Opportunity is out there, if you want it. The kicker is that there is a difference between wants and needs. When analyzing your options during a job search in a hurting market such as the one we’ve had over the last year, it’s important to understand the opportunities in front of you and how they line up with what’s truly important.

For some people, a job search is extremely time sensitive, making needs more of a factor than wants. This happens when a job is lost and there is a mortgage or rent to pay and you have other people depending on you to provide. In this case, you need to get a job – any job – fast. If you are lucky enough to have a bit of a financial cushion to help soften the blow, your wants will become more of a factor. Examples of wants include: type/size of company, product being sold, position status, location of office, benefits, corporate culture, etc. The more time and money you have available, the greater the emphasis is put on wants rather than needs. This is where opportunity comes into play.

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity – Albert Einstein

When given the unexpected opportunity to conduct a job search recently, I found myself immediately thinking about the needs in my life. I thought of my two young daughters and their future, my wife and our happiness, and I thought of my mortgage. These are my needs and they take precedent over everything else.   After assessing the security status of my needs, I was able to map out how much time I had to dedicate to a job search. This then presented the opportunity to focus more on my wants rather than just my needs.

WANTS VS. NEEDS

I’m lucky. I have a little time at least to decide which direction I want my career path to take. I have the opportunity to improve my family’s future and secure our needs by focusing on my wants.  So whether you are in a secure position or in the middle of a job search, ask yourself, “What are my needs? What are my wants? What opportunities are available to me? ”.  Answering these questions will allow you to prioritize what’s important and what you need to focus on when looking for a new job (or your next opportunity).

This past summer I joined the masses out there in what can only be described as dormant job market. The prospects of finding a job were not exactly overwhelming as the economic recession continued to drag on and the unemployment rate continued to rise. With what seemed like an insurmountable task on my hands, I decided to start at the beginning…getting my resume together.

Coming from an extensive healthcare recruitment background where I worked with hiring managers and candidates for the last eight years I thought that I would knock this baby out of the park in fifteen minutes and be back in the playroom fighting with my two year old for LEGO pieces. Boy was I wrong.

I sat down and stared a blank page for about five minutes before realizing that I had to fill at least one page with data about myself and my achievements from my working career. I hadn’t even typed my name yet and I was already getting intimidated. I decided to do what I always do when I get stuck, use the internet. I had a link from a few months back for a great resource on resume writing. I decided to follow the guidelines from the Rockport Institute website as it goes through a step by step analysis of how to draw attention to your relevant skill-set based and present it in an appealing fashion.

2K

Again, it’s a great resource but it’s a time consuming process. I spent parts of the next three days putting together what I thought (at the time) was an incredibly articulate and exciting resume. I decided to send it to my buddy Konstantinos (2K) as he is an executive recruiter at Hudson to make sure I had no errors that needed to be cleaned up.

Within ten minutes of sending out the email, I got a call from 2K reaming me out for putting together such a crappy resume. He said that he was going to kill it and send it back to me to fix. Well, he literally killed it. The amount of red font on it was astounding. It looked my high school calculus tests only without the test score and a “frowny face” in the corner.  I was embarrassed and upset. I had worked hard on this. I have extensive experience in helping healthcare professionals put resumes together based on what healthcare recruiters have told me. I decided to call 2K back to tell him this.

After a couple of minutes he cut me off and said, “Are you listening to yourself? Are you a healthcare professional? Are you applying for a nursing position? NO. You are a BUSINESS EXECUTIVE and your resume needs represent that!”

I hate it when he’s right (and he always is). He and I spent the next few days shooting the resume back and forth with various revisions and modifications and until it was at the point where we were both happy with it.

So I’m letting anyone out there in cyberland know that if you need someone to review your resume, feel free to send it to me frank@beyond.jobs. If it’s a healthcare resume I will be happy to look at it and if it’s for an executive or IT candidate, I will pass it along to 2K. He is always willing to offer his 2 cents.

I called 2K up afterwards to thank him. He said, “Don’t thank me yet, we still have to prepare you for interviews and then you have to actually start looking for a job.” Oh yeah…a job. I forgot about that.

I recently conducted a poll…ok, it wasn’t that recent, but it has only recently gotten enough of a response to make some statistical significance.

The question was “how you got your most recent job?”

And it is official, 44% of respondents got their last job through someone they knew. So, with almost a year of preaching, my little unscientific poll has validated my claims after such a long time…NETWORKING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT WAY TO GET A JOB THESE DAYS. It used to be about WHAT you knew, today it is about WHO you know.

So, if you are one of the 5 people in the world that read my blog, I urge you, check out some of my archived articles, follow the tips, and start networking. LinkedIn is a good place to start, but your professional networking should not be limited to that. Use your Facebook contacts, your church/congregation contacts, and help out any where you can. But, regardless, whatever you do make new contacts. Show your strengths and core competencies to others, and let them support you in your efforts.

Good luck, and remember that if you haven’t already done so, add me to your network http://www.linkedin.com/in/konst2k