How familiar is this scenario: The Christmas festivities are over and Brigitte has resolved to find herself a new job. After carefully crafting and updating her CV, she uploads it to the major job portals.
What follows are some calls from random recruitment consultants to discuss salary requirements, experience and notice periods. Apparently they have some ‘hot positions’ and she is the perfect candidate, but after that – nothing!
Fast-forward a couple of months and Brigitte is still sitting behind that same old desk, still having to listen to Gossiping Sue and Depressing Gordon wittering on about the same old nonsense, and still earning the same old salary; her resolution well and truly forgotten.
Passive Job Seeking
The problem is, Brigitte has been passively job seeking. She knows she needs a new job and that nagging voice at the back of her mind is telling her that now is the ideal opportunity to start looking, but as long as she continues to make the minimal conscious effort to find a new job, she will be stuck in the same position for years to come.
The problem is, finding a new job requires change and few of us really like change.
Fear of Change
Making major changes in our lives takes us out of our comfort zones and finding a new job is no exception.
You probably recognise many of the following concerns that people raise when they begin the job hunting process:
- I really like my current team and I am worried about how I would fit in to another organisation
- I don’t have enough experience to do (insert role)
- What if (xyz) organisation goes out of business when I move
- If I leave now I will miss my (often miserly) bonus
- There may be some opportunities for promotion if I remain loyal to the company, which I will miss if I move
These are all genuine concerns and it would be foolish not to consider the solidity and fit of a business before joining, but only once they have made an offer of employment to you. What you must not do though, is let these concerns put you off the search for a new job, before you have even started.
Tackling Change Straight On
Remember there are three key criteria for finding the ideal job:
- Autonomy – The ideal role will provide you with the freedom to evaluate situations and make decisions, without having to continuously defer to senior staff
- Challenge – A healthy dose of challenge keeps the brain in gear and gives you a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day
- Reward – We don’t work for free, so it is important to be able to see a relationship between the hard work we put in and the financial reward that we get out of it
Once you have been in a role for a while, you will begin to grow beyond your current boundaries of autonomy, challenge and reward; resulting in ever decreasing levels of job satisfaction.
This is why it is vital to take on the fear of change, and the only way of doing this is to get out there and proactively find a new job.
Proactive Job Hunting
Proactive jobseekers take the task of finding a new job to the next level. Whilst they cover all the basics, like updating their CV and distributing it to the major job boards; they also focus time on networking to find the unadvertised roles that make up as much as 70 to 80 percent of the job market.
The best examples of networking are picking up the phone and contacting recruitment agencies that specialise in your field of work or making direct contact with targeted employers.
Find out how proactive job searching helped me to increase my salary by 20 percent.
Start Proactively Job Hunting Now
It’s no secret that job hunting can often be a difficult and challenging process, but by throwing both passion and commitment at it, you too can access the unadvertised job market and unlike Brigitte, look forward to a better paid and more fulfilling role.
