Career planning challenges

Career selection is akin to undertaking a journey at short notice, particularly if your destination happens to be a new place. Don’t you plan for it, find out more about the place being visited, decide on what you would carry and then arrange for rail or air tickets? When you plan your itinerary, you plan to avoid possible downsides. Likewise, when you do career planning, you foresee hitches and take action to avoid them. When you set out in hunt for a job, you will have to be adept at facing challenges and adroit at certain tasks. In fact, you can structure your job search in many ways, but the essence of it is that you have to be shrewd and well-organized so that you achieve grand outcomes.

Career planning is like mapping your future. The process is not bereft of any challenges. When you do career planning, you will face:

· Challenges of remaining well-organised & systematic: During the course of your job search, you will have several documents and papers for use. They could be copies of your resume; contact details of people; printouts of company profiles and emails; and applications sent by you. In addition, you will have to maintain a ‘things-to-do’ list that will include details of liaison visits to be undertaken and appointments to be kept. You will have to keep all such information safe and readily available; and which is the essence of remaining well-organised and systematic.

· Challenges of keeping tag & remaining alert: You will have to display a high degree of comprehension with regard to things happening around you, particularly those that have the potential of influencing your career choices. If you remain cognizant and responsive to various developments, you will be able to evaluate them for the impact they can have on your career. You will be able to infer upon opportunities that can be thrown open for you and organisational growth prospects. Remember that even a trivial happening can trigger a major activity in your career and hence the need to remain aware needs no emphasis.

· Challenges of being driven & single-minded: This challenge pertains to acquiring information about your own self; it is nothing but a self-evaluation. Your career search is all about getting into a pursuit that will provide you delight and contentment. You can be contented if you put to use your skills and knowhow with pleasure. Contentment is invariably an outcome of success; this proves the point that if you indulge in a work that is pleasurable, you are more likely to be successful. And remaining sharply focussed all along is what will pay you rich dividends. Given the numerous distractions that exist, to remain single-minded and motivated is a challenge by itself.

· Challenges of having a line of action: To have a line of action and adhere to it implies planning for the future in a proactive manner. This is the most rudimentary strategy of any job search and calls for a proactive approach. As is well-known, most good openings are hidden jobs and are obtained through your network. Your line of action should be to obtain leads from others, meet people and take your leads to a logical conclusion. To make your line of action work, you will have to systematise your time well, sift through information from various sources, find out details of different openings and widen your contact base.

· Challenges of projecting your image well: You should be able to portray an excellent picture about yourself – when you present yourself in person, when you submit a document in paper and email forms or when you talk over the telephone. The basics pertain to your CV – how dexterously you draft it. You also need to create an impact during an interview and is something that is a monumental challenge by itself. Your routine conduct also matters in creating a favourable impression. Self-assessment thus is very important in being able to create the desired impact because based on your findings about yourself, you plan to conduct yourself appropriately.        

Various challenges enumerated above call for remaining updated on different issues that impact your career. Therefore, you need to research the employment milieu in detail so that you develop a deep understanding of all related happenings. Your focus should invariably be on discerning the person you are, knowing what you have a penchant for and the skills possessed by you. It is necessary that the information you gather should be collated systematically so that whatever strategy you formulate for getting a job is implemented in the correct manner in keeping with your findings.

Challenges will be there for you to face during your entire professional life. You will always need to increase your self-awareness and self-knowledge; come to grips with change rather than fight it back; and recurrently build and leverage networks. That calls for understanding your responses to challenging situations. You will have to learn new ways of working and let go of old ones. And more importantly, you cannot dispense with your trust in some people to provide you with realistic feedback and advice. 

Uplifting your job satisfaction

Job satisfaction is relative and can be described in many different ways. In its most common sense, it is simply how satisfied a person is with his or her job or if he or she likes a job and its related aspects. There are several multi-faceted mental and emotional responses to one's job that matter too.

