If you’re in the job market, you may want a job quickly. Few job seekers—even high-level managers—can sustain a job search for more than three or four months without suffering. There’s something inside us that says, “I have to be working . . . and I have to be working now.”

Job hunting can be a tough road. The job search has been described as “the highest highs” and “the lowest lows.” From beginning to end, it’s often an emotional roller coaster.

The market is highly competitive. There are usually more applicants than jobs, and supply exceeds demand. It’s often lonely, because everyone else is working, and you have way too much free time.

In addition, job hunting is sales, and you’re probably not a salesperson. More than likely, you’re an accountant, a factory worker, a technical specialist, or a manager. Sales is unfamiliar, uncomfortable territory. Without help, you might make costly, ti

me-consuming mistakes and stay unemployed longer than necessary. Why take a risk?

Every job search is different. It’s possible to talk to a recruiter or hiring manager, take a short interview, and be hired on the spot. But that’s rare. It’s more normal to agonize, to have ups and downs, to suffer rejection and disappointment, and to confront realities you don’t like, either in yourself or in the world at large. Although every job hunt is different, a typical transition is somewhat predictable, and these are the eleven steps along the way:

1. Job Loss
Sometimes change is forced: you’re fired outright or lose your job in a corporate reorganization. Other times, change is self-initiated: you lose faith in the boss, the company, your skills, or your career future—and you decide it’s time to move on. Whether your change is forced or self-initiated, it’s still difficult, because change itself is difficult.
2. Focus
You know you need a job, but you’re not sure what to do. Should you continue on your current path or try something new? You’re confused and need direction. You talk to friends, read career books, and seek advice. You want to choose the right course, and you’re afraid to make a mistake.
3. Resume
Trying to get all your life experience onto one or two pages is frustrating, even angering. As you “waste time on the resume,” you note a sense of urgency and begin to feel you’re not getting anywhere.
4. Cover Letters
You prepare letters to friends and begin answering want ads. Once your letters are in the mail, there’s a lag time before the phone starts ringing. You’re increasingly impatient.

5. Networking
Calling to ask for appointments is somewhat frightening. You feel like you’re begging and “using your friends,” but once you get the hang of it, it’s great fun! You discover that others do want to help. However, you lose patience quickly, because informational meetings aren’t “real interviews.”
6. Job Search
You’re now Vice President of Sales and Marketing for your own company, “Me, Inc.” Hustle is the name of the game. You attend organizational meetings, write to companies, take friends to lunch, and do anything and everything possible to develop job leads.
7. Interviewing
The phone rings and you’re invited to an actual job interview. You’re scared and nervous. This could be the big one, and you could mess it up. You read books on interviewing, role-play difficult questions, and touch up your wardrobe. If the meeting goes well, you’re high; if not, you’re low. Either way, you’re often kept waiting, and waiting is painful.
8. Disappointment
Midway in the process you “hit the wall.” Although you’ve tried your best, you don’t feel you’ve gotten anywhere. Nothing seems to be working. You get discouraged and feel you haven’t done anything right. You get angry, irritable, and want to quit. Perhaps you can’t get interviews; or if you can, no offer is forthcoming. Sometimes the perfect job you’ve been counting on falls through and you have to start over. Regardless of the reasons, you fight frustration, confusion, self-doubt, anger—and especially impatience. In such situations, these inspirational ideas might help you.
9. Job Offer
Finally, you receive a specific job offer. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth discussing. This lifts your spirits. You get on the phone and fan the flames of other warm leads. If you’re lucky, this produces a second or third offer.
10. Salary Negotiations
Most companies have fixed salary structures, and there isn’t much room to negotiate. You negotiate within the limits. Usually, if you like the company and they like you, salary isn’t a deal killer. You reach quick agreement.
11. New Beginnings
Once you accept an offer, you feel a tremendous sense of relief—and so do your family and friends. Now you can go back to being a human being. You feel good about life and look forward to your future. You send thank yous to everyone who’s helped.

The role of university-based graduate career advice centres is to help graduates develop their interests, job
prospects and career options thus preparing them for entry into the job market.

Even if you’re still engaged in studies and haven’t thought much about searching for a job after university, it’s never too soon to seek out graduate career advice. It can provide a wealth of information about potential employment opportunities and help you steer your final year of school in the right direction, and give your education a real world focus that it may not have had up until now.

Why Do I Need Graduate Career Advice?

Graduate career advice helps you formulate a clear, objective assessment of your career options and provides assistance and direction so you can reach your goals. Most graduate career advice centres offer a range of options to help you develop and achieve your professional goals. If you seek graduate career advice while you’re still in university, you will learn how to make the most of your degree, and you’ll have time to acquire the additional knowledge and skills that will help you land that dream job.

While graduate career advice services may differ in their specific offerings, below are some of the key services usually offered under graduate career advice.

