How to Make a Perfect Plan For Your Job Search

By Heather Eagar

When you’re looking for a job, you might think that a good strategy is to wait and see what develops, and trust that fate will bring you the career that you want. But usually, job seekers who take this approach miss out while more focused job seekers score great opportunities.

There’s definitely nothing wrong with romanticizing the job search process a bit because it pushes you forward when others are feeling pessimistic. However, if you’re blindly optimistic and you don’t plan out your search, you’ll likely have a tough time.

So how can you create a strategy for yourself? Here are some ideas…

Find Your Passion

One thing many early job seekers don’t think about is what they’re passion really is. They may have spent time studying something in school, but haven’t really discovered what about that “something” makes them want to pursue it professionally.

Until you find a career you’re passionate about, you’re not going to have much success with your job search. Sure, you might find a position or two, but you won’t be happy with the jobs you get, and you probably won’t do a very good job if your heart’s not in it. How do you do that? You might start by taking a few minutes to actually write down some things that you’re passionate about. By looking at what you really love, you could really start to pinpoint your job search strategy.

Match Your Passion to Your Job Search

After you’ve taken time to find your passion, it’s time to really gear your job search in that direction. You may have a business degree and be pursuing an accounting job. However, you don’t really like accounting – you’d prefer to be involved in the more creative aspects of business.

Why not push yourself toward a marketing job? Most likely, you will be able to speak more passionately about it and may be able to come up with examples of when you used marketing in past jobs, classes or even social and volunteer events you participated in. Remember, a hiring manager can always appreciate when your passion falls in line with the job you’re pursuing – actually, they would prefer it that way.

Use the Correct Language/Keywords on Your Resume

After you’ve pinpointed your passion and have matched it to your job search (meaning, you’ve found some jobs to pursue that fall in line with what you want to do with your life), your next goal is to translate this onto your resume. To get started, see what companies are looking for by checking out a few job postings.

You can then look for ways to match your abilities and skills to the needs of the employers posting the job listings. It can be very helpful to use industry-specific keywords in your resume when you’ve found a position to apply for, so be sure to research these keywords. And also, don’t forget to write in a way that speaks of passion for the job.

Job searches themselves are very exciting, but it’s critical to begin with a good strategy. By finding your passion, matching it to your job search and then translating it all onto your resume, you could move that much closer to have a successful job search strategy – and eventually, a successful job.

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