Lisa Virtue:

Welcome to Her Career Studio. I'm your host and career coach Lisa Virtue. Here we live by the mantra thrive at work so you can thrive in life because we know you are more than your day job.

Each episode includes actionable tips and often mentor stories to not only boost your professional success, but also enhance your personal well being. Join me as we explore ways to ensure your career uplifts your life as you strive to achieve work life harmony. Head to Her Careerstudio.com for free resources and coaching services to help support you during career transitions and challenges such as when you are looking to find and land that next ideal job or promotion or are leading a new team, we're here to support you. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and please hit the thumbs up or leave a five star review if you are finding the content useful. This helps us keep going in our mission to help women in their careers. Thank you so much for your support.

Lisa Virtue:

Hi there and welcome back to Her Career Studio. In today's episode, we are going to talk all about working smarter, not harder in your job search and really figuring out where to focus your time in the most effective ways. So this is cutting your job search time in half with these top three career coach secrets. These are things that you might think are duh moments. Of course I need to be doing that or I should be doing that. And if that is the case, then you know that I'm saying this out of love because these are the things you should be focusing on. Okay, There's a lot of squirrel moments in the job search and in our careers in general that end up distracting us from what's most important and what is most effective. So if you've been feeling overwhelmed by endless job applications, the economy, unsure of how to make the best use of your time, et cetera, this episode is for you.

So let's break down the three career coach secrets that help cut your job search time in half. Why do I say in half? Because this is what I've seen when people come to me as clients and they've been in a job search 6 months, 12 months. The general rule of thumb is if you work with a coach and you follow these steps, you. You cut that in half. So someone that's looking for a job for six months, has no prospects, comes and works with me, and within three months they've got a new job and we're onto negotiations. So it's kind of the rule of thumb. Now, of course, everyone has variables when it comes to their job search. And the economy and even location of where you're looking, what's going on in the industry that you're from, et cetera, or if you're in a transition.

But in general, that's what I've seen. The basic rule of thumb is once you start working with a coach and an expert, you can cut your time in half or better. All right, before we jump in, a quick reminder to visit hercarestudio.com for free resources, including the ones we'll talk about today to support your search. We even have a chat GPT resume brainstorming partner that we won't talk about today, but that is on our website and a custom resume template that you can go snag to make those parts of the job search so much more fast, efficient, effective, etc. Tried and true resources for you. Grab it and go. These tools are designed to make your job search easier, faster, et cetera. Be sure to check them out after this episode.

All right, let's dive into the top three secrets. Secret number one Use a job search tool to stay organized. One of the fastest ways to lose time during a job search is by being disorganized. You lose track of where you've applied. You, you miss deadlines. You might miss a job posting that had an expiration date, or you forget to follow up on an application, forget to send a thank you note, or maybe even a recruiter calls you and starts talking to you about a job and you forget that you applied. Or you ask, I'm sorry, what position was this? That's such a good way to break that connection that you're starting to create with that person and that potential opportunity. So this all slows you down.

That's why career coaches recommend using free job search organization tools. I always have my clients start a job board online where they can grab job postings. So there's tools like Huntr or Teal, which I will include links in the episode description because these tools act as your job search dashboard. Okay, they're great. They're job search support tools. They have job boards where you can grab your jobs, track where you've applied, set reminders for follow ups, save and organize job postings you're interested in, even when they disappear online. Maybe you're in the middle of an interview process and you're like, oh my gosh, where's that job posting? This saves you time because you don't have to copy and paste all of that. You just download a Chrome extension, hit save in your job board and it will grab everything for you.

