Three Things You Can Do While Looking For A Job

There are only so many hours per day that you can spend surfing job sites and tweaking your resume.  Here are three things you can do to help enhance your prospects while looking for a job.  Your goal is to make it easy for an employer to choose you and these simple things will help.

1) Stay Current

Keep up with any innovations or reforms in your industry.  Subscribe to relevant trade journals or other publications and keep up your membership in any professional organizations.  When you’re out of work this may seem like an uneccesary expense, but prospective employers will find it easier to hire you if you can demonstrate up to date knowledge of your industry.

2) Stay Connected

Nobody likes the out of work friend that badgers everyone they know for a job.  Maintaining your friendships in your industry however is a great way to hear about job openings, often before anyone else does.  Word of mouth jobs often come with personal reccomendations which make it that much easier for a prospective employer to hire you.

3) Stay Involved

Social networking isn’t just a Facebook page and online contacts.  Get involved and stay involved in your community.  Join a fraternal organization, volunteer for a political campaign or a youth center.  Share your time with your church or other charitable organization.  Volunteer work can turn into a paying gig, but it also will help you make local contacts that can lead to word of mouth jobs and volunteerism will plug holes in your job history on your resume.

Unproductive? Make A List!

What are your days like at work? Does your mind wander around the four corners of your computer monitor? Do you mentally twiddle your thumbs from time to time? (I say mentally because I haven’t seen anyone actually twiddle their thumbs in years!)

Feeling lost at work is never a good thing. For one, it can be incredibly stressful and give you a poor outlook on your job performance. Secondly, it is likely that if you feel this way, you are not being as productive as you should be.

You should do everything you can to NOT be a reactive employee. That means that instead of sitting at your desk, saying to yourself “Oh yeah! I have to do that,” you should be making check marks next to items on your handy dandy To-Do list.

Here’s what I want you to do: at the end of work everday, get out a piece of paper- make sure you print it out if you’re using a word processor- and make a list of fifteen to twenty tasks you should get done the next day. If you can accomplish fifteen to twenty items on a list, every day, then you are most likely doing something right.  (Use your best judgment,when deciding on a number. Some jobs are more project oriented and some are filled with many small tasks. If you’re just starting a job, ask your boss to help you out. They’ll be thrilled that you’re taking such initiative.)

Companies need employees who can produce! That means you need to be filling your day with as many accomplishments as you can. It’s not always so easy to stay productive, and a big reason for this is that in many jobs, there is a variable set of tasks to be done on any given day. Every day is different!

Even if you know what you should be doing, having that list is going to give you more incentive to accomplish it. Just having a tangible list of tasks can be very motivating. There is no feeling quite like marking our accomplishments.

Jobs You Don’t Want…

In this topsy turvy economy, lots of Americans are looking for work.  No matter how bad things may seem at times, there are still some jobs you just don’t want.

Take for instance this Craigslist post from a lawyer in Chicago:

Loop law firm looking to hire am energetic woman for their open secretary/legal assistant position. Duties will include general secretarial work, some paralegal work and additional duties for two lawyers in the firm. No experience required, training will be provided. Generous annual salary and benefits will be provided, including medical, dental, life, disability, 401(k) etc. If interested, please send current resume and a few pictures along with a description of your physical features, including measurements. We look forward to meeting you.

Other than the next to last line, it all sounds pretty routine until the follow up letter arrives, containing the following:

As this is posted in the “adult gigs” section, in addition to the legal work, you would be required to have sexual interaction with me and my partner, sometimes together sometimes separate. This part of the job would require sexy dressing and flirtatious interaction with me and my partner, as well as sexual interaction. You will have to be comfortable doing this with us.

Lastly, we’ve actually hired a couple of girls in the past for this position. But they have not been able to handle the sexual aspect of the job later. We have to be sure you’re comfortable with that aspect, because I don’t want you to do anything that you’re not comfortable with. So since that time, we’ve decided that as part of the interview process you’ll be required to perform for us sexually (i didn’t do this before with the other girls i hired, now i think i have to because they couldn’t handle it). Because that aspect is an integral part of the job, I think it’s necessary to see if you can do that, because it’ll predict future behavior of you being able to handle it when you have the job.

Any self respecting job seeker would immediately steer clear of this one.  If a potential boss can’t be bothered to capitalize the pronoun “i”, you can hardly expect them to pay attention to other important details, like salary and benefits.

For a listing of jobs you do want, check out the listings at EmploymentCrossing.com.