Your overall campaign can be managed with just a few important worksheets. Use the Interview Record for every meeting both networking and job. Consider using a separate calendar to record your search activities so it will be clear to you how much (or how little) you are doing. Use the Contact List to keep track of whom you have contacted in each of your targets. Finally, and most important, list the six to ten things you have in the works on the Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Job Hunt worksheet.
Are You Conducting A Good Campaign? Measuring The Quality Of Your Campaign
When you are networking, people do say, "Boy, I wish I had an opening. I'd sure like to have someone like you here."
Getting a job offer is not the way to test the quality of your campaign. A real test is when people say they'd want you but not now. Then you are interviewing well with the right people. All you need now are luck and timing to help you contact (re contact) the right people when they also have a need.
If people are not saying they want you, find out why. Are you inappropriate for this target? Are you aiming at the wrong targets? Or perhaps you seem like an outsider.
During the beginning of your search, you are gathering information to find out how things work. You look like an outsider, and outsiders are rarely given a break. Why should someone hire an outsider? There are lots of competent people who have the experience and can prove they will do a good job.
If you think you are in the right target, talking to people at the right level, and are not early on in your search, you need feedback. Ask people, "If you had an opening, would you consider hiring someone like me?"
Become an insider a competent person who can prove that she has somehow already done what the interviewer needs. Prove that you can do the job, and that the interviewer is not taking a chance by hiring you.
Measuring The Quantity Of Your Campaign
You need to find a lot of people who would hire you if they could. You know by now that you should always have six to ten contacts in the works at all times. This is the only true measure of the effectiveness of your campaign to get interviews in your target area. If you have fewer than this, get more. You will be more attractive to hiring managers, will interview better, and will lower the chances of losing momentum if your best lead falls apart.
Use the worksheet 'Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Job Hunt'. It contains your current list of active contacts. At the beginning of your search, these will simply be networking contacts with whom you want to keep in touch. At that stage, your goal is to come up with six to ten contacts you want to recontact later, perhaps every two months. In the middle of your search, the quality of your list will change. The names will be of the right people at the right level in the right companies. Finally, the six to ten names will represent prospective job possibilities that you are trying to move along.
If you have six to ten job possibilities in the works, a good number of them will fall away through no fault of your own (job freezes, or the hiring manager changing his/her mind about the kind of person they want). Then you'll need to get more possibilities in the works. With this critical mass of ongoing possible positions, you stand a chance of getting a number of offers and landing the kind of job you want.
Developing Momentum In Your Search
A campaign builds to a pitch. The parts begin to help one another. You focus less on making a particular technique work and more on the situation you happen to be in. In your promotional campaign to get interviews, you see people who are in a position to hire you or recommend you. Keep in touch with them so they will...
- think of you when a job opens up, or
- invite you to create a job for yourself, or
- upgrade an opening to better suit you, or
- give you information to help you in your search
When you are in the heat of a real campaign, a critical mass of activity builds, so you start:
- hearing the same names
- seeing the same people
- contributing as much as you are getting
- writing proposals
- getting back to people quickly
- feeling a sense of urgency about this industry
- writing follow up letters, making follow up phone calls
Measuring The Effectiveness Of Your Job Hunt
(Your current list of active contacts)
How You Know You Are In A Campaign:
- You feel as though you know a critical mass of people in that industry.
- When you "interview," you contribute as much as you take away. Your information about the industry puts you on a par with the interviewer and you share that information.
- You are a contributor an insider. You know what's going on.
- You feel some urgency and are more serious about this industry. You are no longer simply "looking around" playing it cool. You are more intense. You don't want anything to stand in your way, because you know that this is what you want.
- You become more aware of any little thing that can help you get in. Your judgment becomes more finely tuned. Things seem to fall into place.
- You are working harder at this than you ever could have imagined. You read everything. You develop proposals almost overnight and hand deliver them.
- Your campaign is taking on a life of its own. At organizational meetings, you seem to know everybody. They know you are one of them and are simply waiting for the right break. When someone mentions a name, you have already met that person and are keeping in touch with him or her.
- The basic job hunting "techniques" no longer apply. You are in a different realm, and you feel it. This is a real campaign.
