Job Search Strategies for Survival, Part One

You’d be hard-pressed to peruse any job board or social media site right now and not get an immediate sense of job market morale.

Exasperated job seekers who have lost count of their applications and resume versions. Highly skilled candidates replaying their last few interviews on repeat in their minds, wondering what they said (or didn’t say) to warrant the deafening silence now plaguing their inbox. Adjectives of choice now bypassing “tough” and “challenging” for “soul-crushing” and “brutal”.

Yeah….it’s not good.

To be fair, I’m not sure if I’ve ever navigated a time period in my career when I heard the job market being described as abundant or amazing, save for the post-Covid lockdown surge of remote work offerings from companies desperate to stay afloat. Ironically, you’ll find a few of those candidates back in today’s job market as well, but that’s another conversation.

I don’t have answers for those of you cramming into seats at this table that you never wanted to be invited to. There aren’t many hacks for a process that so largely falls outside of one’s circle of control. What I CAN offer, and what I hope is still helpful, are some suggestions to claw some of that control back where we can, and to find meaningful intention in a journey that can feel anything but.

Take a look at this blog series and see if anything sounds worth trying. At a minimum, know that I truly believe what’s meant for you will find you, and if some days your best is just brushing your teeth, then I applaud you for doing just that. I’m cheering for you.

Part 1:      A.I.m to Protect Your Gas Tank

File this topic in that “another conversation” pile, because the controversy around AI and our feelings around it can go in so many directions. For the purpose of this blog, and your sanity, I want to offer you this perspective: you are going to go cross-eyed darting between job descriptions, your resume, your LinkedIn profile and back again. Is that the best use of your valuable energy? When you spend the pretty penny it takes to fill your car’s gas tank, do you feel more validated by reaching your long-awaited vacation destination on that tank, or by driving circles in your local shopping center parking lot for hours?

Exactly.

The AI tools are here. They’re not going anywhere. Why not lean into this technology to help you optimize that gas tank? Find your favorite tool, upload your resume, copy and paste the job description of choice and see what observations and recommendations you get back. Don’t like them? That’s fine – don’t use them…you only lost a handful of seconds on the experiment. Honestly, you’ll see some content suggestions come back that may elicit a laugh or an eye roll, because AI certainly takes some liberties with how it translates our experiences on paper….but that’s where your critical thinking comes in. Decide what to leverage. Tweak what it writes so it feels authentic, accurate and like a reflection of YOU instead of a large language model. Even if you only decide to utilize 10% of the feedback you’re given, your application is now that much stronger…and you didn’t wreck your own head trying to find that miracle breakthrough.

Keep reading the additional blog posts for more tips and tricks!