How to Job Search Effectively in 2024

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the job market is pretty rough these days. What might have landed you a job a few years ago just doesn't cut it in this market. Need some help in being more effective in your job search? Then this video is for you. In today's video, we'll be sharing details on how to be more effective in your job search in a tight and conservative market. We'll start with getting a starting point and clearly articulating your value. We'll move into how you should practice for interviews, warm up your network, upgrade your portfolio and experience, plus update your resume, as well as how to stay motivated and consistent in the job search. If you're new, hi my name is Luki and I create educational videos on jobs, careers, and life. If you're looking for some practical tips, advice, and life lessons, subscribe to stay up to date. The job market is tough, let's acknowledge that, but there are better ways and more effective ways to job search. Start by dealing with some of your constraints. If you have a short runway and only a few months or even weeks and need to pay rent and buy food, consider getting a survival job at a quick-serve restaurant, retail, whatever works best for you. The stress of worrying about money can be much more detrimental for your job, and if you have the luxury of more time and a longer runway, be sure to allocate your time. Your job search can be like a full-time job, the more hours that you can allocate and spend time on your job search, the sooner you'll be successful. But it's not just the quantity of time, it's also about the quality of time. Here's where we'll guide you through the most effective use of your time. Start by understanding what you want. Go onto job boards, search for folks on LinkedIn, what do you want as your next job? Be specific, the specific role, the specific company. Now here's where most folks push back, they'll say, well, I'm just looking for something in my area and I don't want to limit myself. But finding a specific role and company is not limiting yourself. It's finding a starting point for you to be able to articulate your value so that for any similar roles, it'll get much easier. There's an expression, if you're everything to everyone, you're nothing to no one. My recommendation for you to be effective in your job search is to make yourself as valuable and attractive for that role and that company as possible. Then you take that skill and apply it to any and all other roles and companies. Invest one hour on searching for your next job so that you can get started. You'll get more time later to continually improve yourself and take some breaks and then head into the next area. Pick the role and company that's the best fit at the moment. And you can always change this later, but for now, use that in order to do all the rest of the activities. Once you have that role, use an interview prep tool like Udily and answer the question, why should we hire you? If you're the type that likes to prepare, write it down first. You can use AI to give you a starter response, but be sure to make it your own. Focus on what makes you uniquely qualified versus the generic stuff like, I saw the job posting and I thought I'd be a perfect fit. What is that perfect fit? Is it your previous experience, your ability to learn things quickly, your ability to problem solve? Then take some time to review your responses. Give yourself a rating out of 10. Not sure how to rate yourself? Give yourself 5 marks for delivery. If you're not smiling, minus 1. If you're not giving about 50-80% eye contact, minus 1. If I can't see your hands or there's no enthusiasm in your delivery, minus 1. If you use lots of filler words or non-words like um or uh, minus 1. And if your answer is too long, as in more than 3 minutes, or too short, as in less than 1 minute, or you don't naturally end the response, then minus 1 again. Give yourself 5 marks for the content. Did you actually answer the question? And if not, minus 1. Did you mention the name of the company at least once and make it relevant to the role? If not, minus 1. Did you give a detailed example instead of just list the whole bunch of achievements? If not, minus 1. Did you tell a good story or have a logical structure? If not, minus 1. Did you add some human elements to make a connection to the role or the company? If not, minus 1. Based on your feedback, create a quick plan on how you can work to improve each element. Spend about 2 hours practicing on how to articulate your value for the role in that company. And you'll get more time to improve later. Then take a quick break. If you're finding this video helpful, then why not join the Focus Inspired Academy, which is your gym for career confidence. Go deeper into these concepts and get group coaching to help. Click on the link in the description box below for a free 1 month trial for supporting the channel. Now, let's get on with the video. Next, take some time to warm up your network. Do a network audit. Take a look at Frank. Friends, relatives, acquaintances, neighbours, and kids. Who haven't you connected with or spoken to in more than 4 months? If you've spoken to someone recently, have you spoken to them about your job search? Plan to reconnect with your network and build meaningful connections. Take a look at Y-Hira or Harry. You, as in who has the job that you want. Hiring manager, as in your future boss. An influencer, as in a prominent person in the industry that's probably connected to a lot of folks of interest. Our recruiters, as they're often pretty helpful. And then anyone that might be a person of interest. Plan to build meaningful connections with them as well. Spend no more than an hour on these activities to warm up your network and then take