Personality / Aptitude Tests

Graduate career advisors often provide free and confidential psychometric tests to assess candidates’ aptitudes and interests. These tests typically identify your strengths and help you focus on making appropriate career choices. Personality tests can reveal your preferred communication style and key motivators, which in turn can provide pointers toward the career that suits you best.

Career Guidance

Graduate career advice is often centred on helping you explore a range of fields and job types so you can better understand your options. Not only do you get graduate career advice about specific industries, but you’ll also get typical job profiles and practical information on what it’s like to work in a particular field. Some services will also provide you with contact information for experts in the field you are interested in so those experts can give you graduate career advice from a real world perspective.

Application Assistance

Graduate career advice services can help you when preparing applications for part-time jobs and, internships, as well as full-time job placements. Most graduate career advice centres can provide direction on how to identify job listings that are right for you and help you follow up with applications. More specifically, a graduate career advice service can help you interpret the finer points of a job advertisement or description, answer questions on application forms, and ensure that your application package is complete and professional.

Interviewing Tips

A key benefit of getting graduate career advice is that it prepares you to face tough interview situations. Working with experts at a graduate career advice centre before that all-important interview means you’ll be ready to impress the recruiter / potential employer with your skills, knowledge, and presentation abilities. Graduate career The advice will helps you focus on your core strengths in a positive, professional manner and can also include coaching on how to handle potentially stressful telephone interviews.

How to Write a CV

Graduate career advice sometimes includes CV writing assistance to ensure your CV is in line with your career objectives. Most graduate career advice careers services recommend that those who are job searching maintain a dynamic, online CV, which enables you to easily tailor your CV template to a specific job and gets you noticed by thousands of recruiters and employers throughout the UK. It’s a good idea to have ask your graduate career advice service them to review your CV before you distribute it, which could give you an edge over other candidates.

In summary, graduate career advice can make the difference between a lengthy and unproductive job search and securing a coveted position in the field of your choice. Besides providing a wealth of information on the career planning process, graduate career advisors can introduce you to experts and professionals in your area of interest.

Have you ever noticed how your job can be all consuming, even when you don’t like your job, or perhaps I should say, especially when you don’t like it. When this happens, a huge portion of your time, focus and energy is going toward something you don’t even like! I found myself living in this nightmare a few years ago and I often caught myself saying things like, “This just doesn’t make sense to be this unhappy and this stressed out over a job I don’t even like!” It is really ridiculous to live this way when you understand that when your time, energy and focus is on work you don’t like, there isn’t much opportunity for work you do like to happen in your life. In other words, nothing is going to change until something changes.

Consider replacing your stressful, all consuming job with a “transition” job. A transition job is work that is easy, you CAN’T take it home with you, and your career aspirations are in no way tied to it. For example, I used to be a recruiter. I called myself “a recruiter.” I felt loyal to the organization and incredibly responsible for filling their / my open positions. My ego and sense of self was wrapped up in this work – work that stressed me out and I didn’t find personally satisfying. Then, I took a customer service position in the same organization and life changed.

This “transition” job was a drop in status, responsibility, stress and pay AND allowed me the space for the work I DID want to come into my life. I literally could feel my muscles relax more and more as each month passed in this new, easy job. By about the fourth month, I had new energy and was interested in exploring what I would really like to do for work. Eight months into this transition job, the answer hit me as clearly as if it were written in the sky…I’m a coach! The great thing about this transition job is it also allowed me the time and energy to then pursue my dream job. I spent the next 2 years in this transition job while I got my training and certification in coaching and starting my own practice.

The importance of a transition job is not the work of the job itself but the abundance of time and energy it gives back to you to use toward what matters more to you. Imagine what may be possible if you freed your evenings, weekend and possibly some week days from work related stress. What if you had an extra 10-20 hours a week to put time, energy and focus toward listening to and responding to your heartfelt interests and passions? What would you be willing to change in order to allow yourself this opportunity?

Where to find transition jobs

Just about any job can be a transition job for someone as long as it meets three requirements:

1.

You feel ease about the work itself. From the beginning, you’re confident that you’ll become proficient and competent in the job in a relatively short amount of time.
2.

You can’t take this work home with you. In other words, when your shift is over, you go home and the undone work becomes someone else’s to do list. The work becomes yours again, only when you return on your next shift.
3.

The job is not something you view as a potential career aspiration. You don’t see yourself wanting to strive and move up the ladder in this job. You want to keep it as a job that serves a higher purpose; it supports you in finding your true career aspiration.

The other key to a good transition job is that it helps you cover some or all of your financial needs. When you’re making a transition it’s a good idea to reduce frivolous spending, and consider using your savings to offset costs not covered by your job. Do the numbers and decide what combination of spending you are comfortable with then determine the amount of pay you want this transition job to provide you.

