It’s been a year of transformation in the job market, AI creating a number of jobs and at the same time displacing other positions, changes around in-office or remote work, companies scaling back to align with economic headwinds, deepening investments in clean energy and so much more.
If you are in the job market, there’s very little effect you can have on your experience in the short term. What you can control is how you go about a job search, your attitude, and your expectations.
Landing a new job is a full time activity. Searching for leads, networking, enhancing your personal brand, researching, preparing and keeping organized.
Some try to outsource the search by using a company that ‘connects’ you with search firms and helps to market your resume. It all sounds great, their websites are impressive. However, as a firm on the receiving side of these resume blasts, it is comical if it wasn’t so annoying—cover letter after cover letter with the exact same language. We’ve blocked these domains, it’s a ridiculous way to market yourself. First rule of marketing, and yes, you are marketing yourself, is differentiation.
The first step in any job search is to create a compelling personal brand starting with a solid LinkedIn profile and resume. Second, you need to be able to talk about yourself in a compelling manner in a short period of time.
I was recently coaching someone who has a wonderful background, a technical education now applied to a business domain. They consistently left that off their ‘pitch’. Another person had made an unusual pivot in their career–you absolutely need to talk to that. And people laid off may not have ever had to talk about that in an interview, you absolutely need to position yourself in a manner that gives prospective hiring leaders a strong sense that it wasn’t based on performance.
You have about a minute to make a good impression if you are lucky.
The market is highly competitive, employers want people who are ambitious, enthusiastic, and highly capable. If you worked for a big, well known company, that’s great, but that’s not enough.
One of the biggest things you can control is your expectations and your attitude. If your dream job demands onsite presence, figure out a way to make that happen instead of being locked in a pandemic perspective of work. If the job title is a level below where you are, maybe taking that role will ultimately lead to an acceleration of your career—the path to success isn’t alway linear.
Get help if you need it, a professional writer, a good headshot, a coach, establish an informal advisory board of friends and colleagues. Invest in yourself, take the time to practice interviewing, consider videotaping yourself, all of that is more important in the short term than taking a class or two. Certaining not as fun and interesting but more important.
