Job Action Day 2008: Organize for Success

Job Action Day 2008 is today, November 3rd. It's our day for you to take control of your job search in the face of the realities of modern business. Many job search thought leaders are participating and you can learn more about Job Action Day at Quintessential Careers.

Let’s face it, the old ways of managing a job search using a binder or even a spreadsheet just will not work in today’s environment. There is too much information online, too many ways to connect to jobs, companies, and people, to master your job search using out-of-date tools.

The complexity is in the breadth of the five things that you need to organize for a modern job search:

• Activities: Tasks or To-Do items, meetings and follow-up.
  
• Contacts: Networking and relationships.
  
• Documents: Everything from resumes and cover letters to research and tips.
  
• Jobs listings themselves.
  
• Organizations: Companies, social organizations, schools, and other groups that people belong to. Tracking these are critical for you to expand your universe of available jobs.

In addition, you need a system to keep track of your search overall. Some of your search is likely to be high volume, low involvement (such as responding to job boards). Your system needs to help you track those opportunities without spending a lot of time on them. Until you get a response. Then your low-involvement system needs to go high-touch for you so that you can engage with your caller as if they have the only job you are pursuing.

At the same time that you are responding to job listings, you should pursue a targeted approach–focused on a set of companies, or people you want to work with, or a specific type of job. For this part of your search, you need to be sifting and sorting a lot of information to figure out how and where to present your skills and abilities at their best. Later, when you identify an opportunity, you need to make this research instantly useful. This is your high-touch system again, but from another angle.

An automated system can do both of these things for you, and do them well. In a series of posts we will explore how each part of your job tracking system should work best. Take a step forward with your job search today on Job Action Day, and keep working with us in the next weeks to maximize your search.

Copyright 2008 Steven D. Davies