How To Look For Work – LIFE AS A HUMAN

Are you unsatisfied with your job and waiting for things to improve at work? Or are you waiting to look for work until you resign or get laid off?

Here’s the thing; the perfect time to look for work is not when you’re unhappy with your current job or are about to quit. It’s when things are going fine and you’re doing well at work that you should be scouting for opportunities, ironically enough. If you’re currently out of work, then it can be more challenging to get a new job.

If there’s one thing that potential employers are very allergic to, it’s desperation. Not having work tends to affect people’s self-esteem. The longer you’re unemployed, the more anxious you may become. During interviews, this can sometimes come across to interviewers as a lack of self-confidence or even desperation. People who are happy with their jobs project very differently. They tend to be more at ease with themselves, which is why they tend to do much better during job interviews than their unemployed counterparts.

It’s best to take the desperation out of the equation by getting some type of job so that you’re not as stressed out about how to pay the bills or feed your family as you’re looking for work. When you’ve got that kind of pressure, you tend to suffer more from performance anxiety and that’s usually why you may end up blowing interviews. If you’re a happy camper and speak highly about your work or your boss, your aura is totally different. And guess what? Employers will be interested in you even more.

Here’s a dynamic that you need to understand: decision-makers tend to be more interested in you when you’re not that interested in them. It’s a strange thing but not altogether unfamiliar. If you remember high school, girls tended to get drawn to the guys who were “cool” or a bit detached and didn’t show a single care about anything. The eager beavers – or really earnest types – were usually the ones who were ignored or didn’t do well with the ladies. It’s the same in life. Desperation is never attractive or appealing to folks in general. You have to learn how to be “cool”, too.

So how do you achieve “coolness”?

Simple – look for work when you don’t need one. In fact, here’s a better alternative. Don’t even bother with “looking for work”. Focus your efforts instead on developing relationships with people within (and even outside) your industry and see how you can help them. Why go thru this trouble, you may be asking? Well, once you decide that you’d like to switch jobs all you have to do – now that you’re better-connected – is simply pick up the phone and let decision-makers you’ve met from various companies know that you’re now available and actively considering opportunities elsewhere. If you’ve helped these people along the way, they wouldn’t mind returning the favor and helping you when you finally need it. Harvey MacKay (http://www.harveymackay.com/) calls this “digging your well before you’re thirsty”.

When you do things this way, you will never need to go through a regular interview again. All you’ll need to do is engage in a natural conversation with decision-makers from companies all across town about possibly working at their company. In fact, it’ll be like an old-ship courtship process, except with you holding all the cards instead of the other way around. What’s going to happen is that these employers will start to showcase their company and even try and convince you to work for them.

Imagine… having them in the hot seat while you’re doing the picking and choosing. That’d be something wouldn’t it? And it’s a situation that everyone can easily set up provided one does the necessary groundwork, long before the need for a new job comes up. In other words, your strategy should be to look ahead and be prepared by looking at who the players are in town and developing relationships long before you need them, just in case.

And guess what? ‘Just in case’ invariably happens. You may decide to leave your job, or get laid off, or even fired for whatever reason sometime in the future. In your case though, all you’ll need to do to get another job is pick up the phone and let your contacts know that you’re finally available, exploring opportunities at various companies and asking to see if they know of anyone that’s looking for someone bright and ambitious. No interviews necessary in this case.

Photo Credit

Photo is Creative Commons – Via Seattle Municipal Archives

Guest Author Bio

George Verdolaga
George Verdolaga is an author, educator and speaker. He helps people get out of their own way so that they can reach their career and lifestyle goals faster and more efficiently via The Job Farmer and The Contractor Lifestyle books and his Sitting Pretty Course.