Routine:
Many of your jobhunting tasks are routine, and you'll start to slip on some of them if you don't have a written checklist of daily, weekly and monthly tasks. The tasks should not only help you find a job, but more importantly, should continue to position yourself as the first person that a hiring manager will think of, or will find, before they start advertising a role. Check out similar advice from the Globe and Mail.
Here are some things to consider including in your daily, weekly and monthly checklists. Your daily checklist should take no more than an hour if you're working efficiently. - and you should try to spend more than an hour each day on the stuff in the weekly and monthly checklists.
- Daily, check the PNJ mailout (#4 above) - Do this at a specific, scheduled time every day, I don't recommend doing it whenever the mail comes in.
- Daily, just after midnight, update your resume on Monster.com and Workopolis.com, since they will both rank your resume higher in the search results if it has been recently updated.
- I get lots of recruiter calls between 8-10am, and I was at the top of their search results because my resume was "updated today."
- I recommend updating your resumes on those sites every 1-2 days, or at least every Sunday afternoon (weekly checklist), so that you're always the first one recruiters see at the top of their search results.
- Also, the more information you can provide them about your skills, the more likely you are to come up in search results -- don't just upload your Word Doc and expect that to be it -- your uploaded resume file should be a generic cover letter, then your resume, then a two page "skills matrix appendix" listing every technology you ever used. You'll still have a two-page resume, but the 5-page file will win more recruiter keyword searches.
- There is no need to search these sites for new jobs, the PNJ mailing list will take care of that for you.
- Daily, review the new items in your RSS feeds (see jobhunting by RSS below).
- Daily, get some sunshine and exercise. This is a lot more important to include on your checklist than you think it is.
- Daily, log in to LinkedIn. Your daily LinkedIn tasks will be a little different depending on which day of the week it is.
- Weekly, you should have a goal to meet new people. When I was funemployed, my goal was 5 new people added to my network each week, but it's much lower while I'm working. Every week, you should be finding new people to meet 1:1 and setting up meetings with them.
- Search LinkedIn for people that know someone in common with you, and ask that mutual contact to introduce you.
- Look for people with similar backgrounds to yours, similar industries to your target jobs, etc. (List of Toronto-area tech employers)
- Even if all you get is a phone chat, you'll still make an impression, and you'll have someone to contact if you see their employer posting jobs.
- Weekly, find a job fair or networking opportunity to go to every week.
- PNJ has good calendars for Toronto and Ottawa, BlogTO also has a good calendar for Toronto
- While there, have a good stack of business cards with your resume URL or LinkedIn URL
- Most importantly, this is practice approaching and talking to strangers. Practice and work on your elevator pitches.
- Weekly, review your sent-mail and calendar items from the past week, and make sure that you're on track to keep all the promises that you made.
- Monthly, read through your list of LinkedIn contacts and make a list of people that you haven't had any contact with recently, and put together a plan for refreshing those relationships this month.
- This is your army of people helping you look for work, so it's important to keep them up to date, and keep yourself in their minds.
- For super important people, set up a coffee date that month to catch up with them in person.
- For less important people, just keep a little list with you for the month, and keep your eyes open for conversation topics to email or call them about.
- Perfect example: "Hey, Rob! You're always talking about LinkedIn. Could I ask your thoughts on this article?" - That kind of email or facebook message can be very effective at reminding people that you're actively jobhunting, so that as they come across opportunities, you'll be one of the first people they think of.
- Over time, you'll probably start categorizing people in to categories of how often you'll want to ping them to keep the networking relationship fresh.
- If the person is on your list of references, aim for no less frequent than once every 3 months.
- If the person has retired and moved to Florida, well then, once a year should be plenty.
- Monthly, customize your daily, weekly and monthly checklists to make them better. Are you getting value from all the tasks you're doing? Can you make them better?
Additional reading - Resumes:
Additional reading - Networking:
Additional reading - Interviewing: