For many – looking for a new position is certainly up there as one of the least favorite exercises you can go through. That said, sometimes it is not by choice – but thrust upon you as a function of a company merger, buyout or layoff.
Over the years I’ve seen many people struggle with the process of looking for a new job and they waste a lot of time along the way. Simply put, many people perform their search in a sequential manner, that is, they see listings, send out their resume, and wait and hope to be contacted. While logical at one level, it lacks the strategic focus today’s competitive job market requires.
What’s needed is parallel processing – or – many different actions working simultaneously. As an analogy, think about a group of computers working on a task, as opposed to just one computer chugging away at a problem. By breaking the problem down to a number of pieces and letting a group of processors tackle the task – it gets solved much quicker.
The same can be said for your job search. Certainly looking at position listings and responding with resumes and calls is a big part of finding a new spot – but you also need to simultanoeusly be building your network of contacts, attending various industry specific funtions and considering informational interviews and volunteer work as just a few of the many avenues to locating a new spot. In short, it is multitasking your way to a new position and doing it all at once- to accelerate a successful outcome.