The above notwithstanding, job discontentment is something that afflicts people of all ages and across different income groups. That some people may harbour higher degree of dissatisfaction notwithstanding, the numbers of discontented lot is rising regularly. And this ought to be a point of concern. Therefore, the pertinent question is, “How can employee dissatisfaction be precluded?” In other words, if you happen to be discontented at work, what should you do?

First and foremost, you need to understand that job satisfaction is of different categories – innate, acquired and comprehensive. Innate job satisfaction is of intrinsic nature and sets in when employees think through only the kind of work they perform and different tasks that collectively constitute their work. Acquired job satisfaction is of extrinsic nature and is visible when employees cogitate over their various working conditions like workplace environment, pay and allowances, colleagues and even bosses. A mishmash of innate and acquired job satisfaction is what is known as comprehensive job dissatisfaction and since it has several contributory factions, its very intensity can be rather strong. The dissimilarity between innate and acquired job satisfaction leads to viewing jobs from different perspectives. If the dissatisfaction is stems from the kind of work being done, the solution per se will have to different vis-à-vis one generated by the conditions of work.

It goes without saying that your contentment level is nothing but a state of mind that is influenced by your hopes and expectations too. Therefore job satisfaction is also contingent on what you look in a job or what you require of a job. However, the core issue is one of optimising your job satisfaction levels. Some methods to do so are:

· Strive to know yourself better: You should know what matters to you and what is not of much significance. It is necessary that you identify assignments that appeal to you; and be absolutely unambiguous about your expectations from your work. It is always better to jot them down in a diary so that you are able to discern precisely your requirements while selecting a job or career.

· Get to know about jobs that converge with your aspirations: You need to know details about different careers and professions so that you can identify which gels with your outlook and personality. Today, there are several tools and tests available to do that.

· Have pragmatic work aspirations:  Comprehensive job satisfaction is actually a compromise or a type of adjustment. There is no job that can offer you full satisfaction or nil dissatisfaction. Even the best of jobs will have some element of dissatisfaction. And given the intense competition that exists today and the fact that the number of people out to get jobs far exceeding the openings available, no management can be expected to administer your dissatisfaction. It is you and you alone who has to take necessary steps in this regard.

· Don’t let discontent linger on: Dissatisfaction of any type should be allowed to persist. Your very outlook and interest towards your work is gauged by the degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction that you possess. If job dissatisfaction persists for long, the result could be disastrous; you could be taken ill and even lose your job. Workplace issues invariably arise because of discontent since mental states of people prompt unusual behaviour. Therefore, it is inescapable to find an answer to the vexed problem of job dissatisfaction at the earliest.

· Take help from a mentor or counsellor: A professional help will give you an unbiased and unprejudiced opinion. You will thus receive independent recommendations and suggestions that will help you in overcoming any dissatisfaction that you may be having or likely to have.

· View your nature & conditions of work differently: The type of work that you are doing vis-à-vis other factors like remuneration, colleagues, bosses, organisation itself and general working environment, etc. If it is the type of work that is prompting dissatisfaction, perhaps going in for a change of career will be appropriate. However, if the working conditions are causing you to be dissatisfied, sitting across the table to resolve issues with your management will help. If things still do not get resolved, may be a job change will help.

· Glance back at your career path to gauge your progress: When you view all your advancements, a sense of accomplishment will be there. Such a feeling will motivate you to take dissatisfactions in the correct spirit because of brighter days that lie ahead.

· Relook at your principles and standards: Your principles and standards constitute your values and it is you who can determine what matter most to you. An honest response to the subject needs to be found by introspection; the question that you need to put to yourself is, “How important is my job and career to me?” Once you can come out with a candid answer, you can then have an appropriate outlook of your job contentment or discontentment.

You have to learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want. The secret of success is making your work your holiday-break. Have you ever heard of anybody being dissatisfied while on a holiday?

Key ingredients of career progress

“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.”

-Thomas Henry Huxley

Your career is an important facet of your life and you need to take it seriously to succeed in it. You must allow your mind to ponder and deliberate over an instance or time when you were really successful in your career.

Perhaps you cannot think of any such time. Not everybody is fortunate enough to be really successful in their career. This is because very few people quite fathom their actual potential. They may have to their credit a string of academic qualifications but which never contributed to their workplace success.

