Would you be upset if someone you knew contacted you to inform you of their job search and asked if you might be able to offer any advice or point her in the right direction? Of course you wouldn't. In fact, you might even be flattered. This is the same reaction that your personal and professional networking contacts will have. If you don't have frequent face-to-face contact with your network, the quickest way to jumpstart your search using networking is to send your resume and a brief letter to every single one of your contacts, and then follow up with a phone call a few days later. In most cases, people will be more than happy to help you out. But whether they are able to help you immediately or not, follow up with a brief handwritten thank you card. This is a gesture that will make a lasting positive impression.
4) Do your research; don't just blindly and indiscriminately send out your resume. Research the geographic and industry areas that interest you and identify the companies and opportunities that seem most promising and intriguing to you. With the vast quantities of information available on the Internet, you really have no excuse not to research thoroughly. Identify the hiring decision-makers and learn all you can about them and their company, their competitors, their challenges, and their future potential. This is a great time to call on your professional network. Who do you know who knows someone who knows some else at the company you are interested in? Once you have an "in" through a referral, it is time to make sure you are absolutely clear on your value proposition. In what way do you feel you could add value to the company? How would hiring you be beneficial? What is the return on investment that the company could expect if they hired you? Once you have the answers to these questions clear in your mind, it is time to approach the targets.
5) Consider a targeted e-mailing of your resume to headhunter/recruiter firms. But don't just use one of the cheap broadcast services that send your resume out to some unspecified list of 1000s of supposed recruiters. If you are going to do this, use a high-quality service that uses an up-to-date database of recruiting firms that they can break down and segment based on the firms' specialties. Approaching the distribution of your resume to headhunter firms in this way ensures that the recipients of your resume are individuals who have a sincere interest in learning about you and your credentials. They will try to match you to their current searches, and if you are a fit, you will get a phone call right then. Otherwise, they tend to database your resume to search in relation to future recruitment assignments. Of all the suggestions, this is the most passive and the easiest for you to implement with the least amount of work. But, passive or not, if you are in a profession that is among those often handled by recruiting firms, you should definitely make this a part of your overall job search strategy.
Finally, I can't stress enough how important it is for you to follow up. Be assertive and approach your job search as if it is a job in itself. Schedule your activities, keep track of the contacts you have made and the resumes you have sent, and follow up regularly and consistently.
Yes, there is no doubt that job searching can be a highly stressful time. But you do have choices about how you will spend your limited time and those choices can have a profound impact on the success of your search. Choose to focus on the high payoff activities and you will find yourself back to work, in the job you want, much faster than you thought was possible.
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