5 Ways to Redefine Success in Your Job Search
For the average professional, a job search is neither a sprint nor a marathon. For many, it feels more akin to an odyssey. When running a marathon or sprint, we have the psychological safety and assurance of knowing a pre-determined end to our exertion. With an odyssey, we neither know exactly when it will end nor what specific challenges we will encounter. This combination makes it very easy to feel discouraged and/or desperate along the way. Maintaining positivity and motivation through the course of the typical 4-6 month job search is hard enough in normal times -- let alone with the added odyssey-like obstacle of a global pandemic. While the end-goal of attaining a new job is clear, the journey can be quite fraught if your only measure of success in the interim is getting a job offer.
Put another way, if your only measure for job search success is a job offer, anything else will feel like failure. This can be a very damaging mindset given the numerous challenges and myriad factors beyond your control in a typical job search. To be clear, I’m not debating the end goal, I’m proposing establishing additional ways to (re)define success in your job search so that you can tangibly and healthily measure your progress as you go. Here’s what this can look like...
5 Ways to Redefine Success in Your Job Search
1. Attaining Clarity in Your Direction
Imagine if tomorrow the most well-connected person you know asks you, “what are you looking for in your job search, and how can I help?” Would you have a clear answer ready? While it’s perfectly ok not to have an exact answer at the start of your search, you will benefit greatly by clarifying your direction ASAP. If you don’t have a concrete idea of where you want to land in your job search, it can make the journey that much more harrowing because your next steps won’t be or feel clear.
Success Redefinition: There is power in clarity. How much more confident would you feel if you could articulate the following from early on in your search process:
1) Ideal title(s)
2) Industry focus
3) Target companies
By doing the work upfront to identify these key items, you will unleash a cascade of positive benefits including prioritizing your valuable time, focusing your networking efforts, research, & being able to make very specific asks of your network. Psychologically and emotionally you will feel more settled & confident because you are reverse engineering from a pre-set destination.
2. Mapping Your Network
I always ask prospective clients how they feel about the strength & reach of their network. Most don’t feel great about it. I often challenge that response by asking if they have ever effectively tapped into or activated it for their job search. The common answer is, ‘no’. The challenge is, you can’t know what you have access to in your network if you’ve never taken stock of it. The average professional’s network is richer than they know if they would step back and examine who they know and/or have access to.
Success Redefinition: Take the time to thoroughly map out the constellation of people that you know and have ready access to and strategically identify those who might be well placed by company or industry affiliation, domain knowledge, job title, skill set, etc. who would be beneficial for you to contact. Taking this step will reveal a universe of existing networking possibilities you wouldn’t otherwise be aware of. It will also reveal the gaps in your network you need to fill.
Be intentional about knowing/understanding how they can help you and why you would reach out to them. You can do this exercise by examining our LinkedIn connections list using filters. One place I suggest clients start is their cellphone contacts list. The beauty of starting here is the fact that you already have direct access via a call or text, which means you already have some level of relationship. Start with what you have and go from there.
3. Empowering Your Network
Once you’ve mapped your network, it’s important to realize that it’s only as useful as the quality of the information you supply it. If your network was a high-end sports car, it would require premium gasoline for the engine to run effectively. If you pump regular gasoline into it, it might run, but it will never achieve peak performance with subpar fuel. Your network, no matter how big or small will transport you only as far as the quality of information you pump in.
Success Redefinition: Empowering your network means:
Knowing what you want + the kind of help you need → from different people
Reaching out to contacts early in your process → priming them ahead of time
Providing detailed & specific requests → within your contact’s area(s) of strength
Think about what you would want to know if someone were asking you for help in their job search, and craft the message that you would ideally wish to receive. Is it specific, actionable & motivating you to make the effort? Think of your end-user to make quality asks that will yield quality results. When you can do this consistently this will feel great!
4. Quality of Your Interactions
Are you having a string of one-off interactions that don’t produce any recognizable fruit, or are you having meaningful ones that are helping you grow in some aspect of your search process? This is a fundamental question you should ask and answer for yourself and then adjust accordingly.
Success Redefinition: I’ve written about the benefits of connecting through curiosity and how it can drive the establishment of authentic and meaningful connections based on a genuine interest in the other person and their work. Having a genuine interest and reason for connecting will help improve the quality of your interactions because you are trying to cultivate long-term professional friends rather than collect single-serving contacts. Intentions matter. Set your intentions for your outreach, thoroughly research your contact, & show up as your authentic self and see where it takes you.
5. Lead Generation
A search process without leads will certainly feel stagnant, so it’s important to try and generate leads of various kinds as much as you can. It will often take several interactions with a given contact to generate a lead, but remember, networking isn’t instant, but it’s worth it. The quality of your interactions will influence your ability to generate leads.
Success Redefinition: Generating leads can take many forms:
Referrals to new contacts/influencers/hiring managers
Corrective feedback about your candidacy or search process
New domain knowledge that sharpens you candidacy
Referrals to new/unpublished job opportunities
Connections into a hiring process
These are examples of numerous positive outcomes you can gain through building and maintaining relationships with a targeted and intentionally cultivated set of contacts.
If you can achieve these 5 milestones in your search process you will be able to build confidence, gain validation, & see tangible results from the necessary groundwork required to ultimately land that coveted job offer.
In the odyssey that can be your job search, it’s normal to sometimes feel lost or adrift despite the clear end goal. If you can establish a set of personal landmarks you can more tangibly locate your progress and how far you have left to go.
While you can’t control everything you will encounter on your journey, you can control how you navigate. I’m just here to help you calibrate your compass.
Let’s. Go.
Need help navigating these milestones your job search? I’d love to support you!
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NIIATO@AVENIRCAREERS.COM | CALL/TEXT 917-740-3048