Career success entails four imperatives and the earlier you comprehend them, the earlier you rise and progress. These imperatives do not make reference to objectives, visualisation or self-assurance because they automatically come into play when the four imperatives start working out. Sans these imperatives, you will always strain and stretch yourself to achieve even the slightest degree of advancement. And your objectives, visualisation and self-assurance will have little role to play in the entire game. These imperatives are:

· Fervour & ardour: If you are zealous impassioned in doing anything, you actually put your strengths forward. In doing so, your performance enhances and touches the sky. Regrettably, quite a few professionals lack this quality and hence, writhe, wriggle, grapple and tussle with their efforts to bring about any progress in their career. The workplace of current times is rather demanding and daunting. If you seek to excel and maintain a lead over others, you will have to work hard and be ever-willing to walk the extra mile. Whatever fortes and strong points you have, they need to be brought into effect with intense enthusiasm and commitment in each and every facet of your activity.

· Alignment of values: Simple fervour and ardour may not suffice because in case it did, there will not be any predictable unsuccessful individual. You need to be working in an atmosphere or team that has excellent alignment between your personal principles and standards at one end of the spectrum; and your organisational values. In case your own orientation of values vis-à-vis your organisational one is not in sync, things will always grind you to preclude attainment of your objective. You would have had experiences when your output plummeted due to feelings of being at the wrong place or because you were simple trying to be something that you otherwise were not. The fact is that if you are a square peg in a round hole, you will invariably continue to burn up your verve and spirits wastefully. On the other hand, if you be your true and genuine figure and play your part accordingly, you will be better poised to attain sky-scraping success.

· Physical & mental robustness: All professions are stressful, but work pressures should not make you collapse. In most instances, people pay no regard to this vital imperative. It is essential that you remain in good health otherwise you will not be able to keep your mind strong and clear. And without a strong and clear mind, you simply cannot achieve any success. Remember that if you lack physical and mental robustness, your performance by itself will be sickly; and hence attaining objectives or accomplishing success will always elude you. After all, health and success naturally beget each other.

· Good networking: You can make an entry into a workplace alright, but you simply cannot subsist there without appropriate networking. This might seem like a daunting task at first, but after some practice, you will acquire the correct state of mind to establish contacts and widen your network.  You have to be able to relate to people and they have to be satisfied with your personality to be able to have a good relationship. And when you are surrounded with people who are ever-willing to help you, your prospects of success stand greatly enhanced. So, if you neglect relationships, you do so at your own risk.

The perfecting of yourself is the fundamental base of all your progress and development. And perfecting yourself is contingent on the efforts that you make. No matter what transpires and no matter how distant you think you are from wherever you aspire to be in your career, you should not stop believing that you will somehow make it.  You must harbour an indefatigable conviction that things will work out, that the long road ahead has a purpose and that the things that you desire may not happen today, but eventually they will.  Keep it up and keep at it, your chosen path shall always remain promising.

Need for self-evaluation before career selection

You simply cannot accept a job offer just because it has been made to you. Before you say yes to it, you need to reflect deliberately on it. You need to ask yourself a couple of pertinent questions.

You could be straight out of college and looking for a job or have already been working and seeking a change. Whatever be it, you need to peep inside yourself and honestly get to know what your strongpoints are and where they lie. More often than not, we tend to visualise what a job is going to all about rather than dwelling on the prospects of success in it. The peep that you make inside you should be aimed to discern whether your decision to select a particular career is justified or not.

If you take up any career before indulging in a self-evaluation, you will land up in thick soup. The self-evaluation per se has to be honest so that you arrive at definite inferences about yourself before you actually move on to become a person that you seek to be. Something exciting about the process is that you get to know your fortes – something you had no inkling about. Similarly, you also wake up to your deficiencies that were hitherto fore unnoticed or discounted. The discernment is helpful because your strengths help in enhancing your positive self-image by boosting self-confidence, personal efficiency and self-worth. Likewise, a knowledge of your weak spots will prompt you to cogitate on ways to prevail over them.

