Covid-19 Job Hunt To do#3: Make some Lists

Or to-do’s. Whatever you’d like to call them.

So the economy is supposedly going to re-open soon. We’ve been fired, furloughed, or just finally had some time to decide that we need to get a new job.

Hopefully, we’ve already gone through (Step 1:) re-examining our situation and have been continuously (Step 2:) “upgrading” ourselves via education. What we need to do now is create a plan of action, and for those of you who love lists — this is going to mean a lot of them. For those of you who don’t… sorry.

There’s several lists that I personally create when I find myself in this phase. For the most part, they all serve as to-do lists but for separate and distinct purposes. The reason why they’re separated into several smaller ones rather than one large one is to make them more approachable, detailed, and easy to focus on during both their creation and execution.

The Lists:

1. The Master List: Your master plan. This is the list that contains all the other lists, but keeps them high-level. The purpose of this one is so that we can keep a clear goal and the big picture in focus. It’s meant to show priority, progress, and milestones. Generally, it should contain big ticket items and phases like “Get 3 certificates in XYZ” and “Start interview preparation list.” For those who love detail, you could split this into a monthly, weekly, and daily list as well to really run home the idea of progress and self-monitoring.
2. The Learning List: If we don’t learn, we don’t grow. Though this list should focus on the professional skills of interest to grow our competitiveness in the job market, there’s a certain thing to say about adding in soft-skills or even hobbies as well. These goals should be bite-sized and measureable like “go through 3 Udemy course units.”
3. The Applications List: This is the big one. Outside of the Master List, this is going to be the meat of our ongoing tasks. A recommendation that many coding bootcamps have is about 50~100 applications/week if you’re a software engineer. Of course this will depend on your search criteria and industry, some areas and jobs just won’t have that many postings. Other industries and higher positions will have too involved of a process to do that many as well. The number should be doable but meaningfully tough. If you’re not spending at least 90 minutes a day on this though, you need to either boost the application numbers or lower the search criteria.
4. The Networking List: Out of this list, this is probably going to be the one that most people will not do. And that’s a shame, because it’s this one that will probably double or triple your chances. For all the companies you’ve applied to, will apply to soon, or want to apply to in the future — make a list of people you can reach out to who currently work there. Try recruiters first since that’s their job, but bonus points if its someone in a role that you want now. Use this time to ask them questions, what skills they use and need on the role and in the company, and see if you can get a referral, a mentor, or just a friend. Bonus points for a virtual coffee meet!
5. The Personal List: With so many lists, it’s important to have one for yourself. Job hunting is a full-time job, but the most pernicious part of it is that it’s done all in your own time, your own place, and your own discretion. Though there needs to be a proper focus on the hunt itself, it’ll lead to nothing but burnout if there’s not some part of time that’s dedicated to enjoyment and self-care. So keep some goals and entertainment tasks as well.

Even though this has all been written with the format of lists, it can be done in whatever form that works best for you: Spreadsheets, post-its, calendar events, etc. The point is to plan our goals, how to get there, and establish a sense of accountability. Job hunting is a boggy phase in our lives, and it always sucks to be in it — especially when we don’t have the luxury of an existing source of income. So having a map, a trail of crumbs, or whatever your preferred analogy/reference to help lead the way out can make the process much more easy to handle and better for sanity.