And from there, there's notes that you can create. In Huntr in particular, you can also save the documents you used to apply. If you're trying to remember which resume or cover letter you used, who did you contact, did you get a referral or a reference, making those notes, adding contacts to that job, et cetera, it's such a great use of your time to go download it because it's going to save you a tremendous amount of time later. Now, both of these tools, Huntr and Teal in particular, the ones I'm talking about today, let you create a pipeline and a Kanban view of your job search so you can see which applications are in progress. You can even have a wish list before you apply so you can go and do your quick research, snag the jobs you want to apply to, and then go into flow and efficiently start applying to multiple jobs in one day. You can also see which interviews are coming up, what's next on your to do list? All those things are right there in the tool and they're free, which is fantastic. Now, when you're organized, you're more efficient and efficiency is key to cutting down your job search time. There are tools I do not recommend you use to apply for jobs online, and one is there's these AI tools that will.

You can input your info and then they'll go out and they'll apply to hundreds of jobs for you all at once on your behalf. The reason that I do not recommend these right now, and I might never recommend them, we'll see what happens with the state of all these AI tools and what's going on in the job market is that this can harm you more than help you. For one, it's. Some people say it's a numbers game. While I do believe that you need to put the effort in and you need to apply for a lot of opportunities. It's more about quality over quantity. And in this case, customizing your materials to match a job posting is really important. Also, these tools can't quickly answer qualifier questions, right? So if there's questions in the application that you need to spend time on, make your own and answer thoroughly, they can't help you with that.

Also, there's job postings that will say, if you used AI to help you apply for this job, we will automatically disqualify you. Or if we find out after we hired you that you used AI, we will fire you. So things like that are coming up in the marketplace and in the recruitment industry. And the reason is because there's Just these kinds of tools are swamping the applicant tracking systems for recruiters, making their job a lot harder. So check out episode seven of season two of the podcast for more information on this and other AI tools within your job search. So I'm not going to focus more on AI tools right now. Just know that I talk a lot about it. The whole episode 7 is dedicated to that.

Okay, so very briefly, the tools that claim they will take your information and apply to roles for you. So you can put a ton of applications out there, do so in a way that is generic and does not customize your materials to appeal to that particular audience. That's why I'm recommending you do not use them. Instead, focus on these other secrets. So the tools that I'm recommending, Huntr is right now my favorite tool as a career coach in this job board industry because my clients can share their job search board with me. So if you're working with a coach or you want to share your board with someone you're collaborating with, Huntr is the choice for you. So I just want to put a little plug in there. I think that's one thing that they do really excellently is that that you can share with coaches and collaborators.

So if there's someone you're working with on your job search, choose Huntr. All right, secret number two, prioritize networking and cultivating relationships over a perfect resume. So here's a hard truth. Most jobs, some say even up to 80%, are landed through networking, referrals, etc, not online applications. Yet so many job seekers spend the majority of their time hitting apply and hoping for the best. Isn't that where you're spending most of your time doing all this asynchronous work by yourself, solo? Because you can do it any time of the day. And you go and you just find a bunch of jobs to apply to and you go apply to them without knowing anyone at the organization, without looking for a referral, etc. Etc.

But if you want to cut your job search time in half, shift the majority of your focus to building and nurturing those professional relationships and those connections you have people that want the best for you and those that are mutually beneficial. So people that can help you and you can help them either now or in the future, those are those relationships you want to cultivate. I talk a lot about this one in episode six, which is unlocking career opportunities through nurturing your connections. So go check that episode out for a lot of quick guides and how to prioritize networking and cultivating relationships. But I want to talk about right now, why it's important. Over a perfect resume, I see time and time again, even career coaches and resume writers fall into this trap. People spend so much time and energy on the resume and trying to perfect it or find the right template or making the formatting perfect. I've even fallen into this trap as a resume writer.

Spend all this time and at the end of the day, it didn't really matter because there was a referral that helped someone get in front of the hiring manager before the resume was even ready and the resume ended up being a formality. So you do need to have a resume. It needs to be appealing to the human eye because humans are going to read it and look at it as they're hiring you and talking to you, even the recruiters as they're screening you. It's not just about machines, right? We're not trying to trick a machine. We're trying to convince a human that we've got the goods and we match the role. So a resume is important. But how much time are you spending trying to make it perfect versus getting out there and talking to people? So instead of spending all those hours on your computer mindlessly trying to perfect a resume or cover letter, you should be having conversations, you should be getting out there, putting yourself out there. One thing to remember is always follow up with a thank you note after a conversation.