Concurrent with self-evaluation, refining your CV will not be out of place. This will facilitate submission of job applications without any delay. Most people err by applying to each and every job listing in anticipation that they could be called for an interview. But they disregard the important point that a job hunt effort is all about putting forward your skills efficaciously, something that should never be avoided in your career interests.  

During your job search process, you are akin to a finished good that is up for sale. It is your flairs, capabilities, proficiencies, expertise and familiarities that are required to be convincingly sold. You must invariably ponder over the fact that organisations that hire you will stand to gain. This necessitates being proud of yourself and never demoralising your own self. How can you do that? First and foremost, you should get to know your top fortes and make them your key job search preferences. You should not lose sight of the fact that your fortes cannot be useful to all organisations across the board – what is of value to one can be worthless for the other.

The first step in self-evaluation should be to recall moments when you were in highest spirits; what contributed in making you feel exalted and happy; specific knowledge and skills as also personality traits that you applied. It is only thereafter that you should ponder over your attainments – issues that you excelled at in your own perception and not prompted by external influences. You should catalogue them starting from as far back as you can think. Having done so, you will be able to find out the ones that were related to your job in particular. You will realise that you may have missed out on skills related to proper organisation, punctuality or imperatives. The list that you will have in front of you will thus characterise your strongpoints, accomplishments and anticipations.

The skills-set on record are the ones that you need to sell to prospective employers. Among them will also be some skills that offered you immense delight when they were applied. You must mull over them separately to determine the ones that offer you the greatest contentment. Your list will indicate to you your skill deficiencies also; the same should impel you to identify scope for improvement and the way they can be acquired.

The next stage of your self-evaluation is to reflect on circumstances that you consider favourable and are sought by you as also the ones that you need to circumvent. Additionally, the circumstances should also throw light on opportunities that you happen to be looking for; such prospects could well be related to designations, placement location, remuneration and skills acquisition. It is also important that you also dwell on how you prefer to superintend all these issues and various preferences that you have. In other words, you ought to evaluating everything that has short and long-term ramifications.   

A self-evaluation exercise, though apparently cumbersome, will facilitate your endeavours to get a job that is satisfying. An important point is to not confine your job search to either the skills possessed by you or interests harboured by you. Doing so can lead to getting dissuaded because of mismatches and dual requirements. The job or a career that you eventually select should be one that encompasses your maximum skills and interests so that you derive the highest degree of satisfaction.

Avoidable bloopers in career selection

When you make a career decision, a lot many things depend on it. You will definitely want to select a career in which you will succeed in it. During the course of your career journey, you may change careers and which can call for intense struggle. The struggle will generally not be there if you do not change careers quite often.  This implies that you should go in for a career that fits you well and can continue to support you in the long-term too.

You can boost the chances of making a good career selection decision by avoiding the following bloopers:

· Ignoring your own self-identity: Your disposition and principles are exclusively your assets and they need to be in sync with jobs that you seek to take up. You will find it very difficult to change such inherent core attributes. In the light of the foregoing, they have to be accorded precedence in your career selection, else you will end up being a dissatisfied and disgruntled person.

· Being unable to do your groundwork. You should choose your career only after having got to know it fairly well. It should be ensured that you have all details about the career to include roles you would be required to perform, minimum educational qualities, pay package and the job outlook.

· Keeping monetary issues as top priority: Money is significant alright, but if you do not love what you do, how can you enjoy the results of your endeavours? Therefore, you need to maintain a proper balance between work that you delight in and monetary compensations.

· Taking all advice as a diktat to be followed: Quite a few people think that career advice given by them should be followed in letter and spirit. It is your career, so how will your career decision impact them. You and you alone will have to handle your choice for the most part of your career journey. Therefore, the career that you choose should be one that you would enjoy pursuing.

· Following the route adopted by others literally: It is likely that parental influences may weigh you down to get into their profession, the plus points of which are already known to you. Such pressures could be respectfully disregarded. It is best to tell them that you need to make your own choice because factors applicable to them are perhaps not applicable to you. And when you succeed in the choice you exercise, they will be delighted.

