The Rules of the Road to a New Career

Taking control of your job search means that you shift your focus from waiting for a job to come along that sounds right to conducting a search for a job that is right. It means that you take control of where you look and what you look for, in an effort to find that right fit. It means that you are less inclined to be disappointed by the lack of response to your efforts and more inclined to decide where you want to work and how you want to fit in there. It also means that you will be tapping into the unpublished job market-a process that goes far beyond searching the job boards.

Mastering the Routes to a New Career

Regardless of your means of entry into the career transition process, there are four well-known paths to landing a new job:

1. Responding to job postings

2. Direct mail campaigns

3. Executive recruiters, employment agencies, and search firms

4. Networking

Managing Your Job Search

Managing an effective job search campaign takes hard work; a substantial amount of time, energy, and determination; and blatant optimism. This process is meant to get you interviews and offers so that you can choose the job you want, not take the job you need.

The first real key to any job search campaign is to call on your best project management skills. Your campaign to find a job is a project like every other project you have managed in your work (and your life). You will use your strategic thinking, preparation, planning, and organizational skills, along with a little common sense.

Your ability to implement your plan with determination and tenacity is even more important given the fact of unreturned phone calls, limited response to direct mail campaigns, and repeated rejections. Rejection (or nonresponse) is a part of this project work. It does not mean that you are rejected, it means that for one reason or another, the job does not seem to be a good fit. That reality is certainly more difficult to accept when you are not the one making the determination, but it is part of the process that you will manage.

Interviews and Offers

The goal of any job search campaign is to get interviews and offers. If you are not getting interviews, you need to review your up-front work (values, skills, talents, and targets). If you are getting interviews, but no offers, something is missing during the interview process.