Seven Tips to Get a Job Fast

Is your job search taking longer than you expected?  Well, if you literally can’t wait to find a job, don’t panic.

A job search can consume a lot of your time—scouring job listings, filling out applications, writing resumes and cover letters, and going to interviews makes it difficult to focus on each task. But you don’t have to spread yourself so thin while looking for a job, as Louise M. Kursmark explains in her new book, Same-Day Resume, Third Edition.

Kursmark offers the following tips to get a job fast:

1. “Know your skills. One employer survey found that about 80 percent of those who made it to the interview did not do a good job presenting the skills they had to do the job. If you don’t know what you are good at and how this relates to a particular job, you can’t write a good resume, can’t do a good interview and are unlikely to get a good job.”

 

2. “Have a clear job objective. If you don’t know where you want to go, it will be most difficult to get there. You can write a resume without having a job objective, but it won’t be a good one.”

 

3. “Know where and how to look. Because three out of four jobs are not advertised, you will have to use nontraditional job search techniques to find them.”

 

4. “Spend at least 25 hours a week looking. Most job seekers spend far less than this and, as a result, are unemployed longer than they need to be. So, if you want to get a better job in less time, plan on spending more time on your job search.”

 

5. “Get two interviews a day. It sounds impossible, but this can be done once you redefine what counts as an interview. Compare getting two interviews a day to the average job seeker’s activity level of four or five interviews a month, and you can see how it can make a big difference.”

 

6. “Do well in interviews. You are unlikely to get a job offer unless you do well in this critical situation.…Knowing what skills you have and being able to support them with examples is a good start.”

 

7. “Follow up on all contacts. Following up can make a big difference in the results you get in your search for a new job.”

 

Louise M. Kursmark is the founder and president of Best Impression Career Services, Inc., a Certified Professional Resume Writer, Certified Job and Career Transition Coach, and Credentialed Career Master. Kursmark is the author of Best Resumes for College Students and New Grads and Sales and Marketing Resumes for $100,000 Careers, and co-author of Cover Letter Magic, 15-Minute Cover Letter and nine books in the Expert Resumes series.

For more information on her book, go to jist.com.