Healthcare is a great place to find transition jobs. While there are many healthcare jobs that require years of education and specialized training, there are also many support jobs that are willing to train as long as you have basic computer literacy and great customer service skills. Healthcare jobs offer a lot of flexibility with work hours. Hospitals staff around the clock and you receive extra pay for working evenings, nights and weekends. Also, hospitals offer opportunities to work as little as 2 shifts a month, as well as offer shifts that range from 4 hours – 40 hours per week. The best part is most hospitals provide full benefits for part-time (20 hours/ wk) employees! Finally, if you find that a specialized healthcare job (such are RN, ultrasonographer, etc) IS the career you truly want, often hospitals offer programs that help pay for part or all of the training.

Check out your local healthcare jobs online this week! Start imagining what might be possible for you!

Refocusing your extra time, energy and attention

It is one thing to have a goal and completely another to give yourself the support to attain it. Matter of fact, until you give yourself support to attain your goal, it remains just a wish and a hope. If you are going to take the step of taking a transition job, then you are making a real commitment to re-prioritizing your time and energy. It’s essential that you put in place structures that help you attain what you want from having this extra time and energy.

Here are some suggested structures to put in place:

1.

Hire a coach to help you get clear and consistently move toward attaining what you want out of allowing yourself this extra time and space. There will be a tendency at first to treat your transition job like you did your old stressful, all consuming job. Regular meetings with your coach will help support you to allow yourself to let go of the old work habits and allow yourself to start to refocus your attention on how you spend your time NOT working. If relaxation, time to explore interests, trying something new, or discovering your true career path are goals for you during this transition job, your coach can support you in creating and implementing a plan that allows you to achieve these things.

2.

Take a class for fun. Community classes such as University mini courses and Community Ed classes offer everything from dancing and kayaking to writing a book and speaking a foreign language. This regular scheduled “playtime” is part of breaking the old habit of work, work, work, AND has the added benefit of allowing you to explore an interest that may be connected to a passionate career path for you.
3.

Join a career transition group. Find others who are also committed to transitioning to a career that is more in line with their whole life and are actively exploring their passion. Make sure this isn’t a group that gets together to commiserate but rather is supportive and encouraging of each other’s dreams and goals. I currently offer a group coaching program called “Finding and Following your Passion.” To learn more, visit my website.

I encourage you to let go of the idea that somewhere between the stresses of your current job and running through the rat race of life, your passion will suddenly appear to you. It won’t. Passion doesn’t show up in the same hemisphere as stress, chaos and running frantic. You have to be willing to let go of those things to find your passion. A transition job can be a bridge that allows you to move from a job you know you don’t like to the one you know you’ve been always been wanting but didn’t realize it until you took the time to look and cross the bridge that led to it.

How to improve your job transition skills
In our volatile work environment we all accept no job is for life and that we may need to change jobs and careers several times in our working life. Job transitions skills can be developed to assist make this transition easier for you. By applying a few simple ideas you can improve your skills, keep your self-esteem in tact and find something suitable for you.

Get support.
Surround yourself with family and friends and let them know your situation. Stay in contact with those you care about and continue your social activity. It is easy to avoid people or stop socializing but make sure you don’t do this. Your support crew will keep you encouraged and also keep their eyes out for opportunities for you.
Remember jobs … not people, are made redundant.
Redundancy is now a common term and accepted as a part of the workforce. Don’t take this personally. Remember you have transferable skills that can be used in a variety of industries.
Set up an environment to assist your job search.
If you are working from home set up a basic office to include a phone, stationary, postage supplies, computer and printer. If you have small children and pets keep them out of this area. Ask your children not to answer the phone while you are job searching. If you are using a job café or other facilities be prepared. Ensure you have all the details you need to apply for any job that appeals to you, including resume, referee’s details and an email address.
Get involved in local networks and community events.
Find out the groups that meet regularly in your area and get involved. This is a great way to meet new people, make new contacts and find out what jobs are available close to home.
Watch your language.
Avoid using words like “unemployed” or “on the dole”. Your full time job is finding a new role you will enjoy.
Create an up to date resume.
Give a detailed description of the achievements in each role and the timeframes you have been in the role. Provide all contact details including phone number (land line and mobile), email and where possible a fax number. If you don’t have a fax at home, find someone who does and ask them if you can use their number.
Be well presented.
It only takes 7 seconds to make a first impression. Make the most of your 7 seconds by smiling when you greet someone. Invest in a good suit, if you don’t have one, borrow one for your job interviews. Polish your shoes, wear minimal jewelry and ensure your hair is clean and neat and tidy. People will remember you when you are well presented.
Stay motivated.
Finding a new job is hard work; it can frustrate you and feel disappointing when you receive letters advising you didn’t get the job you applied for. Stay focused and remind yourself that there is a role out there just for you and you need to stay positive until that one appears.