I think I failed to say this in episode six, so I want to bring it up now. Make sure that you thank people for their time and you keep them updated on your progress. Like mentors, they always want to know. Even me as a career coach, there's often times where clients will be moving on to a promotion or something and they just forget to update me. And I'll have to reach out and say, how are you? What's new? And then they're, oh, yeah, by the way, here's all these things. Thank you so much for your help. And they just forget to reach out to me and I intimately a supporter and a cheerleader and somebody that wants the world for them even after our client engagement is over. So if that's happening with people like me that work very closely with people, it's happening all the time.

And I know this as a mentor of people too. People just forget to follow up and they forget to thank their mentors. Make sure you're doing that with networking because it's just like brand awareness. Every time that you put yourself in front of someone, it's going to be a little reminder that you exist that you're there. Right? This is what marketing is. It's about brand awareness, making sure people remember that you exist in the marketplace. So follow up, give people updates. You don't have to have a specific reason why you're reaching out to someone, like asking for a favor.

It can literally be giving them a gift of knowing about your progress. People want to hear it. And remember, networking is not about asking for a job. It's about building those connections that may lead to opportunities, but the primary purpose for cultivating those relationships is actually not for the opportunity. When you do it right and you approach it with genuine curiosity and a willingness to learn from others and also help others, it becomes a much more enjoyable process and much more effective. So get out there and make sure you're having those conversations that is going to help your job search in spades over that perfect resume Secret number three. Set time limits and chunk your job search into three parts. A lot of job seekers spend hours and hours applying for roles, only to feel burnt out and defeated.

So what's the secret here? Set boundaries for yourself and structure your time effectively. This also will actually end up cutting your job search time in half because you're going to set boundaries for yourself. You're going to be much more effective and efficient by doing this. So here's a simple formula that I recommend. First, divide your job search time into three equal parts each week. And if you're a software developer or someone who's technical, you can change this to cutting your search into four equal parts. And the fourth part would be working on your technical skills. Okay, so everything applies to you that I'm about to talk about, but just change all of these to 1/4 and then add in.

1/4 of your time is working on technical skills. So an example would be Leetcode. If you're a software developer or mock technical interviews, those kinds of things. It could even be, you know, working on building your new tech stack or a new technology that you know is in demand for your industry. Okay, so that's. Those are for technical people. So going back for everyone else, it's into one thirds. One third is networking, cultivating relationships.

So you're going to spend this time reaching out to new contacts, reconnecting with your network, attending industry events, webinars, places where you can actually have conversation with people. That should be one third of your time. So if you have three hours in a day to work on this or three hours on the weekend, you're going to spend one hour, whole hour on this relationship piece and you're going to set a timer for yourself. That could also be virtual coffee or going to coffee with colleagues. Okay. The next hour or one third of your time is going to be job posting research. This is where you go and you find the jobs that you want to apply for. So going on LinkedIn, for instance.

Indeed. And then there's a lot of niche platforms for your industry that can identify roles that might excite you. So go and find those jobs and save them on the job board like Huntr or Teal that you've opened up and stick to a timer in this case. It's so easy to go down a rabbit hole when you're looking for jobs. Okay. And don't discredit the amount of different specific job boards there are for your industry and for, like I said, for niche roles or for places that have networking events, all sorts of places can have job postings, not just places like indeed and LinkedIn. So make sure you're looking at all those different kinds of job boards. The last one third of your job search time is going to be actually applying for jobs.

