gift-wrapped under the tree?
We’ve got a job search double whammy – a recession and the holiday season. Together that may be enough to put would-be job seekers out of the market until the New Year.
But this is not a time to reduce your energy on your job search. While things may be slow in automotive engineering, they may be moving nicely in medical devices for example. Your task is to make the connection from your skills to the jobs that are in the market today. A little research on some popular job boards (like ours) will tell you what industries are hiring right now.
You may say to yourself that you’ve tried that. And you may be discouraged. Let me tell you that you are not the problem. The job market is slow. Perfectly qualified people are on the sidelines. But that doesn’t mean you should give up. What that means is that qualified people will be working hard to uncover every possible job opportunity.
And while the season may work against you, it can also work for you. Networking is one of the best ways to surface possible work opportunities. (Note that I didn’t say “job” opportunities. Work can take lots of forms and the traditional job may not be the next thing you do.) The Christmas season gives you a great reason to call or contact everyone in your network to wish them the best of the season and to catch up on what they are doing. By doing some careful listening, you may find a good reason to schedule a networking meeting early in the New Year so you hit the ground running in 2010.
There will be days over the next few weeks when nobody is around for even a networking call. That’s probably a good time to fine-tune your resume or do some reading about job-hunting. A lot of the work in a job search is execution, so researching the web sites of prospective employers is a good way to spend some time.
I wish you every success in your job search. The recession has been tough and will continue to be so. But every previous recession has eventually passed and this one will too.
