Martin Buckland has a great article on LinkedIn titled Five tips for what NOT to do in a job search. I whole-heartedly agree with this list… read his entire article here. He says:
Do NOT show negativity or disengagement. Yes. I wrote about this here: I Smell Blood!
Do NOT ignore the power of networking. Amen and YES! And, use JibberJobber to help you network better. If you have heard my story, you know that I thought I was too good to network. I learned the hard way that ignoring networking is a mistake.
Do NOT mismanage your social profile. Martin says you are “committing career suicide” if (go read the article). I don’t agree it’s career suicide, but I do think that you should pay attention to what you do (and don’t do) online.
Do NOT use an outdated resume or send the same resume for each job. Yes, but I actually didn’t have either of these problems. My resume was right for ME, but never right for the job title I was applying to. This was THE reason I didn’t get interviews.
Do NOT use one job search strategy. Agreed: I used one strategy, which was job boards. Lame, unproductive, depressing.
Thanks for the short but potent list Martin!
These are excellent and I am guilty of several, but rather than tell me what not to do, can you help me learn what to do to avoid these pitfalls?
You can flip each of the DO NOT’s around and do the opposite. Also, I have nine years of blog posts here, many of which are “what to do” in your job search. Do you have any specific questions?