A New Year can be a cause for celebration, for new beginnings and for goal setting; however, it can also be a time of a lot of pressure and stress. As a society, we put a lot of emphasis on New Year’s resolutions and enacting change as soon as the ball drops so to speak. The problem is, aside from it being a new calendar year, there really is nothing different about January that help people achieve their goals, and a lot of New Year’s resolutions go unrealized. This phenomenon can be demoralizing and have a negative effect on our motivation. For job seekers, a new year can be an excellent time to give your career hunt a fresh start, but what we don’t want is for your job seeking goals to go unmet. In this post I’ll discuss some tips job seekers can use this new year to help get your goals underway and more importantly, to realize them.
Polish Up Your Resume
This might seem like a no-brainer, but in a competitive job market, your resume needs to stand out from the crowd. While we’d like to hope that the content of a resume will be more important that its presentation, often this is not the case. A poorly presented resume or could end your job application before it starts. There are many great resources online and tools to make your resume gleam; make a point of looking into these as a first step.
Improve Your LinkedIn Profile
Just like your resume, the information on your LinkedIn profile needs to be kept up-to-date and current. Look at some of your connections’ profiles and see if there’s anything they’re doing that positively grabs your attention; if so, consider tweaking yours to replicate it.
Expand Your Qualifications
Work experience isn’t the only important part of a resume or a LinkedIn profile. Professional development certifications, volunteering and extra skills often catch prospective employers’ eyes and can make you standout. Not to mention, volunteering events and professional certification courses can also be great network opportunities and/or places to find a potential mentor.
Read One Career-Related Motivational Book
There are countless great literary resources out there to help you streamline your job-hunting. Even if you think you already know all the answers it’s worth committing to reading at least one, well-reputed motivational book as a process of organizing yourself and practicing committing to a goal. A nicely collated list of these books can be found here.
Get Networking
You’ve updated your resume and got yourself organized, but now is not the time to sit back and take your foot of the pedal. Instead, identify ways you can tap into your professional network. A good first step towards building a robust network is to try attending at least one professional networking event. Networking events are a great opportunity to meet other professionals in your industry that live near you. They’re a great way to make new connections and stay current. Sites like MeetUp and other similar platforms are a great place to start the search for networking events near you.
On the one hand, the New Year is a great time to get a jump on your job seeking. However, on the other hand, you don’t want the pressure of unrealistic New Year’s resolutions to demoralize you and actually hinder your eventual success. There are countless strategies and resources out there to help jobseekers get hired. Hopefully the simple tips in this article can help you make 2023 the year where you get hired for the job that you really want!
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