The importance of planning during a job search

A few weeks back, I got a message from an ex-colleague from Bengaluru, wanting to talk about his career. Usually this is code for wanting to switch jobs but in this case, it was worse – my ex-colleague had recently been laid off during the midst of the pandemic. He had been working in this company for close to 10 years after graduation and this had come across as a complete surprise to him. He told me that for the last few years, he was working in business analytics and had developed good skills in that area.

He asked me if I could connect him to people who were hiring. While I said I would do that, I asked him, how he was going about his job search. The answer didn’t surprise me – like many other people I had interacted with in a similar situation, he didn’t really have a plan.

I suggested that he do the the following to build his plan.

• List the category of companies that he should he be applying to:
  • Companies is his current industry – they would value his industry knowledge – this was a limited set of companies
  • Indian consulting companies – which would value his industry knowledge and his business analytics skillsets
  • IT services companies – they may value his skillset but not necessarily his industry knowledge as their clients were mostly outside of India
  • Companies focused on business analytics – this was his most recent experience and there were specialized companies
  • Start-ups – He wasn’t sure about this category considering the pay & the risks involved
• Customize his resume for each category – emphasizing the aspects in his career which were relevant to that category
  • For example, he had worked on an important IT project in a business role and that was relevant to highlight to the IT services companies.
  • He had worked on a customer experience initiative and that was good to highlight to the Indian consulting company
• Identify the companies in each category in the locations he wanted to be in
  • He was based in Bengaluru but was open to a few other cities
  • As we discussed, he realized that there were 10-20 companies in each category – the job universe had suddenly become quite large
• Identify contacts that could refer him to those companies
  • His networking was quite restricted considering that he had worked in only 1 company
  • We however discussed and identified individuals apart from ex-colleagues – people from product and IT companies; thought leaders in his industry
  • His other networks – alumni networks, social networks
• Reach out to the contacts and ask them to introduce
  • This is usually hard for many people – especially if you haven’t cultivated the networks over the years
• Let people know that he was available to work as a free-lance consultant. The job search could take time and in the meantime he could take on short-term projects

I told him to create the plan and treat the job search like any other project. When faced with a major situation like a job loss, it is a natural tendency to lose control and get into a state of helplessness. I believe, that by developing a plan and executing on it every day, one could avoid that and can get positively energized – this would help in being more successful in the job search.