No Time To Job Search? Discipline + Creative Thinking + Strategic Planning = Time Found For Job Searching

No time for job searching? Discipline + creative thinking + strategic planning = time found for job searching!

Let's be brutally honest here. When you say you don't have time to job search, it's not really because you truly don't have time to job search; it's because you're not committing to finding the time to job search.

Yes, there are always going to be exceptions, but for the most part, if they exert the effort, most job seekers can find even just 5 hours every week to do something that pushes them closer to an interview, which then pushes them closer to an offer.

Obviously, there can be no action without volition, so you have to want it badly enough to commit to finding time. Nobody else can give you that volition; you're the only one who can do that for you, so dig deep and find your "why" before anything else. If you don't have a "why, I can guarantee, you're not going to have it in you to commit to job searching.

Next, look at your current schedule and figure out where you can carve out time. A lot of people think they'll have to treat job searching like a full-time job. I happen to know, from having worked with 100's of job seekers over the years, that if you carve out 10 hours a week, as long as you're strategic and intentional with those 10 hours, you should be golden. No time at all? Hold yourself accountable to 5 hours per week then, and plan on just reaching out to 20 new, relevant people every week.

Be realistic and take your habits into consideration. Some people can carve out several hours after work or most of Saturday or Sunday morning, others can’t. Some people can zone out and do nothing else but job searching all night, some can't. At any rate, get creative! Can you wake up an hour earlier each day? No? Then, how about reducing the time you scroll through Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter or Youtube by 30 minutes everyday? Or, if you're a big TV watcher, keep on your laptop on your lap (I mean, hello, it's right in the device's name, amiright?) and when you're watching TV and a commercial break comes on, use that time to send networking emails, LinkedIn connects, do research on companies to target regardless of whether they have job postings up or not, relevant events you can attend in person or online. Making spaghetti for dinner? How about scrolling through LinkedIn and engaging with posts from people who are relevant to your target industry?? However way you choose to carve out your job search time, you need to have the discipline to commit to meeting your weekly metrics.

Every little thing that you do that nudges you towards the end goal of landing a job gets you closer to the finish line than nothing at all. Even if it's just a little bit here or there. If you're able to carve out an hour each day (even if it's divided into 20-minute spurts) and if you hold yourself to, at the very least, 20 new people that you've STRATEGICALLY reached out to every week and a series of 2-3 followups over the course of the next few weeks while adding 20 more people every week, you'll have reached out to 80 people by the end of the month, 240 people in 3 months.? If only 10% of your reachouts generate conversion, which then leads to quick chats, which lead to valuable insights, which lead to possible job leads, which lead to interviews, which lead to offers, you're already much farther along than you would be (and certainly way farther along than job searchers who spray and pray and throw job application spaghetti on the wall with 1000's of other applicants in the hope that something sticks).

Job searching is a marathon, not a sprint. It might not seem like much but by committing to doing even one job search-related thing everyday, you’ll see results sooner rather than later.

If you need help putting a strategic plan of action together for your job search, or you need an expert who can also make the job search process go faster by giving you solid advice and helping you avoid mistakes along the way, consider hiring a career coach!

Keep going! You’ve got this!

Career Coach Dezzi