Anyone who thinks job hunting is boring at best and absolute drudgery at worst could benefit from this article, featuring three ways to liven up your mood and attitude during your job search.
Job hunting? Fun? Surely you're joking.
Someone recently described job hunting to me as a "grueling and decidedly unpleasant activity. After all, what could be more tiring than going from one place to another and peddling yourself?"
It's hard to argue that point, especially when you hear reports about the average number of months (4) it takes people - even executives and managers - to land a new position. And the articles talking about the hundreds of resumes submitted for a given position. And the rejection you go through in the career search process...
Okay, enough! Like most anything else in life, you can decide whether to have fun with the job transition process. It's up to you to find the fun in it. Could you:
* Make it a game? Set it up like a bingo card, with spots for resumes sent, interviews landed, networking events attended, et cetera. Get bingo, and stop everything to give yourself a job hunting reward.
* Play with a friend? If you know someone else on the hunt, team up for motivation and relaxation. Help each other role play for interviews, share your horror stories, critique each other's resumes, and keep each other's spirits up.
* Take a break already? You know, this whole job search thing can drive you crazy. And if work-life balance was already an issue in your previous position, it's probably going to be a problem when your sending out resumes, too. Schedule some play time to relax and recharge your brain - it's not only fun, it actually improves your efficiency when you're back at the computer.
The point is, you can make time, even in a hectic job-hunting schedule, to do something fun - and it'll immediately improve what you personally project to prospective hiring managers, recruiters, and others in the job hunt game.
What's more, who wants to hire someone who's deadly serious? Heck, I wasn't deadly serious when I interviewed to become a bank auditor, all those years ago, and I got job offers out of both companies where I interviewed. Don't mistake taking the job seriously with being a downer.
I know this is one of those things that can be easy to say in theory, but when you're in the job search trenches, it can be hard to live it out.
But it's like your mother once said: You catch more bees with honey than vinegar. The harder you try to stay positive and have fun with your job search, the faster it'll seem to go, and the more doors that'll open for you in the process.
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