Are you ready to begin a job search?

Does that sound like a silly question? It’s amazing how many people are desperate for a job, yet have a lot of baggage to handle before starting a search. It’s quite a paradox. Be sure you’ve “unloaded” any of that counter-productive baggage before you start your search. Desperate for a job or not, you can easily shoot yourself in the foot if you jump before you’re ready.

Crazy as it may sound, as desperate as you may be, you might not be ready to begin a search. A few considerations:

• Make sure you have a “clean” story of why you’re not where you used to be
• Are there life / personal issues that are impacting your job situation? Anger? Addictions? Is there anything ?else? that was a factor in your being out of work?
• Personality quirks? Hygiene? Clothing? Transportation?
• Is your family supportive of your search? [Remember: your spouse can be your secret weapon, or your saboteur! Are you single? You might have an advantage.]
• Are you disciplined to stick with a search process? Consider the value of some accountability
• Are you current on your industry and the things that are likely common discussion among your peers?
• Are you aware of current events? You don’t want to be too caught up in the media, but you don’t want to miss that there was a major disaster in the last day or so either!

Be sure, before you jump into a search, that you don’t have things that will prevent you from fully executing. Whatever those things are, tackle them first. If you don’t think this is serious, look around at people who have been out of work for many months to many years, with the primary reason being there were too distracted to dedicate themselves to a search. Don’t be that person!

Last updated: 11/18/2014

You can find all my Job-Search related articles here. Please remember, a job search is normally an ordered set of steps. If you try to skip steps, it usually doesn?t work out well.