At our recent community pop-up Together Your Summer, the topic of job searches and role transitions was top of mind for many, especially since a lot of us operate on an academic year cycle. I then popped over here to check in with the hive mind and all kinds of great ideas surfaced. And of course, I’m only writing about staying Together in a job search, and I’m not addressing the emotional issues that can emerge during role switches (but Alicia and Lourdes over on LinkedIn reminded us to “plan a closing ritual or ceremony to end one chapter and start another”).
In terms of Togetherness during a job search, here are some key tips to stay organized:
- Take advantage of technology: Versha notes that using AI to format your resume and create mock interview questions specific to a job description and organization can help tailor your materials per interview. And of course, using one’s Comprehensive Calendar to record any interview deadlines, materials, and follow-up needed will help you keep on top of everything.
- Create a job hunt tracker: Create a spreadsheet of the jobs of interest, their current postings (or not), when you applied, how you followed up, and any other relevant details. Additionally, you can add trackers for key networking contacts, and categorize them by type of help they can give, e.g. one-time introduction, brainstorm partner, resume reviewer, etc. This is helpful because not all mentors and contacts are useful for the same kind of help, and you don’t want to over-tap people. Bonus points for creating a column that indicates if you sent a thank you note or message.
- Maintain an All-About-You document: This idea comes from Hannah M, and it frankly knocked my Together socks off. She maintains a list of accomplishments and anecdotes tied to various skills over the course of her career, so she essentially has a bank of information at her fingertips. How many times in a job interview have you struggled to come up with a specific anecdote to match the required skill? (Raises hand!)
- Download diligently: As you plan to leave your role, you may be tempted to take the entire contents of your laptop with you. Marion from Illuminate notes: “Instead, think of the products/documents that represent your best work and made you proud – i.e. your own intellectual property, and also the documents that reflect your unique thinking – like your management philosophy or your performance review from that year you struggled and then nailed it. Save these. The other stuff, LET IT GO.” As someone who frequently searches through materials from past jobs, I wish I had culled it down sooner!
- Clean up the contacts and calendar: Often the most valuable and essential items we need in a transition are our contacts and calendar events. Laina notes that you need your contacts in a format that is easily downloadable – for Outlook, this requires exporting them to a CSV file. Pam also notes that having a plan for the calendar transition is key: “My biggest learning from my most recent transitions were around calendaring – I use my work calendar as my ‘primary’ calendar, so when I lost access to that, I was losing personal calendar items like kids’ birthday parties, meetings, volunteer things etc. When I know I am going to transition, I go 12 months out and ‘invite’ my personal calendar to all of those events.”
Okay, Together friends, what else would you add? Comment below or over at LinkedIn!
