Your career resolutions for 2010
The commitments
Your career resolutions for 2010
by Brian Moore
The usual New Year’s resolutions — lose weight, quit smoking, learn needlepoint — seem a tad irrelevant this year. With the job market still as tough as ever, workers and job seekers may want to focus their resolve on their careers, or lack thereof. Any knucklehead can lose 10 pounds, but it takes a real go-getter to get — or keep — a job nowadays. And while 2010 could bring a new wave of prosperity, motivated workers may not want to count on it. To help make 2010 a better year for clock punchers everywhere, @work tapped a bevy of job experts for suggestions for career-enhancing New Year’s resolutions. They run the gamut from listening more to doing less, from meditation to regimentation. Many may not be your cup of tea, but you might find one that’ll make 2010 a career year...
SEARCH WITH A SYSTEM
by Steve Seeman
“For job seekers: regiment your search. People don’t apply the same regimenting systems to job seeking that they do to their work. And things people do professionally are regimented for a reason. It’s effective. It helps people to keep on track.
Prepare an Excel spreadsheet of your job targets. Break it down by company and contacts and keep a file on the progress of each. Identify the company, the contact people there, and check it off: Have you tailored a cover letter? Have you tailored a resume to the job description? Have you sent the e-mail? When did you send it? Have you made a follow-up call? If you’re in the interview process, have you sent a letter to each person you’ve met?
Keep this chart going as if you were at a job and maintaining a database of contacts for work.”
— Steve Seeman, director of human resources, Makovsky + Company, an NYC p.r. and branding firm
Article Tools
