Guerrilla Marking for Job Hunters 2.0 - Jay Conrad Levinson [42]
■ MANAGING YOUR SCHEDULE AND PLANNING YOUR WORK
Looking at your job hunting as flextime or a mini-vacation is a mistake. If you want to succeed, you need to stay disciplined. I have met too many people who have said, “I’m going to take the summer off,” only to be scrambling before winter comes. Good for you if you can do it, but while you are lounging by the pool, guerrilla job hunters are taking opportunities away from you. My advice: take 2 weeks off after you land your job.
Your full-time job is now looking for a job. Begin your day around 6:30 to 7:00 AM. That time of the morning, you will be free from distractions and many executives will be in their office waiting for your call (I’m kidding). They will be in the office trying to get a jump on their day’s work, and you will be a nice distraction—after you learn how to talk to these people (discussed in Chapter 9, Fearless Warm Calling). It is also a mental conditioning exercise.
When you’re job hunting, you need to maintain a regular day schedule. You must start your day at the same time every morning. You also need to finish on schedule and walk away at night or you’ll quickly go nuts. My suggestion has always been to start at 6:30 AM working the phone and doing the related record keeping until 3 PM. At 3 PM, you start planning your activities for the next day and take any calls that come in from employers.
Balance your activity levels carefully. You need to plan your attack, and be immersed in the minutiae of your campaign on a daily basis. There is no point in firing off a thousand resumes and not following any of them up—because the follow-up is what gets you the interview. Nor is it sensible to forsake uncovering new opportunities while you are interviewing because you may not land any offers and then you will have to start from ground zero all over again.
Your day should be organized around calling employers to arrange interviews, networking, researching new opportunities, talking to headhunters, sending correspondence, and interviewing. To the best of your ability, you should establish a routine for your activities. You want to do high-stress things when your energy level is at its highest, and call employers when they are most receptive to a call.
If you wake up each day in a cold sweat, start your day by networking with your friends because they are more likely to be pleasant than will a complete stranger. If you have a heart of stone, you can begin calling employers first thing in the morning.
I have included an organizer in Appendix 1 for planning and monitoring all the essential components of your job search. I suggest you take it to your local photocopy center and have it copied onto an 11 × 17 sheet of paper. Keep this organizer on your desk:
1. Make the calls to employers to set up interviews first thing in the morning (6:00 to 8:00 AM). Employers will be easier to reach and are likely to be in a good mood because they haven’t had time to spoil their day yet. You are a solution to the problems they had yesterday—a welcome distraction.
2. Next, move on to making networking calls to friends and associates to whom you’ve sent your resume. Put your effort where the results are going to appear first. You also want to make these calls first thing in the day because generally you won’t have been rejected by many people yet and your voice will project enthusiasm (if you have already been rejected, it likely wasn’t work related).
3. Call recruiters next. Recruiters block out 8:00 to 10:00 AM for marketing calls, so although you want to get them early in the morning, don’t interrupt those marketing calls ... after all, they could be marketing you.
4. Next, call those companies you identified yesterday as potentials.
5. Last, make a list of companies for tomorrow and start researching them on the web.
Some people think that getting an offer is the only indicator of success in job hunting, but they are wrong. Job hunting is a process with a beginning,