Tips for Your Job Search

Searching for a new role is a challenge. There are no two ways about that. It is a full-time job that requires diligence and follow-through. While difficult, it is certainly not impossible. What feels insurmountable at the start may end up looking more like a molehill once you've successfully finished your journey. This article is my attempt to pay-forward the lessons I've gleaned from my own experiencing hunting for that next great role. I hope it helps you!

1. Cardio

   It is essential to take care of yourself. This tip is only adjacently about exercise and more about stress-management. If you get in better shape, that's an added bonus. Hunting for a new career can be very stressful. This 2024 article from Forbes highlights a study claiming 72% of people felt their recent job search harmed their mental health. That is a staggering, and yet very believable statistic. Judiciously submitting resumes and follow-ups each day, every day, can start to feel a little mind-numbing sometimes, right? That, combined with the latent stresses inherent to any job search, and your mental well-being and energy begin to pay the toll. So what do you do? Well you keep going, of course! You have it in you! But it is very important to recharge. For my part, these days I recharge by running each morning. The advice may sound a bit tired. After all, who hasn't already heard that working-out makes you feel better? Don't take my word for it. This article from ZIPrecruiter argues that regular exercise is essential to a job search as it reduces stress, increases productivity, and of course it boosts your confidence. I also want to take a moment to highlight this very well-written LinkedIn post by Carina Hellmich on the root causes of job search stress, and some healthy observations on how to stay positive and motivated.
   

   
   

2. Be Easy to Find

   Briefly imagine yourself a product or a service. You ARE the company, in this scenario. How do people find you? How do they hear about you? Where do people go to learn about you? This is the mentality I advise when searching for a job. You ARE the brand, and people need to be able to find and connect with you. They want to learn about your experience, your skills, and your motivations. So how do they do that? My best advice is to have at least a basic presence everywhere you can, while focusing the core of your efforts where you see the most engagement. Simple, right? Build a list the major job search boards and create a profile on each. Bookmark these all in a folder, and when you make major changes to your resume, push those updates to your job board profiles as well. Considering that some recruiters may choose to specialize in sourcing their candidates from one particular platform or another, you will have generally boosted your visibility to a larger pool of recruiters and opportunities. The risk you run here, of course, is spreading yourself too thin. Being actively engaged with a dozen different job search platforms each day is unrealistic. Once you've built a basic profile on a list of sites, determine which are the most likely to yield results. Look for recruiting organizations that specialize in placing people with your skillset, and maintain updated profiles on their sites. After ensuring you can at least be found on the major job boards, focus your daily engagement activities like blogging, sharing, or commenting to the platform that responds the most. In my personal experience, while I do maintain a job search profile on many sites, I focus most of my daily effort on Linkedin and recruiting organizations that specialize in placing digital marketing roles.
   

3. Get A Password Manager

   This may sound a bit random but I cannot stress this one enough. If you currently use a password manager then you already know what I'm talking about. A solid password management solution can make your job search (and digital experiences in general) much smoother and more pleasant to navigate. Here is why it can be particularly helpful to your job search. According to NordPass, the average person today maintains about 90-ish different logins to the various digital services with which they engage. Now, think of that average person conducting a job search. Think of every application they file. Every job board where they build a profile. Every recruiting website listing their candidacy. These all have their own seperate logins. How does one keep track of all of these different logins while keeping passwords sufficiently random? Some might choose to write them all down, or keep them in an Excel sheet. I choose to use a password manager. By saving all my logins to my PM, I only have to remember one master password. When I return to a job board or recruiting site, the PM automatically loads my login info, and presto, I'm in! No more endless crawling through notes when I have to log back in to a recruiters website. It may sound trivial, but I assert that using a password manager can save hours upon hours throughout the length of a typical job search, not to mention improve the general security of your online accounts. Wary about the security of sharing your logins with a Password Manager program? It is important to do your research. This article in Cybernews does a great job of explaining how password managers function and keep your logins secure.
   

4. Work Your Network!

   Remember that you are never alone. In all likelihood, you have a friend or distant connection that knows of a job opening somewhere, right this very moment. Your friends companies might be hiring. Your friends may know recruiters. Your connections themselves may even be starting their own businesses and staffing up! There is only one way to find out. You must ask! It is essential to put oneself out there, so to speak. Maybe you choose Linkedin, or TikTok, or another platform. Announce who you are and what you're looking for. Share that you are investing in your own success, and you will see a response. There are people out there who want to meet you. They want to speak with you. They want to hear your ideas. But you must make the first move and reach out first. This article from Indeed contains a solid list of tactics for tapping into your network during a job search. Thanks for checking out my blog. I hope you found the advice here helpful. If you'd like to connect, reach out to me directly on the Contact page.