What to Do When Your Job Search Stalls

If you’re stalled in your job search, chances are that something in the fundamentals needs fixing.

Find the weakest link and focus on that first, then go after the other weak points.

1. Know who you are and where you want to go to help make your resume strong.

Have a clear understanding of what your strengths are. Keep them in focus and refine them during your search.

Nail down the occupations that you can thrive in. Know where your strengths will be both supported and used.

Next, look closely at your past accomplishments. Connect them to your personal strengths and values.

Now you can make sure your resume is clearly communicating those strengths and accomplishments.

2. Use what you know about yourself to find the companies where you have the greatest chance of success.

Find the companies that have your occupations. Compare job descriptions to get a sense of where your strengths will come into play.

Use what you learn to write your own ideal job description. Find the companies that are hiring and rank them. The top companies should be the ones that are most inspiring or interesting to you.

When a company inspires you, you’ll have more questions about their job description. Make the effort to fill in those blanks. You’ll be more likely to deliver an inspiring interview.

3. Get help from others to fill in the blanks about your target jobs and companies.

Your best resource for answering questions about companies and roles is other people. But what’s the best way to find those people?

Networking is really just finding people who share your work interests. Many of them will be willing to have informal conversations with you. You can ask them to help you understand what they do.

As you learn, a company might start to look less attractive. But then you may also discover more inspiring companies to go after.

This is easy practice for future interviews. And the information will help make your resume stronger. It’s even possible that someone might be willing to put in a word for you to the hiring manager.

4. Have a system for doing your interviews.

There’s really no reason you should be reactive in any interview. You should have your own system for running interviews. One that is consistent. One that helps you to learn and improve with every interview. You do it by working with the interviewer.

Don’t walk into any interview without having a clear sense of what you want to get out of it (besides the job). Information, good will, visibility – these are some of them. Find out how the job really matches your ideal job description.

Don’t leave any interview without having some notes about where something you did succeeded, or not.

All the fundamentals you need to work on are here in BrightJump. Use them to fix what’s broken.

• Evaluate your resume against jobs you’re interested in. Just find a job you like on Job Search and save it. Then upload your resume on Resumes and see how it stacks up. You’ll get advice on how to improve it from the Resume Readiness tool.
• Follow the BrightJump courses that look most interesting to you. Their guidance can help you to avoid mistakes and become more effective in your job search.
• See if a live BrightJump coach would make sense for you. Professional coaching services are available through Live Coaching.

Put your faith in the fundamentals. Being stuck could be an opportunity to find where your control truly is.