Jeremy Johnson has a new guest blog post this week on how you should think small to get ahead in your interview.
Jeremy is a recruiter in Kansas City for EHD Technologies, a recruiting, staffing and managed services company serving the IT, Engineering and Automotive industries.
Don’t Get Comfortable in Your Job Search
Let’s face it, hunting for a new job isn’t what most people would consider fun. Of the top ten things you may want to do in a given day, job-hunting probably isn’t even close to making the list. You know it has to be done, so you just have to do it. But there’s a dangerous way out these days that makes it much easier to make job-hunting much less painful – the internet. Yes, it’s great and it’s convenient and it gives you so much information. What makes it dangerous, though, is that technology provides an easy path of least resistance, to fall into the trap of posting a standard resume or applying online for a job (or 100 jobs) and thinking that’s all there is to it – sort of a “post and coast” approach. And because it’s much easier to take this path, it’s much easier to not have to get too uncomfortable. This is understandable but it’s a horrible mistake.
What’s ironic is that the ease today of being able to find job openings or have others find your resume is the very thing that makes it easy to become a lazy and sloppy job-seeker. That’s the trade-off of convenience. It wasn’t but about 15 years ago that you had to work a lot harder to find out who was hiring and how to get noticed. You had to actually talk to people, look through the classified section of the newspaper, and send your cover letter and resume through the mail. Or, you picked up the phone to cold call employers or walk in their front door with resumes in-hand. Granted, it’s a lot harder to do those last two things now because the internet makes it a lot easier for employers or HR folks to brush you off – giving you the proverbial Heisman stiff arm and redirecting you back to their website or job board. Technology has made both sides of the hiring fence a lot lazier.
I think people worked harder in their job searches back then because they had to. Job hunting was any more fun, but necessity being the mother of invention, you didn’t have much of a choice but to focus on how you were going to find the next opportunity. Now, you don’t have to do those hard things. Today, I think too many job seekers feel “it’s just a matter of time” before they find the next job because, after all, their resume is out there for the whole world to see, and out of the 300 jobs they’ve applied to, one of them just has to pan out. That’s what’s truly dangerous and that’s not getting out of your comfort zone. The internet can lull you into a false sense of security. Don’t let it.
That’s not to say people today aren’t working at it, and I’ve talked with many people who are throwing themselves out there full-force, thinking creatively, being proactive and consistently working hard on their job search. But, times have changed and, on average, so have most job seekers’ approach. It’s much easier today to seem like you’re putting in effort when you can lean on the internet to do the work for you. And it makes it a whole lot easier – and a lot more seductive – to not get out of your comfort zone. But, to conduct an effective job search, you owe it to yourself to live outside that zone.
If you’re comfortable, you’re not doing enough. It’s that simple. I don’t care who you are or what your background is. Are there people out there who always seem to land on their feet when it comes to a job? Sure. I even know some of them. But, I wasn’t them and no employer was going to mistake me as such. I had to do the work, find the opportunities, and show the people associated with them why I was the right solution to their particular need. And when it didn’t work, I had to readjust my approach and try different things.
So, what does it look like to live outside your comfort zone in your job search? Here’s a starter list. Get to it:
1) Be proactive – job-hunting is a job, so treat it as such. Everything you think and do in your job search should revolve around this mindset. If something in the job search process is within your control, control it.
2) Pick up the phone – I realize that most people would rather get kicked in the teeth than cold call someone, but you have to start reaching out – to companies, to recruiters, to networking contacts, etc. This is “tough love” advice but you’ll learn a lot from it and you never know where it might lead. I got my first job out of graduate school through a cold call.
3) Be targeted in your job applications – I’m giving this advice from a recruiter’s perspective. Trust me, if you’re just throwing up a bunch of “Hail Mary” passes on 100 applications thinking you might get lucky, you won’t. That resume is going in the discard pile. Quality is better than quantity here. Understand the job, know if you truly have the qualifications for it, then customize your resume to bring out the relevant experience in a way that piques the interest of your audience. This takes time and a lot of mental energy, which is why it’s definitely not comfortable. But, to me, applying for 100 jobs that you get no response on isn’t very comfortable, either. You might as well direct your effort into doing it right.
4) Research, research, research – do some old-school researching on particular companies you may want to work for or industries you’re interested in. This isn’t comfortable because it’s a big time investment and because you may not know the best place to start. It’s much easier to grab the remote and watch TV than feel like you’re doing background for a term paper. But, gaining an understanding of a certain industry or corporate environment or structure can help you know who to target, how to structure a resume or how to better prepare for an interview. It’s worth doing.
5) Evaluate whether your approach is working – Whether it’s how you customize your resume, cold call, network or whatever, you can’t be afraid to make an honest evaluation of whether your approach is working and may need adjusting. The easy thing is just to keep doing the same thing over and over regardless of the results. The hard thing is making the change, I think mainly because you may have no idea what else to do. Again, get out of your comfort zone and ask for advice. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but it may help to use others’ ideas. This is one classroom where it’s okay to steal, cheat and copy. In fact, I recommend it.
6) Think critically and honestly – You can’t be afraid to ask yourself the tough questions, and have to face the job market as it is, and not how you necessarily want it to be. Four or five years ago, I met with an architect who was out of work, and I was coaching him on doing a lot of these things. His response over and over was, “But, I shouldn’t HAVE to do those things. I didn’t have to do them when I got my last job!” Well, he got his last job when architects were in high demand, not when the market had tanked, as it had done when I met with him. To him, my suggestions sounded like a lot of uncomfortable work, and even though he’d been unemployed for several months, he simply refused to get out of his comfort zone and adjust to the new reality of the job market.
Ask yourself the hard questions and be prepared to act on them.
- “What am I not doing that I should be doing?”
- “Am I doing anything to sabotage my efforts?”
- “Is my resume structured well to grab the attention of the people I’m targeting?”
- “How could I have answered those interview questions better?”
- “Do I need to bite the bullet and get more education or training?”
- “Why did this particular approach work for others but it’s not working for me?”
Asking yourself these questions aren’t comfortable; that’s why they’re easy to avoid. But, you’re shortchanging your job search if you’re not being honest with yourself and really thinking through your situation and your approach.