It is true that you want to take job search seriously, dedicating enough time and energy, having a good job search plan in place and working it every day. However too often job seekers get lulled into believing they are implementing a “full time” search when in fact their efforts don’t translate into results.
I do not believe that a job seeker needs to put in 40 hours a week to implement an effective search. As a matter of fact somewhere around the 32-34 hr point job search efforts loose their effectiveness dramatically. A good job search isn’t about the number of hours spent as much as it is getting the most results from the hours spent.
For example take 2 job seekers who are searching 25 hours per week and one job seeker spends their time surfing the web applying for jobs and the other spends their time networking for jobs. The second job seekers is likely to find their job sooner because the statistic still stands that over 80% of jobs are found through networking.
Every week job seekers should spend the majority of their time doing job search activites that reap the highest return on their investment of time. It is when job seekers get sucked into endless hours of scanning job sites, researching companies and organizing their search that they will seem to have put in many hours but show few results.
There is a formula for numbers of hours spent per job search activity that reaps the highest results. The good news is that an effective job search can be done in less than 40 hours per week, leaving time for taking care of yourself, your family or your to do list.
