Conducting an Agile Job Search

Adopting an agile mindset and engineering approach to your job search enables you to be flexible and effective in achieving results. Use an iterative process to design, build, test, evaluate, and improve your job search effectiveness.

• Create and execute your job search strategy using a well-defined roadmap and detailed playbook.
• Test and measure the effectiveness of your job search activities.
• Revise and refine your job search activities, depending on what works best.

 
Apply the 5 Steps of the Iterative Process Model to Your Job Search

1. Planning & Requirements: Start with career clarity. What type of job are you seeking? By when? How will you measure success?
   
   
2. Analysis and Design: Envision your end goal. Set parameters. I want to land the position of __ with a __ company by __ date. On a scale of 1 to 5 how strongly are you dedicated to landing a new job? Brainstorm with your support team. Enlist the help of a friend or career coach to serve as an accountability partner. How are you going to achieve your goal? What steps are you going to take to get there?
   
   
3. Implementation: Conduct industry, company, and position research. Create your career marketing collateral (résumé, LinkedIn profile, executive bio, and cover letters). Create a job search action plan. How much time each week are you going to devote to your job search? Block out time on your calendar. What activities are you going to commit to doing? How much time are you going to allocate to various job search activities? 
   
   
4. Testing: An iterative process will bring you closer to your end goal of landing a better job—ideally, a job aligns with your core strengths and values. 
   
   It always amazes me that people rely on one method, applying online, when they could change their job search activities to focus on building professional relationships through networking, which yields far better results.
   
   According to a research study conducted by JobVite, approximately 73% of people found their last job through networking and a little more than 20% of those people had jobs created for them based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
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5. Evaluation and Review: A basic principle of management is that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Track your job search activities daily with a simple scorecard. Review your job search activities weekly. Which activities are generating the best responses?
   
   It’s helpful to have a career coach to provide feedback and encourage you to make incremental changes to accelerate your job search process, help you determine what’s not working, and help you find solutions to overcome obstacles.
   
   ​Are you conducting thorough research? Job seekers need to understand their target audience (recruiters and hiring teams). What is it that employers want to know about you? Are you getting interviews but not offers? Maybe you need more interview preparation and practice. Determine what needs to change and take actions that support your goal of landing the right job with a great company within a specified timeframe.

 
Realize that some aspects of your job search are out of your control such as how long it takes the company to go from recruiting to interviewing to extending an offer, but there are best practices for follow-up communications in each of these situations.
 
Please remember how important collaboration is to your job search success. Surround yourself with a small support team. Do you have a trusted friend who is a great networker, a person who has interviewed and hired people in your industry, or a person who is an expert negotiator?
 
Hiring a career coach to guide you through analyzing your strengths, gaining career clarity, providing you with appropriate resources, and helping you implement new ideas, test the results, and reduce risks can save you time and effort in your job search. If you are unemployed or underemployed, assessing and adapting your job search activities is especially important, because each week that you are out of work, or working for less than you are worth, costs you money.
 
As your career coach, I’d be delighted to help you achieve your goal of landing a great job fast. Schedule a free 20-minute discovery call today.