RecruitMilitary Blog

I was flipping through the latest Fast Company magazine and came across an article about goal setting. It got me to thinking about how arduous and overwhelming a career search can be for many people. There is so much to do and think about, after all. What am I going to do with my life? Where am I going to live? How will this affect my family? Will I be paid enough? What about a house? And so on...

The author of the article suggests setting your sights lower. I echo that sentiment and would encourage you to start small and start today.

Take your search one day at a time or better yet, twenty minutes a day. Set your watch to it - just twenty minutes.

For the next seven days, spend twenty minutes per day: 

1. Day One – register on http://www.linkedin.com and start searching for people you know or people who have a similar military background as yours. Start networking.
2. Day Two – register on http://www.facebook.com and invite all your friends to do the same. Start networking.
3. Day Three – via phone or email, ask three friends or colleagues to review your resume and give you critical feedback
4. Day Four – make a list of 10 people you know who are working in business
5. Day Five – call 5 of those people and tell them you are working on a career search and ask them if they would be willing to talk to you about their companies and what they do there (this is how networking begins.)
6. Day Six – call the second group of 5 and do the same thing.
7. Day Seven - Register your profile on Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, and RecruitMilitary.com – it’ll take five minutes at each site once you get going.

My guess is that some of these activities will be enjoyable and you’ll end up doing them longer. That’s okay. Doing it this way will make it seem less stressful and will actually help jump start you to better and bigger things. Stay tuned, and I’ll talk about Week Two in the week ahead – when I get a free twenty minutes.