Do You Have a Job Search Plan?

Do you feel like you are flitting around working on a lot of different things in your job search? Are you getting telephone interviews and on-site interviews? Are you confident that you are investing your time wisely in your job search to deliver the best results and find the right next step in your career in the shortest time possible?

Pilots have a flight plan; troops have a battle plan; New Product Development Teams have a Project Development Plan – but do you have a detailed, written Job Search Plan that outlines where you should be investing your time? You know you shouldn’t be investing most your time applying for on-line job postings, but at least doing so makes you feel like you are making progress. Once you apply on-line your application often disappears into the black hole of the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or is immediately rejected based on their keyword matching system. This is maddening!!

Having an effective strategy is key in almost every endeavor in life. In most companies 80% of sales comes from 20% of customers, so to stay in business you need to pay extra attention to that 20%. Ah…the Pareto or 80/20 rule. This also applies in a Job Search. You will be more successful if you focus your efforts on a few select activities, than if you spread your effort over many. But in my experience, less than 1% of job seekers have a detailed, written job search plan.

But how to start? First write down all your job search activities and honestly ask yourself these 4 questions. 1) What should I do more of 2) What should I do less of 3) What should I start doing 4) What should I stop doing (and this might be the most important question). Once you have the answers to these questions put a written Job Search Plan draft together focusing on the critical few activities that will propel you job search forward. This is how to start!

If you are still struggling to put a written plan together, please reach out to me to discuss how we can help.

My name is Mark Lauterbach and I am a Job Search Architect and Success Strategist. I founded Jump UP the Ladder, a Job Search Accelerator, based on my 20 years’ experience coaching others through their job search as well as having successfully navigated 7 job changes (5 times voluntarily and 2 times involuntarily) during my career. For 5 years, I also owned, ran and recruited daily at FPC of Fort Collins, a successful agency recruiting firm that I sold to one of my staff in 2013. I know how to plan and accelerate your job search success!

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