Advice

Getting Offensive On The Job Search

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We all know the classic line “The Best Offense is a Good Defense.”  I of course believe the opposite is true many times and sometimes you’ve got to go on the offense as a form of protecting yourself.

I also believe that a job search and career plan can be both Offense or Defense.  The “offense” job search/career plan involves aggressive planning, moving forward, and following plans that lead to various goals.  The “defense” job search is one where you preserve what you have, plan “horizontal” moves to escape bad situations, and in some cases just take any job.  I’m sure we’ve all done both.

However, I meet a lot of people doing “defensive” job searches (indeed I’ve done them myself).  Based on my experiences I think the “defensive” job search and career planning predominates as we have an unstable, unpredictable, economy.  It’s understandable, of course – but I’m thinking it may be taken too far.

I see so much defensive job searching, that I’m thinking far, far too much time is spent in defense mode.

When you’re defensive, you’re not planning ahead (usually).  You’re responsive.  You’re protective.  This may make sense, but when the economy is in such a shambles there may be no defense, there may be no protection.  In a state without sanctuary you need to build one – you need to get defensive.

After all, when you go “on the offense” in your job search you’re planning, you’re moving forward, staking out territory, making things happen.  You’re not letting the crisis define you – you’re doing your own definition – and you may even be redefining the crisis.  You’re also not letting yourself be defined by the situation.

How many of us are being defined by a situation?  How many of us are just responsive?  How many of us have no grounding and are really just preserving what little we do have?

I think it’s time more of us go on the offensive:

  • Preemptive low-level job searches may be great – but get an eye toward career advancement.
  • Keep your career plan moving forward, with training, coaching, looking at new positions, etc.
  • Make that new business of yours anyway – even if its part time or erratically.
  • Keep your career plan going and chart it.  Even if it’s delayed, you know where you’re going.
  • Define yourself.  Don’t’ let someone else or something do it.

Let’s try to ramp up the career plans and the job search. Let’s go on the offense.

But how did it get that way?  Well that’s for the next column . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Ask A Progeek – Linked In and Broadcasting Out

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This “Ask A Progeek” question is about something obvious.  Of course it’s not something that’s obvious, but something that’s about the obvious.

So what’s our question?

If you’re looking for a job, is it a faux pas to say so on Linked-In?  If not, what’s the best way to do so?

So let’s look at the obviousness of this question:

If you need to hide the fact you’re looking for work, it’s obvious that you hide it (or at least dissociate the public search from your public identity).  That’s a given.

If you are looking for work and don’t need to hide it, it’s obvious that you have to make it as public as possible.  The more people know you’re looking the more they can help.  The more people that know you’re available, the more people can employ you.

If you’re on LinkedIn it’s obvious your career and employment are important to you.  So it’s kind of assumed by most people there that at any point someone may be looking.  It won’t appear tasteless or to anyone on there.

With the internet available to you, from Twitter to web pages to LinkedIn, it’s also obvious there’s a lot of ways to broadcast your job search.  So go use them.

There’s no reason not to use LinkedIn (or anything else) that you’re looking for work – as long as you don’t mind making it public.

For you, my pro geeks, here’s a few ways to broadcast yourself, obvious or not:

  • Put it on LinkedIn
  • Announce it on Twitter – with regular (but not overdone) updates.
  • Announce it on Facebook – and chronicle your job search (again without overdoing it)
  • Start a tumblr to track your job search and make it interactive.
  • Chart your results and experiences on your blog.
  • Put it on your web page.
  • Form an online group or join one for a job search (pro tip: make sure any job search group contains people who have work and are helping).
  • Use your related skills to chart your job search and announce it – art, web design, writing, etc.

Go on, make your search obvious – if it’s obviously safe.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

The Recruiting Nightmare: Sounding the Wake-Up Call

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As I’ve been documenting in my repeated rants the last few weeks, recruiting is a nightmare for many reasons, from the craziness of resume spam to the general hate recruiters get.  To be in recruiting these days is to face great challenges and irrational situations that border on the surreal.  To overcome them . . .

Well, I discussed what we can do to ease the problems recruiters face.  I detailed how we can improve our job searching despite the problems.  I speculated on ways we geeks can change recruiting or at least do some things to help.  It’s my hope all this advice pays off for everyone.

Look, the system is terribly broken, it’s not working, and in a few cases it seems to be working backwards.  We’re gonna have to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t affect us, our friends, and the recruiters we know.  No one is going to save us, so we have to save each other.

It’s just not enough, in the end.

The problem isn’t going away I’m afraid.  We can raise some individual islands of sanity, but the mess of crazy hiring rules and the challenges recruiters face still surrounds us and affects our friends and family and the world.

At some point we’re all going to have to wake up from the nightmare.

How we’re going to do that I don’t know, frankly (though Roddenberry knows I’ll be speculating on it here).  I’m not sure how we’re going to fix a very broken system beyond a few minor starting points.  I am very sure that like any nightmare, you need to wake people up and that’s where we start.

Let people know the system is broken, that recruiting is challenging, that hiring really doesn’t work.  Wake them up to the fact that things really, objectively, are lousy.

Let people know the solutions I’ve shared and that you found, so they hear about ways to fix things, at least in the small.  Wake them up to the fact they can solve at least some things.

Let people know we bloody well we’ve got to fix this.   Wake them up to the fact that they’ve got to wake others up.

It’s a start.  We’ve also got to fix a fractured world economy.  But we might as well do something.

Out of the various people we shake some sense into, people we help, we may find ways to make things better.  We may build alliances.  We may awaken that one person who can get things moving to unriddle the mess of recruiting and hiring these days.

Hell, that one person might be you and you just didn’t realize it yet . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.