3 Reasons You Need a Job Target When You Are Downsized: Know your destination when starting your journey.

As we approach the holiday season and year end, you may wonder “what’s next?” Those of you in the corporate world could be waiting to find out whether anticipated bonuses and promotions will materialize. Will the company restructure, perhaps leaving you with an undesirable assignment—or no assignment at all?

Traditionally, employees in the public sector, especially the federal government did not feel as vulnerable at year-end. This year could be different, as a proposed new federal agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has leaders that want to dismiss thousands of civil service workers. Yet another proposal calls for closing all federal and federal-contractor diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and dismissing all their staff members.

On a more positive note, some readers may be finishing college or graduate school this month. That usually means it is time to enter the workforce.

Whether you are unsure that your job will still exist next year, are you are finishing school, or you just feel ready to start something new, it is a good time to think about your next goal. A good way to start is to develop a specific job target…

Here are some reasons to focus on a job target:

1. Employers do not fill “any job,”
2. The job target will focus your search, and
3. A resume and other job search materials should demonstrate the benefits of hiring you to do a specific job.

You will probably think of more reasons to target a specific job as you work through the job search and career planning process. These three points will jumpstart your thinking.

Employers do not fill “any job.”

Jobseekers often tell me “I just need a job.” New grads have parents that tell them to “get a job.” Experienced workers who have been downsized need to support families.

New technology, I’ve been told, permits jobseekers to automatically apply for thousands of jobs very rapidly. Some systems will even insert skills required for the job into an application whether the applicant has these skills or not. Theoretically, if you apply for every job, you may get any job. It’s more likely, though, that you will get no job.

You are unlikely to find work by applying for “everything, everywhere, all at once” because employers have specific business challenges to address. And they need to know about the skill, experience, and education that will allow you to meet their needs. They don’t need someone that says they can do “anything” or “any job” because they need a paycheck or health insurance.

A job target focuses your job search.

Where would you look for “any job?” You can probably leave the job title field blank on many job search sites and get pages upon pages of results. But few, if any, of the leads will be in your commuting area or match your skillset. You can search for any job in your local area and get slightly better results, but most of the jobs will still not match your skills, experience, and education. Narrowing a search to jobs in your local area without specifying the job you want and the jobs you are qualified to fill will still get many useless results. It would be little better than asking an AI to apply for every job on the Internet for you.

Your search will be more practical when you specify the title of the job you want. And if the job search website you are using allows you to specify years of experience, you may get even better matches.

Many jobs are never posted online. Even that hypothetical AI that applies for every job on your behalf would not find them. That means you will have to seek out people in your network or people they know to find these jobs. This makes it even more important to focus your search on a job target because your contact won’t know what business opportunities you can address unless you tell them.

In other words, it is important to select a job target whether your search is concentrated online, or you search primarily through networking with other people.

A resume should demonstrate the benefits of hiring you for a specific job.

Resumes that do not specify a job target are ineffective. For example, I have had clients who are qualified for work in vastly different fields, such as engineering and law. An entrepreneur or senior leader seeking engineers will look for very different skills and experience than the partner in a law firm seeking attorneys. It is possible, of course, to show both fields on the same resume so automated searches in both fields may pick it up. But leaders in either field would probably see the jobseeker as not being committed to either career, or as someone that is unlikely to stay at the job.

A client got results by collaborating with us on a resume focused on the work he truly loved–engineering. Then, we were able to concentrate on expertise in specialized software for drones, rather than on his ability to build and use legal databases. Kate Wendleton, a well-known career coach said in one of her books, “if your job target is wrong—or non-existent—everything is wrong.” Marketers would probably say you have to know what service you are marketing in order to target your ideal customers—employers. You will get better results when you start with a job target, whether the DOGE or your corporate leadership downsized you, or you want a new challenge.