Today’s title is a little tongue-in-cheek, but only a little. The truth is that, for talented candidates, finding a better job - or even the best job, a
dream job - is often simply a matter of starting off correctly.
Step one: forget a lot of what you think you know about job discovery.
Step two: make sure you know what you actually want. See? Two easy steps.
/ C3 W- k. V5 q" l" dOK, maybe that’s a little over-simplistic, but a lot of the classic “best-practices” for finding a great job just aren’t especially productive any more. Take networking, for instance. Sure, you can do great networking at conferences, trade shows, mixers, or even at your favorite pub. However, a growing number of recruiters and employers out there are adopting a Web 2.0 approach to networking. A post at
Web Worker Daily lists “multi-channel communication” as one of the best ways to network today. That means participating in blogs, learning what
Twitter is all about, and finding a comprehensive
online hiring network.
1 P, t$ U- S$ G: F; A$ ~2 U$ }Once you’ve established those contacts, stay on their case. Well, give them room to breathe, but only just enough. An online network has the potential to grow quickly and without bounds. But, just like the hiring world sources candidates, candidates should carefully weed out contacts that might not be ideal and focus in on ones that seem to have greater potential. On her KaleidoBlog,
Susan Strayer lists two reasons for screening in this way:
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- The fewer contacts you focus on, the more likely you can spend more time getting to know them.
- The fewer companies you focus on, the more you can learn about them, get to know multiple people inside the company.
She then recommends “appropriate stalking” as a means to focus on and maintain the contacts and promote yourself.
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Perhaps even more important than reconfiguring your rules is figuring out exactly what you want.
Shweta Khare recommends determining what your career goals are and comparing them to your personal goals, but you
have to figure out answers for both. And remember that the answers don’t necessarily have to line up. Your personal goals may be very different than your career goals, but you should try to determine what they are. Khare says candidates should think about how much (or little) their present job engages or even inspires them. Is it making the most of your skills? Could you be more productive in a different environment? How so?
7 y' F0 r- V$ B5 _3 c' A3 j2 w/ eIf your current situation is turning you into a
Quiet Working Professional, maybe it’s time to more actively seek out some new opportunity. That’s when those
new networking skills from the beginning of this post are going to suddenly become so important.
