Starting a little over a month ago I started seeing a disturbing trend. Many people’s Job search activities have been slowing down; fewer meetings, calls, applications & resumes sent, fewer hours put into the work etc... You need to ask yourself if this sounds like you and if so what is causing it.
I think this is happening for a couple of reasons. Summer is vacation time; time for slowing down, family activities, the summer “to do” list and travel. Even people who are unemployed treat the summer this way. The other thing that I think is slowing down intensity is the talk about a pending recovery or a recovery people imagine has already started. Many people assume that if there is a jobs recovery going on there are more jobs available so they do not need to work as hard to find and land them. When people think like this the difficult activities like networking and target penetration slow or stop and they go back to just searching for jobs posted on line and talking to recruiters.
Regardless of the reason a summer slowdown is a big mistake and will add many weeks or months to the length of a job search. When you think about taking some time off or simply slowing down ask yourself what your competition is doing. A job hunter’s number one objective during his search is to be constantly ding things that set him above the competition. Everything he does should babe focused on making himself look better than other available candidates.
What this means is that while others are slowing down you need to speed up. Work harder, faster and smarter than everybody else. Make more calls, talk to more decision makers, set more appointments, dig deep into your targets etc… When your competition slows down it creates new opportunities for you. Take advantage of them. Slowing down because everybody else does is not very smart.
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