Your job search efforts will struggle if you lack conviction. When you don’t have your reasons and a purpose for your job search, you can wander aimlessly for years. At times, you can even find jobs you later regret taking because of your lack of reasoning. It’s a dark place to be, and hard to find your way out without help, goals, and some form of empowerment.

These elements are also scary because of the commitment required to achieve and thrive in these areas. You may not feel the need to deepen your job search to include these things, but these are tools to help you reach your goals:

Mentorship during your job search

I don’t think we’re too old to have people whose career advice is at least a second pair of eyes. Objectivity is hard while assessing our career moves. Spouses and significant others sometimes can be great sounding boards, but unless they are further along in our career spaces may not be a career asset. It depends on where we are in our careers and our goals.

The New (But not So New) Job Search

Their choices should tell you whether or not he or she is a good mentor for you. You can check LinkedIn to see if coworkers or clients recommend them. Mostly if his or her career is in constant forward motion is a good indicator.

Mastery during your job search

People who are masterful in his or her career were trained by someone else who expects perfect from themselves. Being good or almost isn’t good enough! Rigorous work on your craft yields results, but loving the work is a sweet spot you’ll never regret.

9 Ways to Keep Up Your Holiday Job Search – The Voice of Job Seekers

It attracts the attention of others who have done it, who will offer help!

Momentum to energize your job search

Opportunities appear in strings at times and need a proper perspective. It is easy to interpret momentary success as the “ticket.” If you have done the right things, momentum can quickly turn into tangible progress. A string of referrals and interviews are good signs of progress. If it doesn’t go past the first meeting, then re-evaluate your progress.

At any age or level of success, seek mentorship, mastery, and momentum fearlessly and incessantly. These three elements are critical to your growth as there as distractions and obstructions attempting to derail your focus and eventually your success.

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Modernize Your Job Search Letters, Get Noticed…Get Hired is a compilation of sample job search documents. I have a copy of my own and knew this was a must-have resource.  Wendy Enelow (my guest this week), and co-founder Louis Kursmark published this book with 60 other presenters.  Letter samples in the book such as Cover letters and e-notes, recruiter letters, networking letters, thank-you letters inspire creativity and sound strategy to reach employers and recruiters.

How important are these documents to your career?

Let’s talk about it. I would love your feedback in one of three ways:

1. Call and leave a voicemail at 708-365-9822, or text your comments to the same number
2. Go to TheVoiceofJobSeekers.com, press the “Send Voicemail” button on the right side of your screen and leave a message
3. Send email feedback to [email protected]

Wendy Enelow is the founder and Co-President of Emerald Career Publishing, and also one of few Master Resume Writers in the world. Her company publishes resources for job seekers and help career professionals who advise them.

Here are a few of the highlights of our discussion:

• The usefulness of the book and the importance of the sample documents
• Wendy advises to send highly customized letters and use the book as a guide
• The relevance of cover letters and should be distinct from e-notes
• Letters are essential to selling yourself and use it to market yourself
• Wendy recommends e-notes rather than traditional letters because of its intended brevity and to the point highlights

Need help with your career goals, directions, or efforts? Do you need coaching or instruction? I am here for it! If you’re in Chicago, you might be interested in an upcoming event on February 12. If you want to join me, send me a note at [email protected] or call 708-365-9822 for more information.

Most people are not currently conducting proactive job searches. At best, most job seekers only implement a couple of strategies with no consideration for their personal brands or productivity. Often, these job seekers have resigned themselves to simply using a job board to occasionally look for open roles.

Today, in an effort to help job seekers be more proactive in their searches, I want to share four resources they can add to their lists. These resources will be especially useful for you if you fit into one or more of the following categories:

1. Ex-offenders re-entering the workforce
2. Those who have been searching for jobs for a long time to no avail
3. Those who want to create or build personal brands that help them stand out
4. People of color who are entering a field dominated largely by people who do not look like them

1. 211.org

I’ve known about this useful resource for several years, but it’s rarely referred to or talked about. In many U.S. cities, you can dial 211 for all kinds of local resources – especially if you need affordable food, housing, and utilities.

You can go to the site and type in your zip code to see relevant information and resource centers. The site can also help you find job information and re-entry resources. It is particularly helpful if you’re an ex-offender.

2. GoodHire

Job seekers can use GoodHire’s “True Me” platform to conduct self-background checks that allow them to see what employers will see when they conduct background checks. If negative information pops up, then the job seeker can annotate their file to explain themselves and tell a complete story of their work history.

Listen to the show with Good Hire!

3. AppyPie

In addition to having a professional website of your own, you may want to try to reach hiring managers and recruiters via their smartphones. Thanks to AppyPie, you can build an app of your own – even if you don’t know how to code.

Think about it: Building a website used to be a complicated process, and now anyone can do it in a matter of minutes. It looks like apps are progressing in the same way. Your own personal app could be the place where you fans, networking contacts, recruiters, and potential employers go to learn more about you.

4. Blendoor

The Blendoor app combats potential racial, ethnic, age, or gender bias by matching people with jobs based on their skills, work experience, and education alone. It is a merit-based, “blind” recruiting platform that forces companies to vet candidates according to their business value alone.

Stephanie Lampkin, CEO and founder of Blendoor, says the app removes “unconscious bias” from the hiring process by cutting personal information such as names and photos out of the picture until a match has been made.

Listen to the show with Stephanie Lampkin!

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Today’s job seekers must be creative if they want to stand out and get the attention of hiring managers. Of course, you have to understand that a proactive job search is a 360-degree approach. You can’t just wait until you’re desperate for a job. Position yourself to attract employers to you while you are pursuing them.

 

This article was originally published on Recruiter.com!