Are you tired of competing with everyone for that new open role? Try taking an “active” approach and avoid the competition altogether!
Everyone is looking for the next great opportunity to be “served up” to them. You know, the recruiter calls you with the hot opportunity; a network connection hears of your dream job through the “grapevine;” LinkedIn, Dice, or Indeed delivers your weekly feed of perfectly matched positions; or you discover on a hot start-up’s job page that wonderful “now hiring” stamp of enticement.
While it’s certainly temping to spend all of your time engaged in such “passive activities” when job searching, that one little roadblock still exits – yup, just about everyone else is doing the exact same thing! So it often becomes a battle of who checks off more boxes to make that first hurdle.
I always recommend that job seekers (whether CEO or paid intern) spend no more than 40% of their time in that world. The remaining 60% should be focused on a direct search, where the candidate is identifying a target list of potential employers (their future boss), conducting research to see where personal experiences match with an individual company’s needs, and directly reaching out to the prospective employer initially on the basis of things in common, such as history, activities, social connections, and share values.
As this posting from Work It Daily demonstrates, an active approach can not only help discover opportunities not yet on the market, but is a process that is simply more fun and rewarding. You cannot look for a job 24/7 without going berserk; it’s mentally crushing. However, taking a personal bizdev approach can be exciting while avoiding job search burn out. Sales and business development folks make careers out of it. Maybe it’s time to move from passive to active and control more of your own destiny. What do you think?
LINK to source article (Work It Daily) – https://www.workitdaily.com/proactive-job-search