Maybe you’ve suddenly been laid off and weren’t prepared with a job search plan. It happens to many executives. They didn’t see it coming.
Now they find themselves scrambling to pull everything together and get to work on finding work.
Maybe you’ve been in a job search for a while and very little is happening, although you’re on the job boards several hours a day. That’s how you find a job in the digital age, right? Then how come you’re not getting interviews?
Could be that you’re lazy or just misinformed, and going about your search all wrong.
If all you’re doing is putting out a few feelers to recruiters and your network, and getting your updated resume onto plenty of job boards, that makes you a passive or REACTIVE job seeker, instead of the PROACTIVE one you need to be, to keep pace in this highly competitive job market.
You’re a lazy, or misinformed, job seeker if you:
1. Skip over step one – identifying the kind of job you want, targeting the companies that will be a mutual good fit, and researching their current challenges to find out how you can help them solve their problems.
2. Run straight for your old resume (if you can find it) and update it – without first defining your executive brand, and creating content designed to market your ROI and resonate with your target employers.
3. Focus most of your time on job boards – the “monsters” and smaller niche boards. You think that job search in the digital age means hitting the job boards hard because that’s where all the job are. You don’t understand that most jobs are found by penetrating the “hidden” job market.
4. Fear having an online presence and putting yourself “out there” with social networking and social media. You don’t understand that executive recruiters and the hiring decision makers at your target companies are on LinkedIn and other social networks. If they’re hanging out there looking for candidates like you, you should be, too.
Get started with LinkedIn. If you do nothing else with social media, you need to be there, leveraging all that this social network has to offer, just to keep pace with your job-seeking competitors. See my LinkedIn Guide for Executive Branding and Job Search.
5. Neglected your network while you had a job because you didn’t think you needed them any more. Now that you’re looking again, you don’t have the time or inclination to re-connect. It’s too much work! You don’t understand that the way to get at those hidden jobs – where most opportunities lie – is through purposeful networking.
6. Haven’t researched what executive job search is all about today, so you can prepare and do all the back end work, before jumping in.
Are you a lazy or misinformed job seeker?
To get all the inside skinny on landing an executive job in today’s job market, see my post Today’s Executive Job Search Toolkit.
Related posts:
Bullet-Proof Your Executive Career in the New World of Work
5 Key Elements of a Strong Online Personal Brand
Social Media ROI: Is It Worth the Time?
photo by suvodeb
