It is a maddening situation when you search the job boards consistently and nothing seems to be in your area of expertise or preferred location. There are a few other things that you can do to to keep your search on track.
1) Set up an informational interview – The goal is to contact someone who works at a company you’re interested in and just learn the inside scoop. They aren’t the one who’s making any hiring decisions, and maybe there isn’t even an open position there that you’re currently gunning for. It’s purely for research and networking.
2) Up Your LinkedIn Game – This one is a no-brainer. When you send out a job application, you’re knocking on employers’ doors; when you optimize your LinkedIn presence, you’re inviting employers to knock on yours. Scan your LinkedIn profile for any incomplete fields, discrepancies, overwritten chunks of text, extremely basic skills, and meaningless industry jargon–all of those things are turn-offs to recruiters and need to go.
3) Go to Networking Events – It doesn’t hurt to hit up a networking mixer–even one that you know will be short on leads. The reason? When you’re looking for a job, you need to actively seek out opportunities to practice.
4) Check Your Soft Skills – Recruiters are interested in your people skills, not just your technical know-how. As Susan Vitale, chief marketing officer for iCIMS, recently told Fast Company, “Hard skills are what you do, and soft skills are how you do it.” And some of the top capabilities in that category, according to Vitale and other talent professionals in the space, include adaptability, problem solving, and verbal communication.
5) Change your Thinking on Job-Search Deadlines – One of the reasons a long, mostly fruitless job search can feel so frustrating is because the outcome you’re looking for–a really great job offers–isn’t something you can bring about all on your own. No matter how badly you might want a new job by next month, there’s nothing you can do single-handedly to guarantee you’ll get one by then. As The Muse’s Alison Cardy explains, “When you tie a deadline to something that’s not within your power, you set yourself up to feel defeated if it falls through.”
6) For further details and ideas see Rich Bellis’ article at https://bit.ly/2HVVw8X.
Go to www.TADPGS.com, click on the “Looking for People” tab, then view “Veterans Solutions”. To see more information for Veterans, please join our LinkedIn group, Veterans Hiring Solutions for Veterans at http://linkd.in/Sg346w. If you have specific questions, contact me at Ben.Marich@Adeccona.com