If you are feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with your job search and want to stand out from the crowd of job seekers, the following article provides advice on how to be proactive, not reactive, with your job search.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate significantly rose from 4.8 percent to 5.1 percent in March alone, the highest it has been since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005. The crash of the housing market, with its ripple effects reaching every industry in the United States, has led to massive lay offs as firms "right-size" their organizations and close down offices. It has also created a state of conservatism as more firms put an indefinite halt on hiring. Recruiters are having a field day with the overwhelming number of job seekers, up from the typically low numbers of active candidates in the A/E/C industry. Concurrently, firms that have chosen to grow have developed increasingly selective hiring processes.

The job search for active candidates in this crisis has become a nightmare. Losing a job is nerve-racking, and we have the tendency to respond by quickly drafting up a resume and submitting it anywhere and everywhere that has a "submit resume" button. Those who have thrown their resumes into the deep black hole of job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder.com are in competition with thousands of others. This reactive approach can take you 10 steps backwards and leave you pacing your living room in the middle of the night awaiting a response. It is, simply stated, frustrating! If you have reached this point, step back, take a deep breath, and reevaluate your situation.

Start with eliminating the phrase job search, as it now holds a burdening connotation. Redefine this next exciting step of your life as your marketing plan. You are the product, and the buyers are key hiring managers, network contacts, and recruiters. Use the following four steps to create and implement your marketing plan.

Self-assessment — This is the first and most important step of your marketing plan. You need to first convince yourself of why you are a valuable commodity in order to sell yourself to your buyers effectively. In addition, the detailed outline you create in this first step will allow you to complete the next three steps. Create a table with the following four categories: skills, knowledge, and abilities; experience; interests; and values.

Under the first category, take stock of tangible assets in your life inventory. For the experience category, consider the accumulation of accomplishments in your career and extracurricular activities; it illustrates and justifies your tangible assets. Think of your experiences in SOAR terms: Situation (describe a situation); Obstacles (define obstacles you had to overcome in the situation); Actions (list the steps you took to overcome the obstacles and to address the situation); and Results (summarize the results of your actions and how it benefited your employer.) The interests category then addresses your five- to 10-year career strategy, such as target responsibilities, title, industry, and firms. Finally, the values category highlights your personal preferences and priorities in life and the workplace. This is where the topic of work-life balance is illuminated.

Create your resume template — Your self-assessment outline naturally evolves into your resume. Your resume is your buyer’s first impression of you. Most job seekers use templates from resume software, which is a start; but it should not be viewed as the end all. To set your resume apart, follow these logistical guidelines: be consistent in tense, use action verbs, use concise phrases, avoid long paragraphs, and proofread.
Subsequently, your content should summarize your skills, knowledge, abilities, and experience with a slight tailoring to each target firm and position. Choose the most relevant experiences and use who, what, when, where, why, and how questions to structure your descriptions; use numbers to quantify your achievements; and use the vocabulary of your industry and field.

Identify buyers — You should now have a good grasp of the key features of your product and be able to build your target list of buyers confidently. The overarching definition of a buyer is the firm you would like to work for; furthermore, there are two buyer classifications. Primary buyers are the hiring managers who make the final decision about whether you get hired. Secondary buyers are the enablers—individuals who can either directly connect you to your primary buyers or, better yet, sell you to them.

This step requires an ample amount of research. From your self-assessment, you should be able to distinguish clearly and objectively the types of firms and industries you would like to work for. Create a profile of your ideal firm and position. Consider items such as a firm’s five- to 10-year strategy to determine whether it fits with your interests, as well as company culture and benefits requirements to verify a fit with your values. This should also provide insight into the backgrounds of the key hiring managers for your ideal position, and help determine how to gain access to them.

From your profile criteria, develop a list of questions that will allow you to obtain information from either network contacts or online research. Targeted questions, also known as informational interview questions, serve several purposes. The first is information gathering to develop your target list of buyers. Secondarily, it prepares you for your conversation with target buyers—"the sell." Your list of questions is designed to reveal the needs of your target buyers and highlight where you can add value.

There are two types of positions, formal and informal, and the sell most benefits the latter. The formal position is usually the publicized and visible job you see on an employer’s website or a job board. The informal position could either be a position the hiring managers have considered but have never been able to articulate until you came along, or it could be the exception to their formal position, a strategic reconsideration of the original criteria to fit you. The proactive approach targets the informal position.

The third purpose of informational interview questions is to help you get an understanding of where to find additional contacts such as conferences, online communities, and member and affiliated organizations and associations. In addition to your target list of firms, make a note of where you can possibly find these buyers. You now have everything for your next step.

Develop your marketing plan timeline and schedule—This is more of a logistical step that allows you to maintain a level of organization and sanity, especially when mixed emotions of being jobless sidetrack you. Create a goal-oriented timeline and an activities-based schedule. Include the number of buyers you need to contact, calls you need to make, and network contacts to reach out to. Also include associations and organizations you need to be a member of and conferences that would be beneficial for you to attend.

Market your product—If you have reached this step, you have armed yourself with enough information to market yourself effectively. To reiterate, the reactive approach is responding to publicized opportunities either via posting your resume online and career fairs. Because you have already created your resume, there is no harm supplementing your efforts with this approach. It does not take much time and is the easiest way to go. However, do not spend more than 25 percent of your time and efforts on these activities.

The bulk of your time should be spent proactively networking at conferences, within professional associations, on online communities such as LinkedIn, and with past colleagues and mentors. It is estimated that 65 percent to 90 percent of jobs are found through networking. So do not hesitate to pick up the phone or send out an e-mail to notify someone in your network that you are in the market. Most importantly, practice your marketing spiel and focus on getting those informal positions.

The only disadvantage to this proactive approach is that it is much more time consuming on the front end than the reactive approach; however, the return on your investment can be tenfold of the alternative! It saves time in the long run by avoiding mismatches. And ultimately, knowing that you are directing your career, it provides a greater sense of satisfaction.

Shaw-chin Chiu is a project manager with ZweigWhite. She can be contacted at schiu@zweigwhite.com.