Access other income sources as soon as you can. If you’re eligible, apply for Unemployment Compensation; sometimes it can take weeks for this to kick in, so the sooner you apply, the sooner you can begin to collect an income. If needed, find another source of income - you’ll be surprised how many opportunities are out there for people who are willing to take on shifts outside of the 9 to 5 norm.
As you work through these necessary tasks, make time to jumpstart your job-hunt, as well. Unless you’re forced to take the first real offer that comes your way, don’t be afraid to make the most out of this situation by including your dream job in process. The worst that can happen is that you don’t land that particular job.
But you just might do it.
Just as with the "Plan" phase of your job search, you’ll create the best chance for success in the job-hunting phase if you "Pinpoint" exactly what you’re looking for.
Pinpointing Success
By pinpointing your objectives, you have to understand just where you want to be. But you also need to pinpoint just how you intend to get there, and to be realistic about what you’re up against. It’s the last of those three that’s often the toughest to see and understand. So let’s take a closer look.
Understanding the Challenges: As we noted just moments ago, it’s not too difficult these days to get a pretty good idea of the overall unemployment scene: The official unemployment rate was last this high in 1983, and it’s going to get higher before it hits its apex and heads lower. But you also need to understand just what the hiring situation is in the specific industry you wish to work in - as well as the specific geographic market where you hope to work.
On an industry-wide level, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Web Site (www.bls.gov) is a good place to start. By checking out their monthly Economic Statistics reports, you can get a clear picture of industry-specific performance in the U.S.
For example, in the Employment Situation Summary for May 2009, we can see that both the education/health servicesleisure/hospitality subsets of the service-providing industry added jobs last month: 44,000 and 3,000 jobs, respectively. and
Whereas, the goods-producing, manufacturing, and service- providing sectors were down 225,000, 156,000 and 120,000 jobs for the month, respectively.
By combining industry-wide knowledge with more specific resources available for your cities and states on Web sites provided by local newspapers (in my local area, that would be The Baltimore Sun or The Washington Post, for example), social media networks (like Craig’s List or Facebook) and jobs sites (such as Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com), you’ll gain a much better idea of the job market available to you right now.
Define Your Goal: This is the point most people start at when job hunting because they think it’s the easiest to knock out. Well, in part, they’re right. There’s no better authority than you when it comes to knowing what you can do or want to do.
But there’s a mistake most jobseekers make - a mistake you need to avoid at all costs: Don’t sell yourself short, and don’t "pigeon-hole" yourself by thinking that your skills will only allow you to do a very narrowly defined job. Granted, for certain specific trades - such as HVAC installation and service, plumbing, or auto repair - you may be looking for highly specialized work.
In Corporate America, however, people who’ve worked in the divisions or departments essential to business - such as marketing, sales, human resources, logistics, or operations - jobseekers often don’t see those additional possibilities. If someone has spent the last 11 years working in HR for an accounting firm, they may not realize that they have the skills or experience needed to do a similar job within a school system, a hospital or health-care center, or a startup technology firm. And they could end up missing out on some good-paying and career-rejuvenating opportunities in the process.
That’s when the marriage between knowing what you’re up against and know what you want to do becomes critical. Once you’ve identified which industries are the go-to segments for employment, you just have to look for the companies within that industry that offer positions in which you’ve had all of that experience. Sometimes, though, you may need to persuade the decision-maker for the position in question that your experience in one industry lends itself to the other.
And finally, understanding of the challenges you face may also give you an entrée into the industry that houses your dream job.
Of course, you need to be somewhat realistic, even as you act with enthusiasm and aggressiveness.
