Sometimes in life, our actions are completely counter-intuitive. For example, deciding to go on a diet. The first thing most people do is think they must eliminate something or cut back. In reality, the challenge of a diet is you must add more good foods versus taking away bad foods. The good naturally replaces the bad. But, it's a huge challenge to plan and add good healthy foods to your diet five to six times a day versus going in drive through two times a day. Related: 5 Things You Should Be Doing If You’re Unemployed The same is true for your job search. Are you going to get "job healthy" by adding good habits to your daily routine, or are you going to stay fat, miserable and unemployed by choosing the “fast food” route? Of course, the challenge is to know what is healthy and what is not. Here are the top five unhealthy job search habits and how to replace them with healthy ones:
Here it is - short and sweet. Most of you wouldn’t think you could apply these same job search techniques to your line of work. Well, I'm here to say you are probably wrong, and just need some creative adjustments in your thinking and awareness. I recently hired Pam to do a little work for me. She got the job instantly. How did she get the job? It was actually very easy. Did she send a resume? Nope. References? Nope. Did I know her? Nope. Did a friend refer her? Nope. She simply downloaded an e-book I had written, edited the first page, sent it to me and created her own job! Now, I was no English major, and I tend to write like I talk. This isn't always the best format, and it's certainly not proper. And, of course, even though numerous people proofread the book, it still had typos and your basic grammatical errors. Yes, I hired her on the spot via e-mail. No resume, no references, no interview. Her sample work was all of those and better! She answered all three questions every interviewer wants to know:
Let me be perfectly honest with you: Nobody owes you a job. And, to make it worse, most job seekers are faced with a perfect storm of barriers that never existed in the past. Those barriers include huge competition for a single position, social media, applicant tracking systems, and the complete elimination of entire job descriptions and industries (not to mention a totally overwhelmed HR and recruiting department). You have to be prepared to put your best foot forward. Your most prepared foot. The one that completely differentiates you from the flock. Consider this a wake-up call; consider it an opportunity. Because statistics show only a very small percentage of you will take any action. Interesting, that's about the same percentage of people in the world who are independently successful. It's your choice. It's a new world with new rules, so you have to be ready to do new things.