3 Strategies to Make Job Search Dreams Come True this Fall: Be prepared to start the next quarter century!

As summer 2024 ends, it’s time to get serious about job search if you finished school in June and enjoyed your “last” summer off. Or, for those who are working, you may be looking at one more calendar quarter to meet your key performance indicator (KIP) goals or get another job.

Regardless, whether you want to find a new job now, or feel you may want a new job before the start of 2025, you need a plan. It’s not enough to hope for results without a plan.

So, here are a few ideas for getting started:

1. Remember that hope is not a plan,
2. A plan is a dream with a deadline, and
3. Be prepared to change your plan.

Those of us who have worked in organizations that do a lot of planning may find these statements obvious. But things are different when you are doing a job search. You will not have a team reminding you of schedule, meetings, and deadlines in an organization. Instead, your new job search project will succeed based largely on your efforts alone.

Remember that hope is not a plan.

All of us are hoping for great things in fall 2024, or in 2025, but will hope be enough to secure your future? Probably not.

Do you want a new career, new job, promotion, or transfer by next year? Think about what you are doing now to make that hope a reality.

Start by thinking: what can you do this week to make things happen? For example:

• Are there networking events you will be able to attend before the end of the summer?
• What friends and acquaintances in your business or profession can you contact for a chat during the slow season?
• Will there be an opportunity for you to check in with leadership on progress at your current job before the last quarter starts?

No doubt you’ll think of many other things you can be doing right now to turn your hopes into plans. Whether you undertake one of the steps above, or devise others, it’s important that you do something.

Hope is good. A plan is better.

A public service announcement on TV featured an entrepreneur who described a plan as a “dream with a deadline.” You have to set a deadline, she said, to make a dream happen.

Donna Shannon, in last week’s “Down & Dirty Job Search column on LinkedIn, described job search as a job. In fact, we believe it is more than a job. Job search is an entrepreneurial and sales endeavor, as discussed in a previous post. You are working for yourself, and have to get it done without support from an organization. You’ll have to arrange your own office space, work hours, and KPIs, among other things. Then, you will have to hold yourself accountable for course corrections when your plan is not working. It’s more work than work!

Now, there is nothing wrong with having aspirations and dreams about getting a better job one day. It’s a good thing to want something better. Coaches and project managers tell us, though, that dreaming is not the most effective way to get results for your job search or career change. 

There are strategies in coaching and project management that will help you turn hopes and dreams of a better job into a plan. For instance, write your plan down, break it into steps, and assign dates to complete the steps, just as you would for a project at work. You can even use your favorite calendar, CRM system, or project management tool to guide you.

Then tell people close to you about your plan. Whether you ask them to hold you accountable or not, you will be more likely to act on your job search plan if you have told other people what you are doing.

Unemployed jobseekers may also be required to participate in publicly-funded employment programs or demonstrate that they are job-seeking when they collect unemployment benefits. While this seems like an imposition, these programs help with job search accountability. State unemployment insurance rules in New York, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere may require jobseekers to present proof of job search periodically. The number of required job search contacts is, in my view, minimal—three contacts a week in many cases, but the requirement reduces the chance you will do nothing. Use these bureaucratic requirements to help jump-start your efforts when you are out of work.

Your plan should change if it is not feasible.

Another issue I noticed at job clubs and networking groups is that a few participants stuck to an inflexible plan that was not working. A member of my non-profit networking group, for example, wanted to be a controller for a symphony orchestra. He stuck to this plan long after it was clear that there were too few jobs of this kind available in his commuting area. It’s appropriate to change plans when you find job market conditions that make the plan infeasible.

Set your goal, break it into steps, and set target dates. Be prepared to change your strategy as needed. Army officers say “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” Other people call this “stuff happens.” (And sometimes they substitute a stronger word for “stuff.”)

If you can dream it, you can do it.

An executive coach I spoke with several years ago assured me that if I could dream it, I can do it. This is not always literally true, in my opinion, because technological and financial constraints limit what is possible. Explore the dream anyway, and find out what is possible. Sports coaches say “you miss 100% of the shots you do not take.” So, develop a career strategy, job search, or career communication plan. Then be prepared to change it as conditions change. Your hopes and dreams can happen only when you make a practical plan and then take action.