The MicroTrain Blog

I will admit that having just been through a very long job search, it very hard not to become discouraged, get down on yourself, or even get depressed. You feel like a leaf blowing in the wind with no control of the outcome. And if that's true, why bother?

So I'll give you what little wisdom I have on surviving a job search. In fact, it's pretty good wisdom for getting anything done at all.

I'll skip all the "break the big project into small, attainable goals" and "don't procrastinate" stuff that everyone else talks about, and skip straight to the can't fail, two-step approach to getting a new job.

Yes, I said "two-step." Yes, it's that easy. No I'm not going to try and sell you swamp land in Florida. Ready?

Step One: Determine the goal. In this case, I'm going to imagine it's going to be something along the lines of "Get a New Job" but I'd suggest you push yourself here. My goal was "Find a job I like that pays me more than I make now in Chicago" which is a bit wordier and much more specific, but I will say that's a good thing. If you're going to have a goal, make it a good one. Make your goal real (a bad goal would be "I want to make a million dollars a year and do three hours work a week." Good luck, kid. Investing in lottery tickets is no way to attain a goal). and honest, but a stretch. Go for the gusto. 

And when you've determined your goal (it's okay to call this step 1b, maybe), you need to write it down and say it in your head. A lot. You don't need to get all "The Secret" here and wish that the cosmos bring you your great job like a cartoon stock dropping an infant into some couple's home, but you need to verbalize it. Out loud. Tell your spouse or significant other. Tell your family. Tell your goldfish (if you're currently employed, maybe don't tell your boss. Your call). Tell the conductor on the train. Tell the TV. And write it down and tack it up somewhere you can see it every day.

Don't worry. This is where we turn fluffy-bunny, hippie-dippie, new-age-hooey into real work.

Step Two: Every day, do something, anything (!!!) that moves you one step closer to your goal. To find that great job in Chicago, I had to send a resume. I wrote a new cover letter. I mailed stuff out. I posted something to my blog. I subscribed to the blogs of headhunters in Chicago. I subscribed to Chicago groups in LinkedIn. I showed my resume to more people who would give me ideas to make it stand out. I read a book on how to break interview rules. I asked and answered interview questions to myself in the car (no one else was in the car with me). I read a book on guerrilla marketing techniques. I read of book on how to look like the "obvious expert" in a field. I even stopped my job search so I could write a short, self-published book that I hoped would get me noticed.

Every day, I found one way to get me closer to my goal. Big or small, it didn't matter. Half the things I did didn't even matter, but they kept me motivated, made me feel like I was capable of doing anything, and made me feel more in control of my situation.

One last tidbit: It can all change on a dime. One day I was waiting for the phone to ring, sure that I was still light-years away from my goal, and two weeks later I had three phone interviews with three companies and was deciding between two offers. When it happens, it happens fast. By moving one step at a time toward your goal, you'll be ready for it when it happens.

I've recently gone through a long-term job search, and I can tell you that if you are not on LinkedIn you are missing out.

As a job hunter, it let me have room to post all my skills and experiences, even things that wouldn't fit on a two-page resume. I could connect with people in my industry, people in the city I wanted to move to, and get leads on who i should try and contact. I was able to met people (friends of friends, people who went to the same school as I did, people who were headhunters in Chicago, etc) that I normally wouldn't have been able to meet.

I was also able to use LinkedIn to learn more about my prospective employers before the interview. It was very useful to know where each interviewer went to school, what their background was before, what their current job entailed and what they looked like (which is nice when you're standing in a waiting room: you can be the one to put your hand out first because you know what they look like).

Here's what you need to do to have a killer LinkedIn page:

• Sign up! It's free, so there's nothing stopping you.
• Put all your jobs that are relevant to your job search up (don't add your middle-school paper route or that month you spent jockeying a cash register between semesters unless you can find a way to make it look like an experience a new employer would want to have on staff). Be sure to explain what you did at each job and how your work impacted the company. Did you add value? Did you save the company a lot of money? Did you speed a process up? What were the things you did that impressed your boss and your boss's boss?
• Add your education (academic and professional) and any certificates and honors you have.
• Find everyone you know on LinkedIn and connect with them.
• Once you have a good network built up, ask a few of them to write recommendations for you (I'd even go so far to say that you should write recommendations of them first).
• Go join some industry groups (and be active in them).
• Put a nice professional-looking picture up.

And then dive in!

Also, take a look at the Wall Street Journal's take on using LinkedIn for promotion.

Also, How to improve your LinkedIn profile.