St.Louis Business Journal
STICK TO HUNTING FOR ONE KIND OF JOB AT A TIME

By Anna Navarro December 2009  

Examples in this column are fictionalized to protect privacy.



To be successful at job hunting, especially in the current job market, you have to align how you communicate about yourself with the specific needs of employers. This process of “packaging” yourself for maximum appeal is both challenging and time consuming. As a result, it rarely makes sense to job hunt in more than one field at a time.

Kathy was a reference librarian in a university. Her micromanager supervisor was driving her nuts. She urgently needed to look for another job, despite the recession, because the emotional distress she was experiencing at work was affecting her health.

She knew library jobs were scarce, and decided to be flexible and seek out opportunities in a number of different fields. She explored openings in libraries, but also applied for jobs in several other areas, including non-profits and working with the elderly. She’d worked hard at job hunting for over a year, but wasn’t getting anywhere.

In our first appointment, I explained that an effective job hunt required she be clear about what kind of a job she was looking for, so she could tailor all her communications to the needs of employers in that field.

She said she wasn’t sure what kind of a job to aim at, and acknowledged she didn’t know much about the strategy behind successful job hunting. She asked me to describe what was involved.

I explained that to succeed in job hunting, she needed to start with an in-depth understanding of what employers wanted. Unless she’d worked in the field before, she’d have to gain that understanding by doing research and talking to people who currently worked in that occupation.

Once she understood what employers wanted, she’d be ready to write a resume that would selectively highlight the aspects of her experience that were most relevant to employers in her field of interest. Depending on the field, that could mean as little as 10% of her background might be 90% of what she would showcase.

The resume would provide the raw material for how she talked about herself in interviews. To make the best impression, however, she would need to turn that raw material into a cohesive and well rehearsed oral self-presentation, targeted to the need of employers in the field.

Cover letters and emails would provide an opportunity to describe in detail an aspect of her background that would help her stand out from other candidates. But to make the most of these written communications, she would need to know what employers in the field valued.

I explained that to maximize her chances of landing a job, she needed go beyond responding to job postings and listings, and network with people in the field. The point was not to put anyone on the spot for a job, but to get advice about how to find work in the area.

I also said it would be smart to gently and appropriately coach her references about the kind of job she was seeking and what employers in that field were looking for. Without understanding that, it might be hard for them to know what to say that would best support her candidacy.

Once Kathy understood what was involved in launching an effective job hunt, she immediately grasped why her job hunting efforts had not been fruitful. She had been hunting in several fields at once, and her message was not aligned with the specific needs of any particular type of employer. Even in the library field, her message about herself had not been carefully thought through or reflected in her job hunting communications.

She decided that, given the pressure she was feeling to change jobs, she’d better stick to job hunting in libraries, at least this time. We discussed the possibility that she might come back to explore other career directions later, when she had the time to sort through what was important to her in work and how that might translate into a new career path.

Once she was clear that she was hunting for a library reference job, we went to work preparing and launching a much more focused job hunt. It took several months to find a new position. The scarcity of jobs across all sectors of the economy made it a challenge. But as she job hunted this time, Kathy got much more real interest and positive feedback. That was enough to help her stay on track and eventually succeed in finding a new job in the library field.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that works with clients on an individual basis to help them find more satisfaction and fulfillment in their work-lives. She can be reached by phone at (314) 367-0008 and her e-mail address is email@worktransitions.com. For more information visit the worktransitions.com website.

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.