Many job hunters start their campaigns with only the fuzziest notion of the kind of job they want. Some think this is an advantage: if they keep "all their options open," they might get a job that they would otherwise have overlooked. Don't make this mistake! True, as your campaign progresses your job goal will become clearer. But you can lose job offers if you aren't specific about the job you seek, right from the start.
PEs are interested in men and women who know their own minds and know what they want in life. They are much less interested in suggesting opportunities to you or trying to help you find something of interest on the remote possibility that you might be qualified. Further, PEs are interested in you because of expertise you are offering in an area which they feel they are currently lacking. This might be in sales, it might be in finance, or it might be in general management. Anything you say that does not reinforce your image as the best candidate for the job will work to your disadvantage. Even if you speak ten languages, this skill will only blur your image if it is not directly related to the position you are seeking. Further, in a job campaign, time your most important resource is limited. To be successful, you must concentrate your efforts on developing a single well defined opportunity. You cannot afford to dissipate your energies by going after many different job goals simultaneously.
Finally, you cannot plan steps toward reaching a job goal until you decide exactly what that job goal is. There is one exception to this rule. Despite the fact that you have aimed at a single type of job and have prepared your job campaign accordingly, occasionally a PE will single out an accomplishment in your resume and ask whether you would be interested in a position other than the one you are seeking. You will have to evaluate such an opportunity on its own merits. Even so, you should never establish more than one precisely defined goal at the start or allow a singular interest by one PE to redirect your entire job campaign. In short, spend some time deciding what you want, then go after that specific goal.
How to Establish Your Overall Career Goal
If you are like many executives, your next job is not the last job you will hold. It is one more milestone in your career. Before you can establish a milestone goal, you must establish an overall career goal. Each person's professional career goal will differ. A company president may aspire to be president of a much larger company, president of a company in another industry, or an entrepreneur president; the executive may even want to leave management entirely and go into something else.
Regardless of your function or job level, you must establish an overall professional career goal. Once you do, you can begin thinking about what jobs you must have as milestones in order to achieve your overall career goal. Then you can focus on the job you want as your next intermediate goal and concentrate your resources on attaining it.
Many unemployed job hunters think that they can easily get a job if only they take a step down. This is a mistake. In fact, it is generally easier to take another step up than to go backward. If you try to get a job on a lower level or for less money, your PE will feel that there must be something wrong and will assume that if you have once worked at a higher level you will not be happy working at a lower one. Further, your PE will be afraid that you will leave the first time you are offered a job at your proper level.
Going backward is an uphill battle. Don't try to fight it. You should always seek a job that builds on what you have done before, so that your career proceeds in a logical sequence. If you have not done this in the past, the time to start is now.
The Easiest Job to Get
What type of job is the easiest to get? The easiest job to get is one in your present industry, in an identical or similar function to the one you now perform, and in the same or a similar size company. It is a job at the same level as or one level higher than the one at which you are now working, at a salary 5 to 20 percent higher than what you are presently earning. For a quick and relatively easy job hunt, you must take these five factors into consideration. A sixth factor, geographical location, you may or may not want to consider in your job hunting campaign.
This does not mean that you cannot immediately increase your present salary by 25 percent or more, change industries or functions, go from a large company to a small one (or vice versa), move to a desirable geographical location, or jump several levels in responsibility. However, if any or all of these objectives are part of your job goal, you should recognize that they will make your search more difficult than "the easiest job to get." You will have to allow for a longer and more difficult campaign.
