Don’t have time to read the whole article? Here are the key points:
1- The mental phase. Know that you’re not special & Prepare for a long job search.
2- Stop. Just stop wasting your time in sanding your c.v. and plan your day to be more efficient.
3- Change the environment. Get out of your house and ignore temptations that coffee shop offers.
4- Time management. You divide the day into two: In the first part, you work to land your next job. In the second part, you study to enhance your professional soft skills.
5- Your dream job. know where you want to be in 5–8 years. Learn the path you need to get there. Know that it may not be your current job title.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”
― Alvin Toffler
So, let’s start with the famous statement -“searching for a job is a job in itself “. Cliché but it doesn’t make it any less true. Thinking about a professional change? A new place? Or a new way? So where to start?
The mental phase.
First of all, you’ll need to enlist your mental strength. Know the fact that you will be looking for a job for a long time. Why? Because you’re not F*#@!$% special. Remember the famous speech? Yes, I know! It’s from 2012. Yes, I know! It’s taken from high school graduation. But the main idea is relevant! Don’t skip the clip!
Nowadays, digital is the thing! Everybody wants a piece. Look at how many colleagues you have on LinkedIn to understand who your competitors are.
Let’s dive into some numbers:
Product management (product manager, sr. product manager & VP product titles) more than 50 million.
Design (designer, graphic designer & art director) more than 14 million.
Only the word development has more than 62 million people with the word in their title.
Should we say more?
I don’t want to lower your motivation but you need to be strong. Mentally strong. For how long? I don’t know. It can be a month at best & it can be a year in other cases. You will get lots of rejections. I hope not but you need to prepare for it. What can make you different from all those people who won’t read our articles? The way you handle your self in the process and the unique steps you need to take to grow. You need to learn from every C.V. that you sand out there.
The first step:
Stop sending C.V.
But now.
We mean it.
Stop. Just take a step back and look at the Word document. Let’s see how you will improve your C.V. and then we will start to send them again.
“But I saw my dream job.”
Nope.
Just no. Don’t be afraid!
You will not miss your dream job. Even if the process of preparing your C.V. will take you a week, the life cycle of an open position is more than a week. The whole process (if you work right) should not take more than three days of C.V. preparation. so what to do with your C.V. and how to improve it? we’ll talk about it later…
Environment:
Go out. Do not work from home. Get dressed and go to the public library. Take your laptop. You’ll have quite there, your phone will be silent. Focus. You can make an office away from home. For free! Only if the opening hours don’t work out for you, get into a quiet room in your house and do not leave it. No matter what happens outside. You do not go shopping, not errands and if your kids are sick, bring a babysitter. The guideline is — if you were at work, could you do it? If not… don’t do it. Get out of the house. Think of the positive psychological element that a day with an agenda does for us, as human beings. You’ll go out and see people. By noon the public library will be full of students and you’ll have a good vibe atmosphere.
Now let’s talk about money:
A job search costs money. Because we don’t see the job search title in the credit card details we tend to forget it. A job search day is a 9-hours day. A full workday. Let’s say if you earn a total of $ 15,000 a month. And this month you have 20 days to work (to calculate easier), it means that you earning 750$ a day. Now. You’re not working! Think about how much money you lose for each day you do not work. Think about the day you tried to search for a job from the coffee shop. How much time did you spend looking for a job? And how much time you were distracted?
Make the calculation and you will see that you are losing money. Personally, there is no better motivation for me to see the money I lose. Every day that I don’t work I put in the box near my computer the $ 750 of that day. Seeing the money builds-up, helps me to understand what it means to have a fun day at the mall instead of looking for a job.
Yes, we mean business.
Time management:
What do you do in 9 hours? You divide the day into two (not necessarily equal, but a ratio that makes sense to you). In the first part of the day, you work in searching for a job. In the second part of the day, you study.
What do you study? Future skills that will strengthen you. If you have worked for a long time in a workplace (4 or more years), you are no longer relevant. You were in a comfortable place, but there are movements in the market all the time. Every job you look for should be your springboard for the job that follows. (I do not feel the need to explain this logic) and those who understand this ides knows three things:
- In preparation for a job interview, you need to know where you want to be in 5–8 years. Destination. A clear path that you know that it will change with time but in the meanwhile, you’ll go in a clear path.
