9 Things You Might Be Missing From Your Job Search Strategy

A successful "Job Hunt" is a combination of Strategy, Marketing, and Sales tasks. The strategy and marketing pieces you can start doing today itself, even if you are 5 years away from your actual job hunt and applications.

🎯Strategy 🎯

In broad strokes -🔎 figure out 🔎what you want (earn/learn/title), what you do well(skills) and what next? At the end of this exercise, you should have a list of the ideal industry, company, job role, pay range, learning aspirations, and company culture.

🔁 Iterate 🔁

Do spend 1-4 hrs on this but don't spend more than 4 - at the start of the hunt on strategic thoughts. Idea is to iterate on the strategy as you get feedback from your marketing activities.

🚀Marketing🚀

Many people will say "If only I knew how to sell my skill set better. I could be doing x and y at firm ABC." What they actually mean to say is, "If I could Market my skills better. " The piece you should spend maximum time on (7 days at least) is Branding & Positioning + Messaging & Community for yourself as a candidate.

💥Create a unique personal brand💥

For example, in my last job hunt, it was "Durgesh Shukla, a product manager who is great with ambiguity and understands a broad range of cloud technologies." What is the unique value prop you bring on to the table? Write it down.

👀Be visible👀 on Linkedin / Reddit / GitHub / StackOverflow / Tradeshows / Podcasts / Quora / Youtube / Tableau Dashboards

Create that Resume, personal pitch deck, those tableau dashboard, or GitHub projects you want people to take notice of. Get feedback on these items from different people. You want to be on people's minds. Answer the question "Why you vs 1000 other candidates?" and then create the answers via these forums.

✳️Community✳️

Find the tribe, your network, and the stakeholders that connect with you as a professional, and have an idea about the value you bring to the table.

✨Sales✨

And now once you have built the top of the funnel you need to focus on selling “You” the employee/resource.

🗣 Networking and Outreach👥

Talk to recruiters, hiring managers, and your connections about your being in the market.

🔥Apply! Apply! Apply! 🔥

Cannot stress this enough - once you have a resume set up on LinkedIn/job sites you need to make 10-50 applications daily. You can skip the cover letters, speed is more important. Instead, highlight your GitHub/ Open source contributions / personal pitch decks, etc.

🔄Follow ups🔄

Create an excel tracker and be in touch with all the recruiters with regard to your active applications. Send follow-ups at regular intervals.

Comment and message me to get the following assets that can help in the above steps:

🔆The job hunt funnel checklist to keep on track

🔆A personal pitch deck template

🔆A simple and proven resume template

Also published here.