Job Search Planning

Developing a plan for your job search is crucial.  Remember, this plan will be altered as you move through your goals and meet them.   In order to develop a strong plan for success, follow these steps.

Determine your career goal.  It can’t just be to get a job.  Seriously think about your skills, experience, career desires and financial needs.  Just because you have been in one occupation for a while doesn’t mean that you don’t have the transferrable skills to do a different occupation.  Investigate some career options and determine a suitable path for yourself.

Investigate Companies.  Browsing job ads online and in the newspaper is fine; however, you will also want to include researching companies that you would like to work for.  Have a look at their values, products, visions and career section of their websites.  Try and schedule an informational interview with the Human Resources department (or another person in the company) who can tell you a bit more about the position you would like to get into.

Set a schedule.  Develop a daily schedule of job search tasks.  Arrange time to do online job search, research companies, social networking and in-person networking and tailoring resumes and cover letters.  Keeping to a schedule will make your job search far more productive, increase motivation and is good practice for when you are back at work! Try and do something everyday that is relevant to your job search and that will move you forward.

- Sunny & Sassy

Older Workers: Tips for using your age to your advantage!

Embrace your life experiences:  You’ve experienced great triumphs, successes and failures throughout your life; use these experiences to your benefit when job searching and interviewing!  Great success is practiced and built on learning from bad experiences.  Think about lessons learned and how you excelled in experiences that were trying.

Update your look:  You don’t have to entirely reinvent your personal style; but you want to make sure that you look is not outdated!  Get feedback from friends about your current look and what you can do to update it.  Try reading business magazines geared for your age group and look for styles that you would be comfortable with.  A new hairstyle, some new clothes, and simple make-up application can go a long way!

Regain confidence:  Be confident in your abilities and let that confidence shine during your interview; even if you are interviewing with someone who is younger than you.  Holding a grudge about a generation younger than yours will not get you very far.  Remember, you had to start somewhere too.  Your life lessons, extensive work experience and knowledge will no doubt benefit the employer.  Show them what you've got!

Get with the times:  In today’s world of technology, there are many skills that you can be updating to increase your employability!  Try taking an online or classroom course to update your computer skills, learn about social media and networking, read articles relating to the industry that you are in and learn about any changes that you could be making.

~Sunny & Sassy