Job Search Tip: Become A Time Traveler
If you are in a job search and not having success landing your target role, it may be time to get imaginative and consider an outside-the-box tactic.
Consider this: Become a time traveler!
Envision yourself 6 months or a year into the future. Write a letter from your future-self to your current-self explaining all the steps your future-self took to identify and land your desired role at one of your target companies.
This exercise has many benefits, including:
1. It will force you to think critically, expansively, and creatively about the actions you need to take to achieve your job search goal.
2. It can provide a checklist, roadmap, or pathways to help guide you in your job search.
3. It can prepare you psychologically for the challenges and obstacles ahead.
4. It can motivate and inspire you.
So, what might your future-self write about? Glad you asked! Here are just some job search activities which can contribute to a successful job search and therefore you might want to include in your letter: self-reflection, 360-degree skills/strengths assessment, shifting your mindset, visioning, developing and maintaining a career advisory board, informational interviews, occupational research, defining/refining your brand, participating in mock interviews, networking, increasing your in-person and online visibility, optimizing your LinkedIn profile, and so on.
One statement I encourage you NOT to include in your letter is “applied for a job on an online job board.” That is likely a tactic you are already doing, and which presumably isn’t working. Omitting “applied for a job on an online job board” forces you to think of other ways of being successful in your job search.
🗝 When you know what it takes to be successful, you can then adopt those strategies, tactics, habits, and behaviors.
Rather than ask your current-self what you need to do to be successful, get imaginative and have your future-self explain what you did to be successful. In doing so, you’ll generate a checklist/roadmap/pathways to guide you, you’ll be psychologically prepared for the challenges and obstacles ahead, and you’ll be motivated and inspired.
[This article was originally published on LinkedIn on 1/23/23: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/job-search-tip-become-time-traveler-bill-leonard-mhrm/]