St. Louis Business Journal
How to manage a job hunt

By Anna Navarro

March 2002 - Job hunting, like many other challenging tasks, can be overwhelming. To make this daunting experience something you can handle, you need to apply some basic principles for getting the most out of your time and energy.

Start by deciding how much time you can devote to the process, and how much you expect to accomplish in that time. It's usually effective to think about hours and/or tasks per week. What is best for you will vary depending on your situation.

Tracy had just been laid off from her job in an ad agency. She decided to devote 40 hours a week to job hunting. Her goal was to do seven networking interviews a week.

Paul had a full time job as a transportation manager but he disliked his boss intensely and had decided to find another job in the same field. He figured he could devote about five hours a week to job hunting, and that he would aim at one networking interview a week.

I advised both of them to establish a steady, even pace, one that they could sustain over the long haul. Job hunting is hard enough without having to deal with the effects of burnout!

I also suggested that they make their job change THE priority in their lives, and urged them to say "No" to other activities that might drain time and energy from job hunting.

Once having established a time/task structure, the next step is to set priorities for tasks. You'll want to focus on those tasks that will yield the most results for the least effort. The "80/20 rule" applies here -- 80% of your results usually come from 20% of your tasks.

The problem for most of us is that the 20% of tasks that are most productive can also be the most psychologically difficult. Calling to set up interviews is usually right there at the top of the list.

For Tracy, this meant getting in touch with people at the two prior ad agencies where she had worked. She dreaded admitting to them she had lost her job. But she made herself sit in her "home office" (her kitchen table) every day until she had gotten through to them. She didn't let herself go on to other more appealing tasks (like doing internet research) until she'd finished the task that was likely to be most productive.

For Paul, the most productive task was cold calling transportation managers in other companies and asking to meet with them. He hated the idea of calling people he didn't know and asking for a networking interview. But he stuck with it until he had set up one interview a week, which is the most he could handle in the five hours he had set aside for job hunting.

At other stages of job hunting, other priorities might be to write a great resume, make a follow-up phone call, get your interviewing clothes together, or set up a functional work space. The trick is to ALWAYS do first what you judge to be the most productive, even if it happens to be the most distasteful.

Another important principle is to turn every problem into an opportunity to learn.

Paul had never done any networking. Though we had carefully walked through a mock interview, and even audio taped it, he thought my suggestion that he rehearse further was going too far. In his first interview, he got a little confused about what to say at certain points. Instead of beating himself up, he went straight home and did some rehearsing, even memorizing certain key phrases. That's the best way to deal with less than ideal outcomes!

Here are several other principles to help you manage a job hunt:

• Pay attention to ways to increase your pleasure. Linger in a conversation; savor a mutually supportive interaction; recognize and reflect on small personal successes. It won't take much time, and it will energize you.

• Reward yourself for meeting or exceeding goals, or doing something particularly successfully, or pair a treat with a difficult activity and reward yourself for simply doing the task.

• Plan to have regular meetings with someone who is willing to discuss problems, provide emotional support and serve as a sounding board.

• Give your body what it needs. Get enough rest, relaxation, exercise, and good things to eat.

If you follow these principles they will take you a long way toward making a job change a positive experience.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.