When I asked for input on what to write about in this blog I received the following request from Doug:

“I would be interested in hearing about effective uses of time when you are looking for work.  How much time should be spent on internet search engines, linkedin, attending network marketing meetings, having one-on-one network meetings, time spend with an accountability partner, exercising, prayer/meditation, time spent not working on the job search (I feel guilty doing this), volunteering, or other valuable uses of time.  Alternately, what are poor uses of time.  As I go through this process, I have been advised to do everything and say a yes to everything.”

This is a GREAT question Doug, I’m glad you asked it. Let me take a shot at answering it. . .

Going through the job search process is challenging.  Because it’s so new to most of us, choosing how to spend out time each day/week/month can be confusing.  On top of the confusion there are several pressing issues, such as:

• our husband/wife wondering when we will find a job and asking us daily what we did to accomplish that goal.
• our own feelings of self worth (or lack thereof) — let’s be honest, in our culture one of the first questions asked when we meet a new person is, “What do you do?”  If we “don’t” then how do we answer that question?
• advice from everyone and their brother as to how we should navigate this time – “go to everything you can”  “put this on your resume” “don’t put that on your resume” “always wear a tie when you leave the house” “don’t dress to formal or people will know you are unemployed” and so on.
• a feeling that sometimes we just want to curl up in bed and avoid the whole thing.
• a desire to make the most of this time with family and friends — “After all, I have a lot more free time now that I don’t have work getting in the way.  So why do I feel guilty when I’m out enjoying myself with the kids?”

As someone who has helped hundreds of people successfully navigate unemployment and career transition this past year, let me share with you some of what I see to be most effective uses of your time in this process.

1. Don’t bother spending more than about 30 hours per week in the job search.  There are physical, social and psychological effects of being on a job search that make it unproductive for us when we go past 30 hours per week.  I know you are supposed to consider your job search to be a “full time job”, so for our purposes let’s consider 30 hours to be “full time.”
2. Spend some at least 20 minutes EVERY DAY doing some form of physical exercise.  Go for a walk. Go go the gym. Play with your kids on the jungle gym.  Exercise is good for clearing out the brain and increasing energy.
3. Don’t spend more than 37 minutes per day on the computer. Likewise, DON’T go online during daylight hours.  Think about it, if 80% of jobs are found through some form of networking, then you should spend at least 80% of your time networking.  The internet will be there when you get home, after everyone is in bed.  Heck, you are probably going to be awake at 3:00 this morning anyway.  If you spend the whole day online, what will you have to do when you wake up in the middle of the night?
4. Have a networking strategy and stick to your plan.  This is tricky, because your plan should evolve as you progress in your job search.  I would recommend that early on in your search you attend lots of events where other job seekers hang out.  These are great places to meet new people, develop and practice your elevator pitch, and get some support.  However, within 6-8 weeks you want to begin moving AWAY from those kinds of events to places where potential employers and people close to potential employers hang out. The former of these events will usually be free.  The latter may cost you something.  That’s why you want to work out the bugs in your verbal and printed “brand image” in the early stages of your job search.  And yes, Doug, this means you will say no to some things. You want to be strategic!
5. An accountability partner is a great idea! Plan to check in once a week for at least an hour.  Take notes and hold each other accountable for goals set at the previous meeting.  Choose wisely. To be successful at this you need to choose someone who will kick your butt — not be your friend.

Some of the activities that have proven to be the worst use of time for job seekers include:

1. Spending time on the Internet job boards – less than 6% of all available jobs are posted on these boards. If you were digging for gold, wouldn’t you want to spend your time in a place where other people have found gold rather than someplace where the prospects for finding gold are shallow?  Well guess what. . . you ARE digging for gold! The best place to find it is through your network of friends and colleagues.
2. Writing/revising your resume (or your LinkedIn profile. Or your Visual CV. . . ). Yeah, I know, you NEED a resume.  It needs to be polished and professional.  However, your resume is a dynamic, living document. It will need to be revised continuously throughout your career.  Work on it a little at a time and track your improvement.  Besides, YOU are your best resume, so get out there and show people what you have to offer!
3. Simultaneously, paying someone to write your resume for you is a huge waste of both time and money – unless you are a high level executive commanding a 7 figure salary.  If you feel the need to pay someone, pay them to coach you how to write a quality resume. You are going to go through the job search process again in the future, so this is a skill that is worth learning as best you can! Besides, the tools you use to write a resume will be extremely helpful in interviews, and it’s pretty tough to get a professional resume writer to go with you to an interview!

This is just a beginning list of how to structure your job search efforts.  The key is to have a strategic plan with specific goals that you can track and measure each day/week.  We have more resources on this topic inside the Careers 2.0 membership site.  The Basic Membership is free, so sign up and take a look!

Thanks for asking Doug!

How about the rest of you?  What would YOU like to read about in this blog?

Related Posts:

• Our 4 Step Process for Writing An Elevator Pitch
• How To Conduct An Informational Interview
• What Is A Personal Brand And Why Do You Need One?
• How to Work With A Recruiter In Your Job Search
• Why A Great Resume Is Not As Important As A Decent Network

As a job seeker, you have a resume and you send it to every possible job opening you can find.  You make sure every recruiter in town has at least one copy on her desk. It’s posted in 6 places on Monster.com and 4 places on CareerBuilder.com. You hand it out like those guys hocking strip-show fliers on 5th Avenue in New York City.  You even sent one to your best friend’s mother, simply because she seems to know everybody!  But how effective is your resume, really?

