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Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here.

Coronavirus is accelerating career transitions across the board, hitting record highs in November when 4.5 one thousand thousand Americans walked off the chore. For some of usa, mass layoffs and furloughs triggered this change. For others, pandemic-induced solitude exposed misalignments betwixt our work and our values.

Few people find embarking on a job search heady. In fact, most of us would probably concur that information technology's a daunting and emotionally exhausting process. As a outcome, early career job seekers tend to fall into two broad categories: avoiders or gatherers.

Overwhelmed by feelings of fear or confusion, avoiders frequently shut down entirely: "I don't know where to start and so I'm going to do nothing." Gatherers, on the other manus, respond to those aforementioned emotions with feverish action: "I take no idea what I want to do so I'm casting a wide net," or, "I hate my current job, and then I'll apply to everything."

Neither mindset is going to atomic number 82 you to a successful outcome. In the case of avoiders, idleness does non result in chore offers. For gatherers, a lack of clear direction leaves yous wandering in many directions.

To land a job yous volition actually enjoy doing, you need to exist intentional nearly where you lot apply and why. As role of my own process, I've created what I telephone call a Career and Personal Manifesto, a framework to provide construction to any job search. You lot can use it, too.

Here'southward how.

The Career and Personal Manifesto

The manifesto includes iii steps:

  1. Evaluate
  2. Engage
  3. Execute

Evaluate

A successful job search is uncomplicated. All you accept to practice is find task opportunities that lucifer your needs and goals. The hard office is figuring out what those needs and goals are.

To start, spend time with yourself and evaluate potential next steps. Consider the six categories beneath, each of which include a series of questions to help you discover the factors nearly and least important to you in your next role.

As you respond these questions, retrieve virtually your past and present jobs or internships, and which aspects of each part you lot enjoyed most (or really disliked).

  1. Environment: What kinds of environments, management styles, and ways of working do you lot thrive in?
  2. Role: What kind of roles and prospects for growth are you looking for?
  3. Bounty: What's the minimum compensation you volition have and what'due south your ideal range?
  4. Skills Acquisition: What skills and competencies does your resume currently demonstrate? Are y'all looking to gain additional skills or further specialize in what y'all know now?
  5. Career Narrative: How does your resume position you in the hiring market? For instance, does it propose you're someone who cares well-nigh socially driven work? Does it suggest you lot're nifty at building, launching, and leading new initiatives? Have you collected "prestigious" company logos?
  6. On the Horizon: Is there a meaningful and realistic pace you tin take inside the next 18 months based on your answers? For case, are in that location opportunities yous can have off the table or add?

Adjacent, utilise your answers to these questions to fill out the Chore Search Prioritization Matrix. This will help y'all figure out which roles to prioritize as yous move forward with your search.

Rank order the 6 evaluation categories based on society of importance:

  1. Must Haves: Required – will non consider whatsoever task without these items.
  2. Dainty to Haves: Of import simply won't brand or pause an opportunity.
  3. No Ways: Required – will not consider any job with these items.
  4. Don't Cares: Things that don't matter or are non-starters.

For instance, if compensation is the well-nigh important factor to you when searching for a new role, information technology should be the furthest left on the matrix. To illustrate how to apply this tool, I've provided an example of a matrix that has been filled out and ranked upwardly below. This matrix is for a junior consultant who is hypothetically interested in getting a job in the tech industry, and who well-nigh values skills acquisition and piece of work surroundings.

Engage

After working through the questions and filling out the matrix, you should have a better idea of what y'all are looking to do adjacent. At present, it'southward time to take action and outset reaching out to people in your network. Discussions are a natural role of the task-hunting process, but you want to segment the people yous engage with into two categories:

  • Thought Partners: People who can weigh in on your thinking and path forward (mentors, alumni networks, former managers and colleagues, etc.)
  • Opportunity Sourcers: People who tin help you identify open opportunities

When seeking outside counsel, be wary of what I phone call "advice of convenience," taking advice from people simply because they are in your orbit (an easy trap to autumn into). Instead, endeavour to step out of your comfort zone.

The best people to attain out to for communication are people you lot a) admire, b) take demonstrated skills and personal attributes you would like to gain, or c) are doing what you lot desire (or think you want) to be doing. Afterwards all, who meliorate to prove yous the path to where you want to go than the person already there?