a quick break. Next, take some time to spruce up your portfolio and your experience. That means upgrading your LinkedIn, make sure it has a picture, the background image speaks to the type of role you want, your headline is an intention grabber, and it shares the skills or value that you add to the role. With your About section, make sure that it compels the reader to want to connect with you in the context of the role that you're looking for. Your Experience section should have many of the points from the various job descriptions that you're looking for. The skills on those jobs should also be on your profile too. And be sure to join some groups of interest and connect with folks there. Take some time to identify gaps between the job description and your experience and find volunteer opportunities to gain more experience or look at freelance or personal projects as well. Take a course or certification that also might be helpful. Spend no more than an hour to update your profile and experience and then take a quick break. Now, take time to upgrade your resume. Based on the job description, reverse engineer your resume. Blank out the bullets, go to the Responsibilities, Requirements, and Qualifications sections of the job description, grab the first bullet, copy it, paste it into the experience that best demonstrates your ability to do it, then paraphrase. Keep as many words from the job description as you can. You might need to chop up a few bullets or combine a few bullets together to make it more readable. Then, when you're done, run the updated resume through an ATS scanner like ResiMatch or Jobscan and make the appropriate adjustments based on your report. Spend about 2 or 3 hours on this activity and you might need to schedule a break in between. Then, spend a few minutes in your day to reflect and improve. What did you do well and what could you do differently or better? That should be a good 8 hours for your first day on the job search. And if you have other commitments, those hours might be spread over a few days. And in the next job search day, you'll want to pick up where you left off for interviews. And in addition to the why we should hire you, you should practice common interview questions like tell me about yourself, what are your strengths and weaknesses, where do you see yourself in 5 years? And you should practice turning the job description into interview questions. Practice answering based on your last experience, multiple experiences ago, or your strengths. Spend at least an hour or two or more if you struggle with articulating your value. Aim to target about one interview practice question for every 10 minutes of job search time that you've allocated for interviewing. You want to practice until you're at least an 8 out of 10. As in this market, companies are tight and they're conservative. They're not really hiring 7 out of 10s. You might even want to practice until you're a 9 or a 10 out of 10. And if you really want to level up your interview chances, consider pitching yourself in an interview. If you're not sure what that is, connect with me on LinkedIn and I'll share a template with you. Though I'll probably create a video at some point. Take a break then continue where you left off with your networking activities. Target one connection for every 10 minutes of job search time allocated to networking. Brainstorm ways on how to add value and see if you can actually create opportunities for yourself. For the connections that regularly respond or you feel you have a better relationship with, you might want to invest more time to create a value project for them. This is where I would spend most of my time in the job search as networking, in my experience, is by far the most effective way to land a job. Spend on the order of 2-3 hours per job search day and then take a break and continue where you left off for your portfolio and your experiences. Your daily activities of building your portfolio and experience might start at 2-3 hours and then reduce to maybe half an hour a day. Then take a break and continue where you left off for resume activities. Target improvements in your resume writing efficiency and it might take you 10 or even 20 resumes to get to one application every 30-60 minutes. I would typically allocate 1-3 hours per job search day. Then be sure to end off the day with reflecting. If you need help in any of those areas, then ask a mentor or a coach. In your reflection or off time, consider ways to maintain your motivation and consistency. The breaks in between activities are meant to help you with consistency, plus if you need help with an accountability partner, or doing an exercise on your purpose, or help from a mentor or coach, don't be shy about reaching out and asking for help. To be effective in this job market, go back to the fundamentals and really hone in on the value that you can provide to a company and in a role. Practice interviews so that you can communicate that value, spend more time networking and look to add as much value as you can to those that you connect with. Add a bit of time to level up your experience and portfolio to showcase your value. And of course, reverse engineer your resume for any interesting job postings. Plus, be sure to reflect and learn so that you are constantly improving in the process. Do what you need to stay motivated and consistent in the process, and reach out to a coach or mentor if you need help. You got this. Remember to share this video with a friend, let me know if you have any questions or what you are struggling with in your job search or career, and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget to subscribe for more tips on jobs, careers, and life, and YouTube recommends that you check out these videos next. Until next time, be focused and stay inspired.