Job Search Advice – The Best Ways to Find a Job
While I teach my clients up to 15 different strategies they can use to land the exact job they really want, these strategies fit into four categories:
- Advertisements – This may seem like the fast track to landing a job, but only 1 in every 20 people get a job by responding to online job advertisement. I tell my clients, ‘Since less than 10% of all people get hired by responding to an advertisement, then don’t spend more than 10% of your time searching for a job responding to online job ads.’ Make sense?
- Recruiters / Headhunters / Search Firms –If you are searching for a new position in the same industry and you have a solid, steady and impressive work history, you might want to use these firms as PART of your job search strategy. If you are changing industries or careers or have some potential ‘red flag’ in your employment history, you’ll probably find this is not a viable job search strategy. Regardless, using these firms shouldn’t be the focus of your job search since they account for about 1 in every 10 job hires.
- Networking – Roughly 4 in 10 people land jobs through traditional and social / online networking. This is an effective way to find a job… if you have a network in your area of interest. The good news is that it is easy and fairly fast to build a network, even if you do not feel that you are not good at it.
- Direct Contact – This may surprise you… contacting prospective employers directly – even though they do not have a job opening advertised online or on their website – is the best strategy to find the job you want. Though it takes some work and needs to be done the right way, it is the best way to land your IDEAL job… the one that you’d love to do.
