The season of resolutions is upon us, but let’s not even go there. That’s not what your job search engine needs. Resolutions are a lot of work. They take willpower. They take energy. Sometimes they fizzle out at the first sign of the slightest trouble.
So be it, because we just don’t care. Forget all that willpower and energy. You don’t need them, because we have a magic wand and we know the right spell to cast: Jobus Findinicus! With those two words, clinically tested and endorsed by four out of five wizards of the enchanted job search, your troubles are over. You’re now in a position to change one of your job search tendencies without lifting a finger. You don’t need willpower or energy, and you don’t need to resist temptation. Just make a wish and the change shall come to pass.
What would you wish for?
A system that you’ll use – and one that works: You’ve tried just about everything, and you feel like you’re all over the place. You don’t want to miss out on anything, so you try everything. The whole enterprise leaves you feeling like you’d be better off with a lot more focus, but you can’t seem to commit to a unified approach to the search, and you’re not even sure what a unified approach would look like. You’ve tried one thing, then another, taking a bit from here and a bit from there. If you could just get yourself to settle into an effective, organized strategy, something that goes step by sensible step, you’d make a lot more progress and save yourself a lot of stress.
A thicker skin: Ask people in sales, even the best of them, about cold-calling, and you’ll be met with an abundance of negative reactions. Constant rejection, the kind of situation in which you’re lucky to get a positive reaction from one out of every 100 attempts, is no easy thing, and that’s often the story with the job search, especially when jobs are scarce and applicants plentiful. Wave the magic wand, though, and each rejection will no longer feel like a personal affront or a devastating setback. You’ll roll with the punches. If you don’t get hired this time, it’s no big deal. In fact, it's their loss. You’ll move on to the next opportunity, no worse for wear.
The key to the magic of LinkedIn: You’ve heard a lot about LinkedIn. You know it’s important, and you even have a half-baked profile on the site. It doesn’t seem to do much for you, though, and you know that the site has all sorts of unrealized potential. Wave the magic wand, however, and your LinkedIn presence is first-class, you’re using connections to open doors and you’re expanding your network exponentially every day. Who knows? With the right spell, you could end up as one of those “Influencers” you’ve heard about. Before you know it, you’re the one people look to for insight and wisdom, whether the subject is your industry or the best way to get the most out of the premier site for professional networking.
The ability to ace any interview: Interviews are tough. We get nervous. We didn’t prepare in quite the right way, so we missed a great chance to answer a couple of tough questions or to ask some fabulous questions of our own. With a little bit of magic, though, we’re perfectly prepared. We’re cool, calm and collected. When we walk into an interview, we know we’re walking out with an offer.
Those are four big items that could use some magical help. The bad news, however, is that we can’t seem to find that magic wand at the moment. There’s good news, too, though. If you look at each of those magical wishes, seeing them come to pass is not beyond the realm of possibility. Each of them can start with a small step in the right direction: some investigation into a better approach to the search, a slight psychological adjustment, a bit of study into what makes LinkedIn tick and a slightly more thorough approach to interview preparation.
None of it requires some major resolution that you’re unlikely to honor. Start with baby steps. Results will follow, no magic needed.