Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. (Will Rogers)
Time.
Studies show that the Japanese “salaryman” puts in more time at the office than American “workers”. They also show that American “workers” spend more time working. The “salaryman” spends a LOT of time around the water cooler and playing solitaire. Americans work.
Time is your scarcest resource. Every minute you use or waste is gone forever. You can’t save time and use it later. The next hour will be gone in 60 minutes no matter what you do. That’s a scarce resource.
In your job search are you a “salaryman” or a “worker”? The “salaryman” job hunter spends his time seeking out new internet job boards and looking for new newspaper ads. It isn’t a total waste of time. But it quickly becomes redundant. The same jobs and agencies seem to be in all the boards and ads.
The “worker” job hunter uses the internet job boards and newspapers as a part of his job campaign. Some researchers say that between the job boards and newspapers, only 25% of jobs are filled. So spending 25% of your time on those methods makes sense. The rest of the jobs are filled before they are advertised. So if you want to get a really great job you have to look where most of the really great jobs are filled.
Most really great jobs are filled by networking, calls to managers at companies that aren’t advertising, recruiters, and getting famous. I’ll be talking about these methods in a few days.
Something To Do Today
In your job search are you spinning your wheels? Keep track of what your job search time is spent at, and what you find. If you keep turning up the same useless leads over and over, you need to change your attack. Time is too precious to waste in ineffective repetitive motions.
————————–
Tomorrow: Short term rewards
Later: What motivates me
Waiting for the “help wanted” sign
Networking
Calls to companies
Intelligent use of recruiters
Get famous, get a job