· Failing to meet people in the same line: Your groundwork will be incomplete if you do not interact with people in the same field you are considering to enter. A person who is already working in the same field can guide you better however, you must talk to several such persons to avoid any subjective advice.

· Paying scant attention to the venue of work:  Some career opportunities exist only in certain cities, generally metros or specific areas of cities like outskirts or industrial zones. Now if you reside somewhere else, it is likely that such opportunities may never come to you. And if at all you do get hold of them, any unwillingness to move out will cause you to be rejected for the job.

· Overlooking times ahead: Just as you do not judge a book by its cover, likewise, you cannot make a career decision solely on the advice rendered by others. You are not a divine prognosticator and predicting things about your career. The only that you can do is to always hope for the best. In the interest of your career and your own self, the least you can do is too discard anything that indicates that the future can be despondent. 

Any decision about your career does not always have to be complicated. If you spend time getting to know yourself and researching different opportunities, you should be able to make a sound decision. The trick lies in arriving at a sensible and composed decision. And that will entail using both your head and heart. You may make a very logical decision, but the same can be ruined because your heart perhaps is not in it. Similarly, an impetuous decision could backfire if it has not been properly considered.

Making an informed career choice is actually about a lot more than choosing a job. It is about choosing something that will provide you with the lifestyle you seek. Therefore you should not decide till such time you are fully prepared for it. In the meantime, you must indulge in extensive research, serious soul-searching, add up to your qualifications, and most importantly, persist with your standards and principles.

Do you have quantifiable career objectives?

Everyone keeps harping on the need to have career objectives because if you allow your career to drift on the quirks of fate, destiny and providence, the consequences can be uncertain and hazardous. People do set objectives but do not focus on evaluating them, as a result of which, they are unable to discern if their career is on the right track and whether they are moving forward to achieve their objectives. Therefore, the need to have objectives that are quantifiable cannot be overemphasised.

You need to have set career objectives – they could be tall and grand or small and subtle. But prior to setting any objectives, you need to know precisely what you seek to do for a career. This is indeed a challenging task, particularly for youngsters. When some people are out selecting their career and wanting to take up engineering, medicine, sports or any other pursuit as a career, there are many more who have absolutely no clue about what they want to opt for. Therefore, setting career objectives is vital as a maiden action. It is immaterial if you want to become the vice-president of a multinational company or representing you country in hockey. What is critical to planning your professional future is setting career objectives.

There is no decision that does not have a possibility of peril attached to it. When you make a career plan, you do so to cover about four decades of your life and cater to various risks that are entailed. With the world being in a state of flux and new scientific advancements taking place, the perils and hazards associated with your career stand increased enormously.

While all career planning is invariably a decision that extends into the long term, alterations that take place in the employment milieu are always short-term. Considering this fact, you can make a sound career decision if you comprehend the need to be update your skills on a continual basis and also go through some pressures, difficulties and adverse exposures. An assessment of risks involved in your career decisions helps you to preclude mediocre decisions and impassioned strain. Therefore, your career plans ought to recognise specific talents and skills that you can envision. You also need to foresee various expenditures and different life events, positive or negative as you move ahead in life because they will impact your career decisions.

There will also be some risks about which you can do nothing at the moment, not even planning to deal with them. You cannot rule out altered milieus or your retrenchment and ill-health; but you should have the dynamism to accept such risks and be fully geared up to make appropriate responses in the least possible time.

It is essential that you are able to determine the degree and quantum of progress made in your move towards your objectives. You can experience a spectacular rise and become the vice president of your company after putting in about a decade of service; under such a situation you will be able to gauge your progress. But in case you are rising up at a steady pace, your progress will be classically less recognisable. In most cases and more often than not, career advancements are relatively protracted and more systematic. The single important action is to gauge your progress because sans it, you will not be able to accomplish any of your objectives.

If you happen to miss out on achieving any of them, it would call for immediate serious contemplation. You will have to find out whether your objectives were not pragmatic or if you had deficiencies or whether your efforts were not commensurate. Your findings will provide you information that will facilitate making midterm corrections to get back on rails.

