Stop losing momentum when job searching, with this one bit of advice.
We need to clear something up and change some perspectives.
Finding work can be tough and will likely require multiple tactics being done at once. When these tactics fail to pay off or at least aren’t providing you with any insights that you monitor/understand, it’s easy to feel deflated, beaten and to make rash changes.
Making changes isn’t a bad thing – it’s what you’re changing that’s the problem
Job hunting is like any project you might have taken on before. It needs a Strategy and Tactics to achieve the end goal.
From our experience, too many people don’t understand the difference between Strategy and Tactics and thus change the wrong thing, so let’s clear up the difference.
Strategies –
These are the wider activities that will drive you closer to your goal. They tend to be the through line linking a part of your plan to the goal and might look something like:
. Maintaining and developing a strong digital presence
. Networking more often
. Going to a jobs fair
Strategies are a general plan and have many smaller actions inside of them that make them work which leads us to.
Tactics –
These are the smaller actions you do inside the strategy that push it forward and help make it work. If we take one of the strategies used as an example above such as Maintaining and developing a strong digital presence the tactics you could do for this might look like:
- Choose the right platforms the industry/employers use the most and ensure you’re present there.
- Set up a schedule to post frequently and engage in conversations happening in your industry
- Update your profiles to best reflect you and what you are looking for
- Share links to your portfolio or recent pieces of work
You might see that some Tactics can be effective for multiple Strategies! That’s something we help our members understand and utilise so check us out to see if we can help you with that.
You know the difference between Strategy and Tactics so now what?
Many people create a strategy and pick tactics without a conscious plan, then start without setting any goals or doing research to measure results. They change their whole strategy instead of changing the tactics they are using.
So going back to our example.
Someone chooses the Strategy of Maintaining and developing a strong digital presence and they are using the following Tactics.
- Pick the best online platforms used by your target employers
- Set up a schedule to post frequently and engage in conversations happening in your industry
- Update your profiles to best reflect you and what you are looking for
- Share links to your portfolio or recent pieces of work
But they don’t feel like things are working. They should look at the tactics and ask some questions about them such as:
- Do they need to do more research and consider if they chose the correct platforms?
- Is their schedule posting updates at preferred times? Are they sticking to posting often and engaging in the conversations happening?
- Are they updating their profile enough?
- Have they updated their portfolio to show the work their ideal employer or client would want to see?
Perhaps they need to add or remove some tactics, maybe they would benefit if they added in more video or visual content on their digital platforms.
Instead, what we see people do all the time is change the whole strategy from Maintaining and developing a strong digital presence to something totally different like rash and defaulting to blindly sending applications and CVs to anyone via general job search sites.
This is an instant recipe to lose all momentum with steps that would be helping them and it’s also the single biggest reason for feeling deflated, burnt out and hopeless.
Want more tips or guidance to turn your perspective around and achieve your career goals?
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