Resolutions for your career health, part II
Posted on January 5, 2012
Filed Under Career Change, Employment, Finding a Job, Hiring Forecast, Networking, Promotion, Technology in the Workplace, The Workplace | Leave a Comment
By Courtney Sprague, Guest Contributor
While continuing with your 2012 career resolutions, these last suggestions are intended to aid you with your job search. Hopefully, these suggestions you will help you conduct a more seamless and manageable job search. It is also important to remember that searching for a job can be a full-time job, so using these few resolutions may save you time and frustration.
- Review your online presence. Many HR departments are now reviewing a candidate’s online presence before considering an applicant for an interview. In order to make the best impression, make sure that your online persona is squeaky clean. Conduct a Google search on yourself using all names you go by or have gone by in the past- this includes nicknames, middle names or maiden names. If you see something that could be considered incriminating, investigate the source and see if you can have it removed. Also review your social media profiles to ensure the image you’re projecting through Facebook is the same one you would like to project in the workplace. Ask friends if they wouldn’t mind deleting any disagreeable items or photos that you’ve been tagged in. Even if profiles are set to private and friends only, your privacy is not something that can be guaranteed. When in doubt, take out!
- Add new connections to your network. Your network is equally as important as your resume and cover letter to your career search. These could be people you meet at your current workplace, coworkers of friends or family, someone you meet on the subway or even through a networking event. Some people say they hate networking, but networking happens every day, you just may not realize it! When you walk into a coffee shop and standing in a long line, and get to talking to the person in front of you, even if it’s about nothing, it is still networking. You may not think you need to add people if you’re secure in your position, but who knows what doors that person may open down the road. Once every month, try to add at least one new contact to your network. If you having trouble adding a person to your contacts every month, then try to reconnect and stay in touch with current contacts to stay abreast of what they are doing and let them know a little about you. It may lead to bigger and better things in the future
- Don’t drive yourself crazy checking job postings every day. While I was in graduate school, I was searching for job postings online every other day. I feared not having a job upon graduation. I was getting frustrated and felt defeated when opening new postings, only to realize I had already read it last week. After talking to my career counselor and advisor I decided that I would dedicate two hours to job searching every week. This was my dedicated time to browse current positions and create an action plan for applying. Setting aside this two hour block of time every Monday night allowed me to relax and concentrate on the importance of quality job searching over quantity of applying. After searching and identifying positions of interest I would make a timeline, detailing each position’s deadline. I then set aside two more hours later in the week to work on and submit my application materials. If I had not created this job search schedule, I would have become burnt out and miserable. To save time you can also set up job agents on websites that email you whenever a new job of interest is posted; however, you will want to check the site every so often in case a job is not classified in your interest group. Save yourself the hassle and frustration and create a job searching schedule that works for you!
Here’s to your Career Health in 2012!
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