Unemployed... and bored?

People tell me all the time that they wish they could find a job because they’re so bored from being unemployed and having nothing to do. Well, I’m going to throw a seemingly radical idea out there- if you’re a job seeker, you have no excuse to be bored!

You’ve probably all heard the phrase, “Getting a job is a full-time job.” You’ve probably also said to yourself, “Yeah right, like I’m going to spend as much time looking for a job as I would if I had an actual paying job!” Well, in this job market especially, that phrase is quite literal. There’s a direct correlation between the time and effort you put into your search, and the outcome.

One of the problems is that many job seekers spend an hour or so each morning scouring job boards… and then quit for the day because they don’t know what else they should be doing. In reality, there are way more job search activities than you could ever even fit into a single day. If you’re a trying to conduct a successful job search, you need to be researching companies of interest, locating individuals to make contact with at those companies, making calls to contacts, setting up “coffee meetings,” conducting informational interviews, building your online brand, getting out there and attending events to meet new people, volunteering in order to enhance your resume and build your network, and ideally, even doing some pro bono consulting work to keep your skills fresh. Whew! That’s exhausting just looking at that to-do list!

So, if you’re bored, great! Use that free time and energy to your advantage to get out there and secure a real, paying job that much quicker!