Are you getting the results you want from it?  Are you getting enough interviews?  Do you even KNOW what “good results” would look like?

Have no fear, my friends, we are here to take the pain and confusion out of writing an effective resume.  Here’s the inside scoop on getting the most out of your resume:

1. Define expected results. The first thing you need to do is determine what purpose your resume will play in your job search efforts.  Do you want to use it to get a foot in the door?  Do you want it to help you “close the sale?”  Or, do you want your resume to simply be something that your prospective employer has in their hands to help them rest assured that they have made the right decision by hiring you?  Any of these are legitimate uses for a resume, but you need to know how yo intend to use this important document in order to be able to craft it to effectively achieve your goals.
2. Begin with a clear Professional Summary. If you are lucky you will get 8 seconds worth of attention from the person reading your resume.  You have got to grab their attention so they will read further.  A banal, boring, or uninteresting summary will send them on to the next person.  I see way too many resume’s that begin with some kind of “objective statement” to the effect, “desire a challenging career that utilizes my strengths.”  BFD.  I bet the hiring manager who reads this will get 500 or more with the same objective.  What in that statement will make you stand out from the others? More importantly, what do you have to offer a potential employer?  Your resume is a marketing tool similar to a newspaper ad.  If you want to grab the attention of the reader you’ve got to have a compelling headline.  Otherwise, they will move on to the next one without giving you a second thought.
3. Give proof. Once you have their attention you need to back up your statement with credible, verifiable results to prove that you are capable of doing what you say you can do.  Use CAR Statements in the body of your resume to demonstrate your capabilities. Don’t just state responsibilities.  Give specific examples of how your actions have helped previous employers make or save money.  For example, every Office Manager could put on their resume that they “order, organize and monitor office supply cabinet.”  Big deal.  Nothing in that statement would be enough to get you an interview.  Just think of what might happen if, instead, you put down something like: “saved previous employer $12,000 per year by developing a process to effectively order and manage office supplies.”  I can tell you what happened, because one of my clients put that on her resume and got several interviews because of it. Show “proof” and you will stand out from the competition.
4. Develop an effective follow up strategy. You probably have figured out that using a shotgun approach in your job search is not very effective.  It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but a narrowly focused, laser-beam strategy will produce much better results. If you don’t have a strategy for your job search you may want to check out the Careers 2.0 ARMS process.  It has helped hundreds of other job seekers find their perfect job in half the time, and Basic Membership is free!

If you aren’t seeing the results you want from your current resume, perhaps it’s time to try something different.  These 4 tips have been time tested and will definitely produce results, I guarantee it!

Resume Advice Related Posts

• How To Write a Professional Summary Statement for Your Resume
• 4 Examples of A Professional Summary Statement
• 3 Different Types of Resumes You Need To Know About
• Why a GREAT Resume is Not as Important as a DECENT Network
• Resume Writing Tips

Welcome December!  This month I am participating in a 30 Day Blogging Challenge with some other bloggers.  As you know, this blog is all about helping people find a new job. Not just any new job, mind you, but rather, the perfect career. That’s why we write about acing the interview, cutting time off your job search, and using Internet job boards (like LinkedIn, Monster.com, and Twitter).

This 30 day blog challenge will allow me to develop some new material to use in the Careers 2.0 website.  That means two things for you: 1) you get the opportunity to add your 2 cents to the conversation, and 2) you get it for free before everyone else! This blog is all about offering free job advice, free job resources, free resume examples, and much more. We deal with topics such as networking, building a personal brand, working with recruiters, unemployment, interviewing and salary negotiation. What would YOU like to see us cover during the 30 day challenge? I hope you will participate by adding your thoughts to the conversation.  Actually, it won’t be much fun without you! Oh, and don’t forget to pass the links along to your fellow job seekers.

While the long term goal of this blog is to help everyone in America find the perfect career for this time in their life, my short term goals are a bit more attainable. Here are my goals for 30 day blog challenge:

1. create 5 posts on Personal Branding as it relates to the job search.
2. create 5 posts on interviewing and interviewing tips for job seekers.
3. add 50 followers to Facebook blog list.
4. add 200 people to newsletter mailing list.
5. get 3 posts to get picked up by a national venue.

Thank you for joining (and encouraging) me on this 30 day blogging journey.  And don’t forget, happy hunting!

30 Day Blogging Challenge – day 1.  Tomorrow’s post: “Do You Have A Professional Photo?”

You can find a lot of help for the job search on the Internet for free. Some of it is good, but a lot of it is simply bad advice. For instance, did you know that only about 4% of job seekers find their job through Internet job boards? That includes all of the Monster.coms and CareerBuilders put together. Only 4 out 100 people ever find a job using those tools! That’s because you, as a job seeker, are simply a commodity to those sites. Big companies pay a lot of money to have Monster and CareerBuilder send qualified candidates to them. You don’t pay a dime. That makes YOU the raw material that Monster/CareerBuilder sells to their clients.

Wading through the junk on the Internet could cost you valuable time in the job search. The question is, “how can you quickly sift through the bad advice to find the good advice online?” The answer is, “USE A SYSTEM.”

A job search system will help you get more out of your time online so you can get the face time you need to land the job. People who use a system (such as the CMS Careers 2.0 ARMS process) typically cut their job search time in half, negotiate for a higher salary, and find themselves in the perfect career for this time in their life.

Want to know more about the CMS Careers 2.0 ARMS process? You can sign up for a free account at www.CareerAdvice4U.com.

Happy hunting!