The Full Time Job of the Job Search

One of the biggest complaints of people who are unemployed (aside from a distinct lack of money) is that they have nothing to do. The fact is, if you’re doing your job search right, it should really be a full time endeavor.

Unique cover letters and resumes

Pop quiz: Are you sending out the same vague resume and cover letter to every single place and wondering why no one is getting back to you?

Answer: no one is getting back to you because a generic send-to-all resume can be spotted from a mile away and if you’re not putting in any effort to customize for them, they don’t have much inclination to get to know you.

If you really want to get this job, you need to tailor a resume to it as well as a cover letter. Let them know you’re serious and they’ll take you seriously.

Interview preparation

Let’s say everything is great on the resume and cover letter front, and you’re getting call backs and interviews. The problem is, every time you get an interview, nothing comes of it. Why is that? Could it be you aren’t preparing quite as thoroughly as you should?

A lot of people assume they can just kind of wing it when it comes to interviews. This very rarely works. You need to have spent a significant amount of time thinking about what you want to ask them and what you think they might ask you. Write it all down. If you spend some serious time seriously thinking about those questions and answers, chances are you’ll be much better prepared when it comes to the actual interview, and will spare them all the “ums” and “ahs” they’d have to endure otherwise.

Two sided networking

So maybe your chosen job search method is hitting up all the people

you’ve networked with in the past. Is that working? Maybe you’re approaching

Networking the wrong way.

Networking is not like collecting Pokémon. You can’t just catch ‘em all and be done with it. Networking is all about creating relationships. You need to actually keep in touch and interact with these people.

If you’ve been maintaining your connections properly, rather than if you just put their businesscard in a jar to pull it out when you want something, it’s much more likely they will help you in the future

All of these things take time and effort to do well. If you aren’t busy while you’re unemployed, you’re doing it wrong.