Surprisingly, people of all stature are attainable and enjoy offer career advice. There are a variety of channels you can use to reach professionals. The about tried-and-true is LinkedIn, where many professionals have an account. If yous utilise this channel, include a personalized invitation to connect, explaining your objectives to increase the chances of a response.

The basic structure of your bulletin should be:

  • Introduce yourself.
  • Establish legitimacy by sharing context on your groundwork.
  • Clearly explain the purpose of your outreach, including why you lot desire to connect with the recipient (e.g. a specific job yous have identified at their company, interest in their industry, or interest in learning more than about their career path).
  • Make an ask to come across either past, telephone, video call, or in person.

Sticking with the to a higher place example of the junior consultant who is interested in transitioning into the tech industry, hither is a LinkedIn message they might transport to a hiring managing director at a visitor they're interested in:

Hi Ben:

I'm a 2d-year consultant with case work that includes working with education agencies. I'm looking to transition to EdTech startups and Handshake piqued my interest.

Would you be open to speaking with me some time about roles that may lucifer my skill prepare and interests?

Appreciate any time you tin provide and promise to hear from you soon.

Industries such as engineering, media, and mode likewise heavily leverage social media platforms such equally Twitter and Instagram. If the person with whom yous are interested in connecting has a public account, you could transport them a public tweet, comment on i of their posts, send a private direct message, depending on your comfort level. A common cold email — like to the LinkedIn message to a higher place — is another option to consider. (Many years agone, I sent an Instagram direct message to the woman leading the U.Thousand. fashion and luxury retail practice of a top engineering science company asking to meet while I was in London — we did and nosotros're still in touch!)

Individuals with whom you have analogousness will consequence in higher response rates. This can be high school or higher alumni or individuals with whom you share a sports, hometown/dwelling land, cultural, gender, greek life, or professional society tie.

In one case a meeting time has been confirmed, exist sure to ship a calendar invite with all the appropriate details to the person y'all are connecting with. Y'all want to make it as easy as possible for them.

Execute

At this stage, work with the contacts you have made in the step above to identify a few opportunities that are a skilful fit for you and the next stage of your career. Take another look at your evaluation criteria and determine how your job prospects stack upward confronting each other.

This is where the Opportunities Prioritization Matrix comes in. Use it to organize the opportunities y'all detect and prioritize which ones y'all actually want to apply to. This will save you a bully deal of fourth dimension and free energy in your search.

The Opportunities Prioritization Matrix is a loose adaptation of the Eisenhower Matrix Framework.

Hither's how to set up it upwardly:

Look dorsum at the Chore Prioritization Matrix. Which two categories did you charge per unit as well-nigh important to you? Identify these on the two axes and assess your opportunities to run across if they rank high or low (come across or do not meet) those priorities.

The matrix has four quadrants of priority:

  1. Focus Here: Opportunities in this quadrant are your "dream jobs." They meet the two most important criteria you have identified so you should invest the most fourth dimension pursuing these.
  2. Waste of Fourth dimension: Opportunities in this quadrant rank low for your well-nigh of import criteria. They may not even be worth applying to
  3. Be Mindful of Time Invested: These roles match your most of import criteria but not the second. You will want to utilise discretion applying to these positions as well.
  4. Distractions: Naturally, you'll come beyond interesting opportunities that practice not satisfy your near of import criteria. Try not to spend time applying to them.

If we utilise our original example of a inferior consultant interested in moving into the tech industry, nosotros know that this job candidate has an interest in mission-driven companies and has indicated in their Job Prioritization Matrix that maintaining a generalist skill set and dynamic, collaborative surround are the ii nigh important factors for their side by side task.

Beneath is an example of how they might fill out the Opportunities Prioritization Matrix if they were because the below roles at various companies.

Higher up, you lot can run across that task opportunities that offer generalist skills evolution (e.1000. strategy, partnerships and sales, operations) and collaborative team environments state in the focus here quadrant. Job opportunities with a specialized skill set and less collaborative environment land in the distractions quadrant. Since social mission is also important to this candidate, you'll see that mission-driven companies rank high fit on environment. Similar positions at non-mission driven companies rank low fit when it comes to environment..

All companies and positions have trade-offs and then structuring your matrix in this way allows you to stay light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation focused on only the ii most of import factors as you lot evaluate opportunities.

For fifty-fifty the near seasoned professionals, the multitude of career paths and chore opportunities available is an immobilizing feature of a task search process. By using a structured framework such every bit this i to focus your efforts, you'll end up with a more than favorable effect and avoid becoming an avoider or gatherer.