The Unemployed Life
The Zen of Job Hunting
Desperately seeking employment? Spending hours on job sites, with not an offer in sight?
“Give up,” writes Peter Bregman over at HarvardBusiness.org. “Not completely. But mostly. Stop trying so hard.”
We’re totally on board with this idea. Yes, it’s a tough job market. Yes, it’s important to be looking after your career. But that doesn’t mean obsessing over your resume, growing pale and wan because you spend hours each day scouring the internet for openings.
You can get burnt out just as easily job hunting as you can on the job, generate tons of stress and waste acres of time that you could be using to network, explore other opportunities, or simply enjoy your life while you’ve got it. Indulge in your passions, or test out activities you’ve always wanted to try. Broaden your horizons–you never know what new doors will open as a result.
But back to job hunting. Bregman, C.E.O. of Bregman Partners, a global leadership development and change management firm, offers these rules:
- Write your resume quickly and efficiently. Get the basic point across and then let it go. Same with a cover letter. Your resumé is not going to get you a job. If you’re a company, the same holds true for your marketing materials. I’m sure they’re already good enough.
- Don’t spend time on job sites. It’s highly unlikely, with all the people who are looking, that someone will hire someone they don’t already know (or someone they know doesn’t already know). Same goes for companies: don’t respond to RFPs unless you already have the relationship.
- Spend all your hunting time with people: at lunch, on the phone, going for walks. Finding a job or new clients is all about human relationships.
And, he says, limit the search to two hours a day. Not only will you increase your chances of finding a job, you might enjoy the ride.
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6 comments for “The Zen of Job Hunting”
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Great post…I do agree with most, especially spending the majority of time networking rather than searching job sites all day. I do think a resume and cover letter are important (especially a cover letter) and I think the best job search is where you do a little bit of everything. Spend the majority of time networking but also dabble on some job sites or even social networks like Facebook or Twitter.
Thanks for the post!
Good point. It seems like people have had some success with LinkedIn, too. Throughout my career–and especially now–most of the best job leads I’ve gotten have come from personal referrals. The resume was important, but still secondary. And cover letters have been almost irrelevant.
I think a good way to avoid having to give up is to use the power of small. Stop yourself from getting overwhelmed. Break your giant to do list down into “minitasks” that can actually be accomplished in one day.
I agree. Fast Company had a nice story on this a few months ago–about how starting with really, really small tasks can help when you feel overwhelmed. I think they called it setting “whisker goals.”
[...] From Recession Wire: The Zen of Job Hunting “Yes, it’s a tough job market. Yes, it’s important to be looking after your career. But that doesn’t mean obsessing over your resume, growing pale and wan because you spend hours each day scouring the internet for openings.” [...]
I found that there are a couple of things that really increase the chances of getting a job, even now with an economic recession the basic rules still apply.
* Use Titles or Headings That Match The Jobs You Want
* Use Design That Grabs Attention
* Medium Size Resume and The Use Power Words
* Identify and Solve Employer’s Hidden Needs
* Sell the Benefits of Your Skills – it should be pretty obvious for the employer why not hiring you would be a loss for their company