I came across this write-up by William Henderson, who graduated from Berkley in ’95. William “spent several years as a project manager for a leading consulting firm” and put together a serious action plan for his job search – which lasted 9 weeks (3 weeks shorter than what he thought was “the average”).
William put together an excellent formula and, with “persistence,” was able to get the job done. What did he do? In a nutshell his plan was:
- Develop a 12 week project plan,
- Organize a job search committee,
- Attend at least 5 networking events each week,
- Focused search (in his case, to seven potential employer organizations that he needed to network his way into)
- Develop relationships with several recommended executive recruiters,
- Sent thank-you notes and follow-up announcements to his network.
You really have to read his article – it is a nice 8-minute read. What is your plan? If you are serious, and don’t have a plan yet, I recommend you *borrow* his!
Very cool William!
I definitely agree with this approach. Job hunting is a lot like starting a business, with the uncertainty, financial crisis mode, emotions, etc. Taking a proactive approach, that is highly structured, and with more of a sales/follow-up strategy, can really work well to cut down on lost time or getting tripped up by the experience.
Before I got hired with Provo Labs, I made a 10 week job-hunt plan for managing the transition from my old job to finding a new one. I ended up having to quit the old job after 6 weeks, and got the new job on my last day of work. (Which I can only explain by super good karma, or something.)
I put together a job hunt strategy book that I give to any friends who are looking for a job, whether they’re deciding to quit and move on, or if they’ve lost the job. I think one of the keys is to make a job hunt an automatic system, instead of susceptible to the delays that stress and distraction can cause.
You know, it seems that this “wheel” gets created so many times! Of course the environment changes so it makes sense that the job search today can’t be the same as the job search of 3 years ago. And each person’s strategy needs to reflect their target job, or skills or industry or whatever. That must be why there are so many different ‘wheels’…!
Thanks for visiting Carolynn. And for those of you that aren’t familiar with Carolynn, she got a bunch of fame a few months ago by starting a blog that was completely based around “Why Provo Labs should hire Carolynn Duncan”. And she longboards, runs and is going to get an MBA… quite a gal!