding the needle in the haystack job spec, or reconnecting with the colleague you thought you would never hear from again. And if you need affirmation that you are on the right track, find a local job search support group to hear what others are doing and share new ideas and best practices.