We all know about looking for work on the job boards. If you’ve spent more than one month looking for a job, there is a good chance that you've tried a job board. Some of you may have been successful using this method most of us have not.
After 10 months of searching job boards and getting nowhere, I finally decided that it was time to take matters in to my own hands. Here is a list of what I did to land a job within six weeks of taking a no nonsense approach to my job search. I am not saying that this will work for you exactly how it worked for me, what I am saying is there are other ways and here is what I did:
1. Removed my information and stopped responding to ads on job boards. The job boards were wrecking my self-confidence and making me feel as if my destiny was out of my hands.
2. Reached out to my network with a new request. Instead of asking if they knew anyone hiring, I asked them if they could provide me with some names of people who might need some help.
3. Started prospecting by writing letters, sending emails and making phone calls to people that my contacts referred me to. This helped me to expand my network and I started to get a few freelance assignments from this effort.
4. Sent my resume to an employment service whose promotional material stated that a live person would review the resume and provide suggestions on how to improve the document free of charge. After months of resume tweaking the document had became almost unrecognizable. Worse yet, the hybrid resume was not getting any results.
5. Started an intensive search for local employment agencies. I had done this earlier in my job search but this time I changed my tone an my tactics. Instead of asking them about available positions or what type of jobs did they specialize in I asked, “When can I come in to be tested?” To my surprise, after months of getting nowhere with agencies I was finally getting in the door. Some asked that I email my resume to a specific recruiter before coming in for testing. Others just said show up during the hours that they were testing.
6. Only responded to ads on Craigslist. For some Craigslist can be scary, in reality it is not much different from the job boards. You have to be careful of spammers and use your best judgment. If it does not feel right, follow your instincts and skip the ad. The upside to Craigslist is that you usually know within a week if the company is interested in meeting with you. The companies are usually smaller and more in tuned to their needs. Most companies that advertise on Craigslist do not use web crawlers. An actual person usually reviews the resumes, which means that even if your resume is not peppered with keywords there is a good chance of it actually being seen.
7. Obtained input from a person who hires or recruits people for a living. When I first started to get interviews again, I realized that I was still not closing the deal. I spent a small amount of time communicating with a human resources recruiter on Twitter and the input that I recieved was dead on.
After taking these steps, I was off to the races. I had freelance work, I was getting calls for temp assignments and I was going on at least one interview a week. Better yet, within six weeks I had no less than three job offers.
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