But what happens if your career objectives are not sharp and precise? Perhaps then you will have to make adjustments and enunciate your objectives all over again. Remember that in the absence of any capability to quantify and trail them, your career objectives are nothing but imaginings and castles built in the air.

When you make attempts to gauge your progress, besides discerning positive results, you will automatically get to be aware of your shortfalls. The shortfalls will highlight the need to undergo additional training, gather more experience or work harder still.

Most career objectives, including the best of them are mere proclamations about what you intend doing with your professional life. Your career objectives could well entail intricate ups and downs or spirals and drops in your move forward towards for attaining them. The point to note is that the enormity of your objectives in no way repudiates the need to measure your progress.

Considering all the above explanations, you must set quantifiable career objectives for yourself. The requirement of objectives being quantifiable is more significant than the objectives per se. But if your objectives are arcane and unfeasible, your capacity and capability to measure them will be subject to contesting. 

Deciding on a career

Making a decision about your career is no conjuring or sleight of hand; and it cannot be brought about in haste. Other than you, no one else can do it for you and therefore, you have to participate dynamically in the entire exercise. This will always appear to be petrifying at first thought and sight; and hence calls for a deliberate and uninhibited contemplation to facilitate simplifying and refining your own beliefs and judgement. And the earlier you get cracking on it, the better it will be.

There is no career that can be said to be a perfect profession for you. The contentment that you seek from and at work can well be provided by more than a few occupations. People make a blunder when they try to get into a job that, in their perception offers contentment from all directions. Most people expect this from their jobs and often derive lot of satisfaction from leisure activities, including playing games and domestic affiliations.

There is every possibility that you too will have numerous occupations in your career span. Given the economic conditions that prevail today, having job flexibility is very essential. Compared to the past when you took up a job and retired from it, the mobility that is available provides you the desired freedom. The career decision that you make today will definitely not be a lifetime one. However, it should be a good beginning and based on planning to take you as much ahead as possible in the fields of training and academic pursuits. So, if you defer your education plans, it is not going to serve your interests.

You need to ask yourself the following questions:

· Are you inclined to pursue your studies further? If yes, then to what point?

· Do you seek to do internship training?

· Are you keen to continue in your family work and if yes, will you like to plunge into it immediately?

· Do you have no plans to study further and want to take up an employment as early as possible?

Based on the answers to the above questions, you need to get into a research mode. You have to start collecting information that will have to be evaluated before you make any decision on your further plans. It is necessary that you remain open-minded and refrain from any impulsive approach. You must have other options at hand which also need to be well delved into because should your only plan fail, you will have nothing else to take recourse to. Once you arrive at a decision to take a plunge into work or not, the reflection on what to do should be very serious. It is essential that you do not have any terms of reference with regard to time for the research. This maiden step that you take in your career journey is very important and therefore, the research that you do should be detailed and not left to be undertaken as a last priority.  The foregoing notwithstanding, you need to guard against the following:

· Having ambiguous objectives: You need to concentrate on discerning what precisely you are aspiring and planning for in the initial phases.

· Relying excessively on others: Too many cooks spoil the broth. If you depend on others to make your decision, you are bound to run into hitches and glitches. A person may mean good to you. This intention by itself will not serve to assist you in any way if you discover that you embarked on to a path by external coaxing and not on your own accord.

· Acting on cast-off or indirect information: This is perilous in every facet of your life and all the more while going for a career. It is your life and you are responsible for its future. Therefore, you must ascertain the veracity of every bit of information that you gather.

· Getting weighted down by unnecessary information: You research will may entail internet surfing, visiting career fairs, liaison and interactions. During the course of these, collecting significantly excessive information – unread and non-perused but otherwise possibly utilitarian – cannot be discounted. The collection process per se should be unhurried and gradual so that you have time available to read and consider the information that you have acquired. In case you find some information not relevant, you should have no qualms in discarding it.

