It was always the plan.

Once the following things had come to fruition…

• Youngest child leaves the nest.
• Hubby and I relocate to our forever home.
• I launch the Crazy Productive Academy.

…then I would enter the next phase of my career.

The plan was (and is!) to continue coaching and training through referrals and start working on something, well, something new. After all, I love variety.

I could teach college courses.

I could work at a nonprofit.

I could lead an employee engagement team in a company.

…or I could do something I had not yet imagined.

What was NOT in my plan was the wonky job market right now. It’s weird out there, folks. I believe that anyone who spends significant time job hunting should be able to add the following skill sets to their resume:

• Optimism in the face of adversity
• Drop-down menu maestro
• Ability to summarize a decade of experience in one sentence

I recently facilitated a lunchtime talk with The Georgetown ITL Network. I called the presentation, “Down and Dirty Productivity for Development Devotees.” It was a super fun, totally interactive session with like-minded people.

Here’s what surprised me, though. Almost half of the participants were job hunting. They were skilled and experienced learning and development specialists who’d recently joined a saturated job market.

Here was some advice I shared with them, and a few tips I have discovered during my own job hunt.

 

Three Tips for a Productive Job Hunt

If you know someone in the job market right now, please forward this information to them. And if it’s not too much trouble, tell them that they are smart, skilled, and amazing. They may be questioning their self-worth several times a day.

1. Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium Job Seeker

The AI capabilities are great when you just need a launching point for profile revisions. Of course, never accept the rewrite as is, but it’s just a nice tool to get you started. With Premium, you won’t have to worry about exceeding your number of customized invites and such. You have enough to think about.

After you upgrade, your LinkedIn feed will contain five things:

1. People posting jobs
2. People complaining about recruiters not responding
3. People announcing that they are #opentowork
4. People sharing their new jobs
5. People philosophizing (i.e., “what I learned during my job hunt”)

Some of these posts will be validating, some will be annoying. The same post can be both depending on the kind of day you are having. So, the next tip is very important.

2. Set time limits on your job hunt

The temptation will be to doom scroll LinkedIn all day, every day, and evening, and weekends, and even at 3 am. Only do that if you are a more positive and resilient person than I am. My job hunt isn’t urgent (whew!), and I still fell into this trap.

Determine when you are going to job hunt. Set a start time and end time and USE A TIMER. Let yourself do other things when not in job hunting mode. Your brain and psyche need rest from the trauma and drama.

3. Use a Spreadsheet to Keep Track of Everything

Your job-hunting spreadsheet should have the following tabs at least:

• Applications Done (including date, organization, job title, link, and status)
• Target Organizations (including name, date last checked, and career page link)
• People that might help me (including name, email address, organization, date of last contact, and next steps)
• Cover letter blurbs (including skill set/job family, and a blurb that you can copy and paste into a new cover letter)

I hope these tips help you maintain your good humor during this weird job market. And if you have any tips you’ve learned, please comment on the blog and share them with the rest of us.

In the meantime, keep your eyes open for career opportunities for your friends, family, and me, please.

 

P.S. – Yes, I am still coaching, training, and blogging. I probably always will.