CAREER PLANNING
Erin Wolfram and Melissa Johnson It’s time for spring cleaning! As you organize
various aspects of your life this year, why not prepare for your next job search? The job search process can be very daunting and time-consuming. To help you feel more confident as you seek new opportunities, below are 10 tangible tips to help decrease stress and increase efficiency throughout your job search. 1. Identify your job target(s) and where to find opportunities: Defining your current job target will help you focus your job search and make it easier to identify positions in which you are most interested. Rather than applying for everything you find, it is better to take a focused approach and only apply to the positions you are genuinely interested in and those for which you are, at least minimally, qualified. Brainstorm where you can find job openings that may be of interest to you. Consider professional organization and industry websites, specific company or organization websites, job boards that have opportunities in your field and within your location of interest, social media job announcements, and people in your network who might know of open positions. Never undervalue your network! 2. Prepare your documents: Prepare drafts of your resume, cover letter, and reference page after you have an idea of the type of opportunities you want to pursue. Have a friend, family member, or professional career consultant look over your documents to ensure they represent your strengths, skills, and accomplishments well and are error-free. Once you have a solid foundation, you will be able to easily tailor your resume and cover letter to the specific positions for which you want to apply,
and you will not be starting from scratch with each application. 3. Alert your network: Reach out to friends, family members, mentors, and colleagues. Let them know the types of opportunities you are considering and discuss your qualifications. Talk to people even if they don’t work in your industry. When you tap into your network, your contacts can access their network, and suddenly you have a broader reach. You never know who might have a helpful recommendation. As you reach out to your contacts to seek assistance, don’t forget to offer how you can assist them. Remember, networking should be mutually beneficial. 4. Create an email account: Yes, you have probably had an email account for 20+ years, but unless you have an email address solely for job search purposes already, you may want to consider creating one. Generate an address that is simple, professional, and clearly represents your name. This will help you funnel all job correspondence to one email inbox and keep you organized. You won’t have to worry about filtering through potentially hundreds of other emails to find those that include job prospects or communication from human resources managers. The last thing you want to do is miss an email with an offer for an interview. To keep your job search-focused email account even more organized, set up email rules to differentiate between emails alerting you of potential jobs and other correspondence such as invitations for interviews. Through email rules, you can automatically send job notification emails to a specific folder so you can peruse new opportunities at your convenience,