So now you're going to go in and you're going to focus on crafting tailored applications for the roles that truly align with your goals. And quality matters more than quantity here. So take the time to customize your resume and cover letter for each application. Now, what I don't want you to spend a lot of time in is going and thoroughly researching the company and the role until you get an interview. So you should be looking at things like what are the, what's their culture, what's their value system, what kind of projects are they working on, finding the hiring manager? Those kinds of things here you can absolutely spend your time on to customize it and make it true to what your experience is and the value you can bring to that role. But what I see often, oftentimes happens is people go down a rabbit hole here as well, where they look into everything, like all the Glassdoor reviews, everyone they can find on LinkedIn that works there, and they start putting themselves mentally in the role as if you've already got an interview and you're already onto the job itself. Sometimes people also talk themselves out of applying for a role because they see one bad review on Glassdoor, let's say, and this can be a waste of your time, but also a waste of your mental energy. If you're aligned to the job posting, you're eager to apply for it, and you go and do that quick research to customize your resume in the places that we talk about in episode four, writing a stellar resume.

If you're doing that work, it shouldn't take you very long, so do it quickly. Turn those applications quickly so that you can get a little more of the quantity in there, but it's very much focused on the quality. And then once you land interviews, that's when you do a ton of research to prepare for the interview. Okay, but don't spend all that research up front just for the application. You haven't even gotten an interview yet. All right. By chunking this time into three categories, or four if you're a technical expert, you ensure you're not putting all your energy into just one area, like endlessly applying online or endlessly looking for jobs. You'll make steady, consistent progress every week if you follow this guideline.

So set timers for yourself. Make it a discipline action. All right, here's a bonus tip. Create a weekly job search routine. One of the biggest time savers is having a consistent routine. So when you're chunking your time like this, go schedule it and make sure that you put it in certain days in your calendar. Like maybe it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're going to spend time on your job search. So Mondays you're going to spend one hour of networking.

Wednesdays you're going to do one hour dedicated to job research. And then Friday you're going to focus on submitting applications and following up. Obviously, this can ebb and flow based on the job search and what's happening. Like if a deadline is impending for an application or it's been open for a week and you want to be one of the first people to apply, go turn the application quickly, maybe stop the job research, and then and there go apply. But make sure you're timing yourself and you're not spending too much time in one area. It should really feel balanced in this case and that one third of networking time. If you actually do that, your network is going to help give you opportunities, or you're going to find new networks and new people that will eventually get opportunities for you. That networking and connections and relationships is key here, so don't forget to set those boundaries for yourself.

A job search does not have to consume your entire week, but it easily can if you're not setting those boundaries. Even if you just have a few focused hours per week, you can make significant progress if you're intentional about how you spend that time, and it'll be much more effective and efficient. Okay, let's put it all together. Let's recap the top three Career Coach Secrets that I shared with you today to cut your job search time in half, use a job search tool like Huntr or Teal to stay organized and efficient. Check out the show notes for links to these platforms. Number two Prioritize networking and relationship building over endlessly applying to jobs online. And number three Set time limits and divide your efforts into three parts each week or four. For you technical people, networking, job research and applying these strategies will not only save you time, but will also help you focus on what really works in today's job market.

That's it for today's episode of Her Career Studio. I hope these Career Coach Secrets inspire you to approach your job search with more focus and less stress. And if you need help with the how to Check out the other episodes I referenced and the rest of the season and also reach out. Let me know what questions you still have. If anything's unclear, please send me a note at support@hercareerstudio.com or connect with me on LinkedIn at Lisa Virtue. Remember to check the links in the episode description for the tools I mentioned and don't Forget to visit hercareestudio.com for free resources. Thank you so much for tuning in today and as always, remember you've got this. I'll see you in the next episode of Her Career Studio.

Lisa Virtue:

Are you currently in the job search or looking to make a career transition? Her Career Studio has you covered.

Hi, this is Lisa Virtue, the career coach and the founder of Her Career Studio that is dedicated to bringing you free resources.

So head to Her Careerstudio.com and get your free cover letter template, the guide to how to write it and your free resume template. Keep it simple and use these tried and true resume templates that are also ATS friendly and in Google Docs so they're easy to edit and keep track of. This will build out your career story in writing so that you can get those interviews and ultimately land that ideal job.

You got this. Good luck and best wishes.