Job Hunting To Do List

If you are looking for a job, you certainly aren’t alone. The economy is bad. Unemployment is high. People are desperate. It stinks. Here is a to do list to keep you moving during your job search.

Make an effort every day

It is easy to get distracted and depressed when you are out of work. The best way to fight that is to start every day with three tasks to do. Make a list of employers to call, to email, to visit and to research. Have a plan for every day.

Make phone calls

Emailing your resume is a passive activity. Making a phone call is much more proactive. After you send your resume, call the company and ask to speak to human resources. Make sure that they got your resume and see if you can get them to talk about possible positions. Beyond HR, try to contact the mangers in the departments you hope to work for. This can be uncomfortable work, but if you need a job, it is the fastest way to get moving.

Customize your resume

When you have a specific job description for what you are applying for, take the time to work as many of the words from the job description into your resume as possible. Your goal is to look like the perfect candidate. Don’t fake experience or knowledge, but make sure your resume reflects the most appropriate version of your job history and goals.

Use a job search aggregator

There are hundreds of sites that list jobs. It is a good idea to bookmark the sites that are local or specialized to your career. Beyond that though, you should use a job search aggregator such as indeed.com or simplyhired.com. These sites track the jobs at all of the major job sites, so you are less likely to miss an opportunity.

Have a complete job search kit

If you are looking for a job you should, at minimum, have a resume and a business card. Beyond that you might want to look at creating a portfolio of past work, a compilation of references and even a web site with online versions of these things. Go the extra mile. If you can provide something the other job seekers cannot, you are ahead of the game.

Practice your job interviews

Job interviews make many people nervous. Some of the questions you get asked can be downright silly and others will make you wonder if you are qualified for the job. Good preparation can help you overcome these obstacles. Get a list of practice questions and either practice reading them and answering them aloud (preferably with a friend) or write down your answers so that you can review them in the future. Below are some links to job interview questions and other sites that might help you in your job search.

More on the subject

• Typical Job Interview Questions
• More Job Interview Questions with ideas for answering
• Additional common interview questions

A Career in Technical Writing: Two dates to the prom

The Bullet Points

• In the world of contracting, the entire hiring process can take place over the phone
• Knowing the right tool (even a little) can get you the job
• Per diem is a fixed daily allowance for meals and/or lodging
• Beach time is payment for staying with a company but not actually going to work until they find more work for you
• Benefits such as health insurance and paid time off (PTO) come at a cost, and sometimes they are negotiable
• Recruiters always make the job sound great

The Road Not Taken

The first phone call I received that week wasn’t for a technical writing job. It was for a web development job at the local newspaper. The job made sense. I had some newspaper experience and I knew HTML. They wanted somebody who could convert their articles into HTML using a conversion program that would probably require a few on-the-fly tweaks. They brought me in for a job interview and it went well. I met the editor in charge of the online edition and we liked each other instantly. He was a nerd, just like me. We prattled on about HTML for far longer than anyone should.

The downside was the pay. The job would be part-time (25 hours a week) and pay about twelve dollars an hour. That would be barely enough money to skirt bankruptcy, much less get ahead. Still, the job seemed well-suited to my skills and the journalist in me liked the idea of working for the largest daily newspaper in town. The editor promised to call me the next day and let me know whether or not I got the job.

A Bunch of Calls in a Row

I was still dressed in my suit when I got home and the phone rang. I was hoping it was the editor, calling me early, but it was another gig entirely. The company calling was Wesson, Taylor, Wells & Associates. They were a contracting agency out of North Carolina that specialized in placing programmers in the health care industry. They wanted to know if I could interview for a technical writing job that day. I still had my suit on, so I said sure, just tell me where to go. You don’t have to go anywhere, the man said, I’m going to have the head programmer call you in about ten minutes. Eight minutes later, I was talking to the head programmer.

Once again, the interview went well. The programmer wanted to know if I knew anything about Speedware. I answered honestly that I had never heard of it. How about Cobol? Sure, I told him. I knew a little about Cobol. It was a structured language used for building reports and such. Well, it turned out that Speedware was a lot like Cobol, a programming language I knew “a little” about. He asked if I could read Cobol. I told him I had programmed in Basic, Fortran and Assembly language. Reading code didn’t frighten me. Either my answers were good or they were desperate, because the next thing I knew I had an offer.

All the Work I Could Handle

Actually, I had two offers. While I was on the phone with the head programmer, the newspaper editor called (a day early) to offer me the web job. The recruiter for WTW simply had more to offer though. He could either pay me $20 an hour without benefits or $29,000 a year salary with benefits (paid medical, holidays, paid time off). If I took the $29,000 I would be considered a regular employee of WTW with a permanent job, even though I would be contracting for a local health insurance company. When this gig ended, he explained, they would find me another. It might not be in the same city, but if I moved I would get per diem, which is a daily (tax free) allowance to cover living expenses. In the meantime, if they hadn’t landed me a gig, I would be paid beach time. Beach time means that you keep getting paid even though you aren’t currently working on a contract. You could go to the beach if you wanted. He told me WTW had plenty of work to offer, and that I would probably be working steadily for years.

I took the full-time gig, and using the power of the other offer (without revealing the pay) I eventually negotiated the salary up to $35,000 with benefits. In addition, because I told him I might take the newspaper job as well (it would be nights) he offered to pay me to redesign the WTW web site, writing new web copy and creating a new visual look. Suddenly, I had all the work I could handle. I also had to fire up the fax machine…

Further Reading

• Evaluating a Job Offer by the US Department of Labor: Advice on researching a job or a company.
• Employee benefits by Wikipedia: A rundown of the general benefits that might be available for a job.
• How to Find Technical Writing Jobs by John Hewitt: My step-by-step guide to the process.

Questions

• Is money the primary consideration in a job search?
• If one job paid significantly less than another, what other factors might lead you to take the lower-paying job?
• What experiences have you had with job recruiters?

Next Time

I’ll discuss some of the things that happen after you take the job but before you actually start the job.