You have already seen that job hunting uses some of the skills you've developed on your job, but it also requires new ones. Working hard at your campaign will develop all the skills you need for job hunting, and you will quickly show improvement if you conduct your campaign actively and interpret the results properly.
A key asset for you is time - learn to use it effectively. If you are out of work, job hunting should be a full-time job, 40 hours a week. But if you try to spend 60 hours a week at it, you may end up by being much less effective. Don't sit around the house all day. You may make a very unfavorable impression on a possible employer or recruiter if you are found at home in the middle of a working day. Also you cannot make the most effective use of your time at home. Running an intense campaign with a lot of activity keeps you sharp. Minimize the opportunity to feel down in the dumps.
Your typical day should consist of: courtesy and job interviews (at least one a day and sometimes two, or even three) or prospecting for new interview possibilities, follow-up on contacts. You might have been able to reach or interviews that you have already had, doing research on the companies.
Don't waste time on jobs that are completely unacceptable. On the other hand, those that are mediocre ones should be pursued as time is available. There is always a chance that one of these will be improved enough to make it a good possibility for you.
Be careful not to get sidetracked. It's easy to waste time running down blind alleys. Usually when people take nine months or more to get a job and have been working hard at it, they have wasted three or four months pursuing inappropriate leads.
If you find yourself spending a great deal of time on a lead because it seems exciting to you, make sure that you spend every spare moment developing other possibilities.
Large blocks of time can slip away on what turn out to be fruitless activities. A certain amount of this is inevitable. But make sure that you spend much time as possible working toward your specific goals.
There are seasonal slowdowns in hiring, such as the summer months of July and August. The hiring process does go on, but there are a variety of delays when key people take vacations. Thus, a process that might take two weeks to a month often can extend to two months or more. The longer it goes on the greater the risk for the applicant (for example, developments within the company may reduce the need for the job being filled, other good applicants may come to light, etc.). The last two weeks in August through Labor Day are a particularly heavy time for vacations. Another slow period is from the middle of December until after January 1. These seasonal delays don't mean that you should stop your campaign altogether, but use your judgment.
You should always run scared (but not panicky). Assume even good prospects are not going to work out, and continue your efforts to get new leads.
