Week #1 - Wednesday

So where were we?  Oh yeah, next steps once the resume and LinkedIn are up to date.  So the next thing I'm going to do upon my exec coach's recommendation is to subscribe to the Atlanta Business Chronicle which publishes what's called the Book of Lists.  In this book, there are lists of Atlanta's best places to work organized by size, industry, etc.  Tomorrow I'm going to spend some time reviewing the lists and making my own list of employers I'd like to work for.  Then I turn to my 280+ LinkedIn connections and leverage Brandon's 2200+ to make introductions, from there, I schedule coffee/meetings and those become my sales pipeline, only this deal is big bc they get me and I get compensation and benefits!  So to recap:

1. Get your resume looking incredible and be sure to make your LinkedIn profile reflect that professionalism (copy/paste goes a long way)
2. Pick the companies in your area that you'd like to work for.  Don't worry about whether they have a posted position
3. Use LinkedIn to get introduced to people who work at these places
4. Work to schedule coffee meetings with these key individuals to learn more about there company, tell them your career goals
5. If you can schedule a few of these every week, pretty soon one of those "coffee talks" will morph into an interview.

So that's the plan as prescribed by my Exec Coach.  It sounds phenomenal to me bc let's face it, I've got the time and also bc I feel like it keeps my sales skills sharp and opens my eyes to a new way to network.  And if I can build a larger network of contacts in Atlanta, who knows what opportunities will avail themselves later on?

Plus the whole approach feels more like old school networking.  Funny that in the age of the internet the approach can actually revert back to getting people together, in the same space, over coffee.  It actually aligns really well with this book I've been reading called What's Mine is Yours about how social networking sites are allowing us to spend less time in front of our screens and more in our community, with those neighbors we've spent the last few decades disassociating ourselves to.

And don't get me wrong, I'm still searching jobs in the traditional online way but I am leveraging LinkedIn more heavily in the process. The 5 steps above is an experiment that I'll report on through this blog bc at the end of the day, I want to be certain I've tried everything.  Plus if Brandon's right and 80% of jobs are unlisted, the experiment above will help me uncover those with only employers and industries that I'm interested in.

Tomorrow I'll dedicate the post to other things I've done since returning to the job market. Until then...