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Job Searching

Once you have created a wonderful resume, the next question is “What do I do with it? Job searching is in itself a full-time job. An effective job search should be an eight hours per day, five days per week commitment.

However, most people do not make this type of dedication to their job search. It is very common, especially among recent college graduates, to believe that by answering a few ads in the newspaper they will magically find their dream job within a few weeks. The reality of job searching, however, is that there is no magic formula. Successful job searching is the result of hard work and dedication.

The rule of thumb for job searching is for every $10,000 in anticipated salary, you should expect to dedicate one month to a full-time, intensive job search.

This rule, of course, depends on many factors: your flexibility regarding salary, location, hours, your degree, and the state of the job market in the particular geographic region in which you are looking.

Preparing to Send Your Resume

Before you begin deciding which companies you would like to contact to try to find employment, it is important first to do a little bit of selfassessment. Remember that the positions you take upon graduation will determine the path of your career. As such, it is important for you to make sure your personal and professional goals are complimentary.

To ensure this is the case, you should ask yourself questions about your goals - both personal and professional - and be ready to answer such questions and direct your job search around them. A personal assessment consists of questions regarding your private life, such as:

• Are you or do you want to be married? What are your spouse’s goals?
• Do you want to have children? If so, when? How many?
• Where do you want to live?
• What are your financial constraints? Desires?
• How much time do you want to have for your family each week, or are you willing to work as many hours as necessary?

Professional questions deal with your career and what types of jobs you want to hold. Some examples are:

• What size of company do you want to work for?
• What are your goals with regard to promotions/moving up within the company?
• Are you willing to travel? For long periods of time or just one or two nights? How far?
• What type of co-workers do you want to work with? Is it important to be friends with them, or just co-workers? • Do you want to work closely with others or very independently?

As you can see, your personal and professional goals are closely linked and must not be contradictory. For instance, if you only want to work 40 hours per week in order to have lots of family time, but also want to become CEO of your company within two years, your goals are ambitious, yet unrealistic, and most likely not possible to achieve simultaneously. These are the types of conflicts you must be able to solve before you begin your job search.

Now you are ready to start utilizing several methods of job searching to find a job. There are three basic methods most people use when determining where to send their resume. They are:

1. Answering Newspaper Ads
2. Visiting Personnel Agencies
3. Networking through the use of Prospecting and Informational Interviewing

Two Types of Job Markets

Before discussing each job search technique in detail, it is helpful to understand a little bit about the job market as a whole and when to use each technique. There are actually two types of job markets which together account for all of the jobs filled each day. The first is the advertised job market. This market consists of jobs that are advertised in newspapers, through personnel agencies, and through other sources such as the PNC Career Development Office. This job market, however, only accounts for approximately 20-30% of all the jobs filled every day. Therefore, while the advertised job market is important to your job search, only a small amount of time should be spent job searching in it.

The other type of job market is the hidden job market. This market consists of jobs that are filled but never advertised. This market is best described by the old sayings “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” and “I was in the right place at the right time.”

The hidden job market accounts for 70-80%, or even as high as 90% of all of the jobs actually available at any given time.

The key to your job search, then, is to tap into this market by using a process called “Networking,” discussed in detail later.