Seven Steps That Can Shorten your job search

Seven Steps That Can Shorten Your Search
By TERENCE C. REILLY
4:13 p.m., Aug. 11, my office. They came, they saw, they conquered.
This isn't a plot from a science-fiction novel. This actually happened at my company when it downsized me and a lot of other employees. "They" were the executives who did the downsizing, and they "saw" or laid off many of us that day.
The date and place is etched in my mind because it was at that moment I was told that my job had been eliminated after 16 years. I had heard countless stories about other executives being downsized, but I never believed it would happen to me.
The good news is that I wasn't conquered. In fact, I'm stronger for having gone through this transition. My search took four months and taught me a lot about my inner resources. I developed tools that helped me land a new position more quickly than I expected and I learned what I really wanted to do professionally at this stage of my life. I'm sharing my story in hope that it will help others who may be going through a similar transition.
How Events Unfolded
Before my layoff I had been a senior account manager at a $2 billion privately owned marketing services company based in the Midwest. For most of my career there, I had held senior sales and field management positions. I had moved twice for the company and traveled enough miles to have a Northwest Airlines Gold Card for five years. My performance evaluations were excellent, and I had closed more than $3 million in new business during the first half of 1998. One was a minor automotive account that I expanded into a significant revenue stream with projects contracted into 2000. My life seemed stable and secure.
Bad assumption. For a guy who grew up in Brooklyn, I should have had more street smarts. Last July, the company's third president in two years arrived and it became known that we were awash in red ink. The focus immediately shifted to cost reduction. We assumed most of the reductions would occur at headquarters, not at regional field offices. And, since I was a prime revenue producer, why should I be worried?
As other downsizing victims would likely agree, logic and business strategies weren't part of the layoff equation.
A Sense of Urgency
The severance package I received made my termination more terrifying. My 50th birthday was three weeks away and I was given six weeks' pay, plus two weeks more for unused vacation -- a two-month cushion. There would be no transition period.
I also received 30 days of bare-bones assistance at an outplacement firm -- in essence, a desk with a phone and help revising my resume. Fortunately, the senior manager of the office realized the inequity of the situation and gave me full use of the outplacement firm's services, including extensive executive coaching, for as long as I needed it.
Nevertheless, due to the short severance period, I had a strong sense of urgency about my job hunt. I needed to put together a plan that would help me generate results quickly.
After some of my shock and anger subsided, I began to get organized for survival. My action plan helped me keep track of contacts and find a terrific new job in just four months. If you want to stay organized and productive, consider taking these steps.
1. Create a system for organizing your job search.
I developed several templates on my computer to track different elements of my search. They included a table for active companies, a table for interested companies with no current openings and a table for rejections (several pages). I also kept lists of "companies contacted but no response" (many pages), "companies applied to but no longer interested," and "offers" (short but sweet).
I printed these reports and stored them in a one-inch binder with additional sections for tracking networking contacts, recruiters, correspondence, job options (including written and revised descriptions of "my perfect job"), resumes, reference lists and letters. I also included a section for storing data sheets for each company I contacted. The data sheet included key names, phone numbers, contact dates and outcomes.
Organizing and tracking everything I did may have consumed a lot of time, but the positives outweighed the negatives:
I gained a sense of control over my new job of marketing myself to employers.
I captured details that I might have lost given the stress I was under.
When fielding return calls from potential employers, I could immediately locate information about the company and know when and who I last communicated with.
All key information was available on one page, and the tables could be easily updated depending on new information I received about various jobs.
2. Revise your resume by forming a focus group.
Take advantages of the resources and expertise available to you. For instance, ask professional coaches at the outplacement center, headhunters, friends and fellow job searchers for input about your resume. Most importantly, ask employers you contact for interviews what they like and find interesting about your resume.
3. Use multiple sources for job leads.
I was advised that networking was the only viable source of leads to good jobs. However, I recommend using all available channels for leads. My three best offers came from a recruiter, a local newspaper ad and a networking contact. In fact, the sources of my leads were fairly evenly distributed among these three channels.
4. Have a daily action plan.
Treat your job search as though it were a full-time job. I created a "to-do" list every night to accomplish the next day. Using these lists and my various charts, I quickly reviewed open items and action plans, then assigned a priority to each item. I rarely finished my lists, but as I checked things off at the end of the day, I regained a sense of control and developed a feeling of accomplishment about my search. By staying busy, I also never hit the wall of depression or despair that I had dreaded. Most of the time, I simply didn't have time to start worrying.
5. Pursue every job lead, even if it appears to have limited value.
By doing this from the start, I was invited to interview and became involved in follow-up discussions and job-offer negotiations early on. Although the initial offers didn't meet my job or compensation needs, I could practice for the real thing. More importantly, I knew I had more options to fall back on than flipping burgers. My feeling of desperation left because the marketplace had validated the fact that I was employable. I knew my resume and interview demeanor was working and that perhaps I could be selective and actually find my dream job. If not, at least I would be able to afford my son's college tuition, keep my house and still have retirement savings left.
6. Use all the resources offered by your outplacement company.
If you receive outplacement assistance as part of your severance package, take it. Two acquaintances who also were laid off declined this option and opted to receive the equivalent funds in cash. One of them, a former senior executive, was unemployed for 18 months. During this time, he did manual labor to pay his bills. He ended up accepting a job that pays considerably less than his former six-figure income. The other accepted a position quickly and now is underemployed and unhappy with the job and pay.
I received invaluable assistance, from re-writing my resume to negotiating multiple offers (to my surprise, this isn't fun) to executive-level coaching. This helped me beat the odds, and find a new job more quickly than the six-to-10-month norm for someone at my level.
7. Go for the big numbers.
To be successful at job hunting, I had to do three things: know my product (me), see as many people as possible and ask everyone to buy. The critical step is securing interviews. I calculated that for every 10 contacts I made, I would receive five interviews. Of the five interviews, I planned on being called back for second interviews at three of the companies and I hoped one offer would result. I also tried to be realistic and assumed that only one in five offers would be acceptable. These statistics meant that I needed to contact 50 companies to receive one good offer. Just in case my assumptions were false, I upped my initial goal to 100 first contacts.
My actual results were:
80 companies contacted
32 initial interviews
20 subsequent interviews
eight offers
three final offers.
The job I ultimately accepted was created for me: director of business development at the University of Michigan Business School's Executive Education Center. It's a unique position that capitalizes on my early career in education, advanced graduate work, experience with major corporations and sales and management success. The downsizing truly had a silver lining: I can now say that I'm happier with my job and life than I was at my former company. The journey was painful. I regret to say that if I had known how it would turn out, I might have enjoyed the process.
A final note: I was surprised that so many people were so willing to help. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this downsizing madness is the downsizing alumni who want to assist new members of the group. I'm ready to help, just e-mail me at treilly11@aol.com.
-- Mr. Reilly is director of business development at the University of Michigan's Business School Executive Education Center.