- The current position you are looking for should be the thread that links there. In other words, you will not aim for the same position, choose the best job that will take you to your destination.
- Don’t get fixed on your title. The market is evolving and jobs you never dreamed of appear every day. Look around. Talk to people.
If I take these insights one step further, there is no doubt that as job seekers you have an advantage over working people. Time. You have time. You can promote your professional abilities. Do not think of it as wasted time but as an investment for the future. You are less relevant because you need reinforcement in professional hard or soft skills? Go for it. There are more than enough websites that can teach you all these things for free. Want to be certified? the same websites, if you pay them and pass a test, will give you certification. No one will ask for certification. you’ll need the terminology. bring examples. talk about case studies. create demo projects and highlight the capabilities through them. Nowadays we need to learn how to learn. We need to get the knowledge fast and get tools that help you practice. nowadays’ it is less important where you have learned. I am not saying that colleges are not important. Go through employee search ads. See the balance between work experience and the right education. You’ll need to emphasis on how you can influence the organization you want to enter.
thank you for reading.
part 2 will help you to write your C.V. correctly, and how to get ready for the interview.
stay tuned!
Need professional reinforcements? Here some top-six resources you can use:
want to learn one thing every day? Got tired from newsletters/podcasts that go directly to spam? Here a few options:
PlayBook
PlayBook — personal professional growth for product managers, customer experience, designers and more. The new age of newsletters. Directly to your phone on the platforms that you already love. With more than 5000 people exposed to service across social networks and with more than 1000 daily readers, this new and free service is gaining momentum as there is no sign up for the service, there are no tedious newsgroups and nothing to install to get the content. join the telegram channel or the WhatsApp broadcast list.
The telegram channel:
to join the WhatsApp broadcasting list contact the service throw their Facebook page:
googles free apps to learn about digital:
Google playbook for developers
Google playbook for developers — tips to grow a business.
Learn about the latest Android features, best practices, and strategies to succeed on Google Play. Discover insights to help you develop and launch your app, engage and grow your audience, and earn more revenue on Google Play. Explore the in-depth guide to Google’s developer products, and choose interests to get curated posts and videos both from Google and across the industry.
Download from Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.secrets
Apple fans — we didn’t find it on the apple app store. sorry.
Google’s Primer App
Primer is a free, fast and easy way to learn new business and digital marketing skills. Primer works offline too, so you can take a lesson on business planning, management, sales, digital advertising, social media, content marketing, SEO, analytics, branding, and more whenever you have 5 minutes free — anytime, anywhere. You get personalized next steps after each lesson, so you can put your new skills to work right away. Get the business and marketing knowledge you need quickly and easily, and keep track of your progress to make learning new skills part of your everyday life.
Download from Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.primer
https://apps.apple.com/il/app/google-primer/id918628107?l=iw
Coursera
Coursera was founded in 2012 by two Stanford computer science professors with a vision to provide anyone, anywhere with access to the world’s best education. Professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng put their courses online for anyone to take — and taught more learners in a few months than they could over an entire lifetime in the classroom. Today, Coursera has expanded to reach more than 40 million people and 1,900 businesses around the world. On Coursera you can find online courses, Specializations, certificates and degrees from 190+ world-class universities and companies, including Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Google, IBM, and more.
Udemy
Udemy helps organizations of all kinds prepare for the ever-evolving future of work. Our curated collection of top-rated business and technical courses gives companies, governments, and nonprofits the power to develop in-house expertise and satisfy employees’ hunger for learning and development.
Pluralsight
At Pluralsight, we believe everyone should have the opportunity to create progress through technology and develop the skills of tomorrow. With assessments, learning paths and courses authored by industry experts, our platform helps businesses and individuals benchmark expertise across roles, speed up release cycles and build reliable, secure products.
Didn’t find what you were looking for? do a quick search on Google with “sites like….” You’ll get lots of interesting results according to interests….
ilan dahan.