Four Simple Steps To Getting A Job (I Hate These Lists)

I saw this on AOL Jobs: The Simple Truth About Finding A Job

The article says that leads come from four places:

• Your Network,
• Through directly contacting target employers,
• Answering ads (aka, job postings), and
• Through external recruiters and agencies.

I think that nicely sums it up.  What I don’t like about the graphic on that page is that it doesn’t show where you should spend your time.

In the Ask The Expert video with Nick Corcodilos, Nick talks about how to work with recruiters, and how to think about them as a job search tool or resource.  What he teaches you is totally different than what I did in my search (which was to rely on them for a lot of hope and results).

In my job search I spent more than 90% of my time in my job search on job boards but I was told only 14% of jobs where found through boards.  Nick said about 1.3% of jobs were found through Monster.  Do you see a problem here?  Even if I were to spend an equitable 25% (giving each of the four strategies listed above equal time and effort, I would have been spending way too much time in those areas).

Without thinking too much about it, I’m not sure what else to put on the list of things to do in your job search (at this high level), but I do know you can’t spend an equal amount of time on them.  Instead of 4 equal boxes, perhaps it should look more like this:

Note how SMALL the brown (job board) box is.

The green box is also small, although it is wide.  I didn’t know how else to represent the idea that for some people, working with recruiters (especially how Nick teaches you how to do it) can work, but you have to do it right/well.

The almost-thirty recruiters I had developed relationships with did nothing more than file me away. They weren’t working on openings that I could fill, so I was irrelevant to them.  But I didn’t understand that for months, and I spent way too much time chasing them.

So, there you go… the same four strategies, but the key is to know how much time and effort to spend on any of them!