Keep up to date on articles and news and subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

When jobs stop looking for you

At least once a week a client or reader will tell me, “I’ve never looked for a job before.”

Are they teenagers? Homemakers saying goodbye to the last child out of the nest? Lifetime students finishing the last possible degree before facing the real world?

Sometimes. But not usually.

The people uttering those words are more likely to be 40- or 50-year-olds who have worked at least 20 years. They might be laborers or white-collar workers, or something in between, but they have one thing in common: Their jobs have always come looking for them.

Sometimes they helped the search along by mentioning to a friend or family member that they were ready for work. Next thing they knew, someone was arranging an interview and the job was in the bag.

In other cases, they were just minding their own business when a recruiter called, or a colleague asked them to consider working for a competing company. Voila. Job change without a job search.

Aside from feeling a little superfluous as a job search strategist, I don’t have strong feelings about this situation. If everyone is happy, it seems like a good outcome with the least amount of effort.

Perhaps the only real problem is that the worker in this situation may not be making career decisions. Rather, he or she is following the course laid out by others, or by a series of coincidences. If that’s the case, when it’s time to actually look for work, the lack of previous career planning experience can be daunting. Where does one start looking, when one never had to look before?

Like everything else about a job search, this situation is made easier with a process. The following steps will lend structure to what can be a confusing picture.

1. Don’t rush to conclusions about what the next job should be. It’s not necessarily the best idea to look for something identical to what you had, even if you enjoyed that job. Now’s the time to look at your life goals as a guide to developing your career goals. For example, if you’ve always wanted to travel, but the current profession keeps you homebound, is it really the best fit for you? Or, if you are now interested in living a rural lifestyle but your current work depends on an urban setting, is it time to consider a new field?

2. Make a resume. If you are not yet certain about your next work, use a summarizing style. In this version, you describe what you’ve done in past jobs, and you provide an overall summary of your skills near the top of the page. But you don’t declare a target or goal job. Later, when you have more clarity about the type of work you want, you will adjust this resume to emphasize the skills and experiences those employers would be most interested in.

3. Start networking. Begin by contacting friends, family and colleagues to explain your job goal, at least as much as you know about it now. Chances are you will be good at this task, as this is probably how you got past positions. In fact, you might be too good at it. Your challenge will be to carefully weigh the ideas or offers your friends give to you, as you are now trying to develop a longer-term plan.

4. Put yourself on a job search schedule. This will probably be new to you. Although it might not take long for a new job to materialize, you should set yourself up for an organized job search process that includes weekly contacts and resumes sent out. This might be a good time to take a part-time job as well, to keep your cash flow in balance.

5. Set a date for a Plan B. Since you’re new to job search, you may expect things to go more quickly than they actually do or you may find yourself allowing more time than you need for things to unfold. Building dates into your schedule to check your progress and to adjust plans will keep you from floundering.

6. Enjoy the process. Although there’s always anxiety about being turned down for jobs, recognize that this is a small part of the overall job search process. You will be meeting people and learning an incredible amount about the work world and about yourself, perhaps for the first time. Vow to see the good in each of these situations and you might be pleasantly surprised by how much fun it can be to take charge of your career.