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The future of work requires a new approach to job searching
In this moment, as we reinvent the world of work, it’s well past time that we also reinvent the way we search for work. Specifically, we need to embrace online career storytelling as the best way to attract jobs and other meaningful opportunities.
It kills me when I encounter someone who is slogging through an old-fashioned job search, defeated and depleted by what is too often an unrewarding and ineffective process. It doesn’t have to be this way. In the age of the Internet, it doesn’t make sense to perpetuate a custom where the only place you share your career story is in a series of custom cover letters addressed to individuals who may or may not ever read them. What does make sense is to tell your career story online, where it has the potential to reach exponentially more people and have exponentially more impact.
Let me describe the old way of job searching — see if it feels familiar — and then paint a picture of how it could, and should, be.
The old way
You give your job 110%, until one day, a voice inside of you says, very quietly, that maybe you‘re done here — maybe your needs aren’t being met, you aren’t growing, you aren’t doing the work you’re meant to do. But the thought of ginning up a job search is overwhelming — updating your resume (ugh), dealing with your LinkedIn profile (double ugh), starting to network (insert panic attack), etc etc. So you stay put. And on bad days, you search online job listings. That makes you feel better, for a little while.
Eventually, the voice inside you grows from a whisper to a roar. But still, you stay, because you‘re stressed and busy and oh, god, updating your resume would be such a production. Plus, and this is the really scary thing, you aren’t completely sure what you want to do next, or if anyone will want to hire you — if your skills and that 110% you’ve been giving are applicable anywhere other than the place you currently work. It feels so much easier to tolerate the status quo. It’s not so bad, really.