· Thinking restrictively on account of previous botches: It is essential that you pay attention to your makings – abilities, capacities and capabilities - and forget any adverse occurrences of bygone days. Failures are stepping stones to success and nothing needs to be constrained by them.

When you decide on a career, you need to learn from the past but realize that it is no longer the key to the future. Remember that it does not take much muscle and power to do things, but they are definitely required to decide on what to do

Finding best job leads

The recipe for a successful job search can best be discovered if you have the ability to get into the hidden job market. And you have to do so incontrovertibly well. Regrettably, most people out hunting jobs do not take proper initiatives in this regard.

Job vacancies get to be known through different means. They get advertised in newspapers or posted on online job portals. Research shows that accounts for only one-fifth of all job vacancies. Nearly eighty percent of openings do not get advertised at all. So, if you focus on only advertised openings, you will be frittering away your valuable time and losing out on countless other prospects. Therefore, you need to apportion your time accordingly; eighty percent of it should focus on unadvertised jobs and the balance on advertised ones. Why?

Since advertised jobs are in public domain, they are always easy to spot. On the contrary, unadvertised job opportunities entail significant effort in discovering them. If you get to peruse advertised job openings, so will others. There will thus be many contenders for a single post and hence getting into one can prove to be a monumental effort. However, hidden jobs, by virtue of inherent difficulties in finding them, very few people get to know about them. The competition therefore, is much less. And when there is minimal competition, the chances of getting one stands heightened.

Job openings are generally advertised only as an unavoidable option, usually as a last resort. An inference that can be drawn from this is that advertised job vacancies are rather difficult to fill. More often than not, they are less perfect for some reason or the other or the qualitative requirements set by the employer calls for special expertise in a person whose recruitment thus is rendered difficult. An unadvertised job for that reason implies that hiring people is an easy matter. A corollary to this is that unadvertised job openings are mostly for people who are very keen to get them.

A job search confined to advertised openings means imposing restrictions on yourself. Going by statistical logic, every advertised job that you search implies missing out on four unadvertised ones. The prospects of getting a job are thus in the same ratio. The topmost job search secret is earmarking twenty percent of your job search effort on advertised jobs and eighty percent on hidden jobs.

But you need to have a definite job search strategy to be successful. You have to be at your ‘TOP’ – where ‘T’ means thorough, ‘O’ signifies open and ‘P’ implies pertinent. You need to be thorough in your outlook, initiatives and actions. You need to advertise yourself too and hence you must post your CV on various online job portals so that employers and recruiters get to contact you. Being obvious means remaining noticeable and you can be so if you portray your updated picture. Your resume has to be kept updated; it has to be succinct with all your recent achievements appropriately included. Remember that for the purpose of shortlisting, employers and recruiters invariably tend to attach more significance to your last two or three jobs. You also need to be pertinent – to the job being applied for and your knowledge. Accordingly, your resume needs to be tailored for your ideal position. This can be achieved by highlighting your capabilities and attainments in the context of facilitating productivity.

A job search can be a challenging encounter and experience. It is bound to generate tensions and strains because of the prolonged process that it is. You must regard this as an inevitability and carry on with patience. Concurrently, you must mot waste your time and efforts in applying for job whose qualitative requirements are not fulfilled by you. The crux lies in being smart in applying to selected jobs only. You will need guidance and encouragement in your job search and hence must have suitable people to assist you.

  Remember that to be truly successful in your job-search, following up a job lead is very important. After forwarding your resume to a prospective employer, your follow-up action ought to be finding out if it has been received and of course, ensuring that indeed are called for an interview for the position. The follow-up action has to be aggressive, persistent and professional. You may maintain a record of all follow-up actions taken.

Whether you are unemployed or simply looking to make a move, in a world where jobs are more competitive than ever, finding a job is a full-time job. There is no single best source of leads. The obvious ones are the ones advertised, but they are generally the least rewarding because nearly every other job seeker out there is checking out and pursuing them. More often than not, the best job lead comes from the most unlikely source; it may come out of the blue. The reality and the challenge for you is that you need to unfailingly pursue dozens of avenues all the time.