Jobsearch Planning: A Project Planning Approach

In my opinion, jobsearch planning is best tackled as you would any other project, because the key to a successful project is in the planning.

Creating a job search project plan is the first thing you should do when starting your job search and looking for a new job.

Too often project planning is ignored in favour of just getting on with the work - writing your CV, covering letter preparation and sending out job applications. However, many people fail to realise that a project plan is essential for saving time, money and avoiding many problems that may arise.

Lets look at what a Project Manager would do:

• Direct and manage the project from beginning to end and define the project scope, goals and deliverables that support the goals...
• Communicate project expectations to team members and stakeholders in a timely and clear fashion and liaise with project stakeholders on an ongoing basis...
• Estimate the resources and participants needed to achieve project goals and submit budget proposals...

There's more about being a Project Manager including a CV example at Project Manager.

This page is dedicated to showing you a practical approach to project planning i.e. jobsearch planning. On completion of this guide, you should have a sound project planning approach that you can use for future projects. You can also try my proven 7 Steps course by email - its free.

1. Define Your Project Goals

Any project can only be said to be successful when the needs of the stakeholders have been met. A stakeholder is anybody directly, or indirectly impacted by the project, so it is important to identify the stakeholders in your project. In this case that means YOU and most likely, your family and once you understand who the stakeholders are, the next step is to find out their needs.

With your comprehensive list of needs, the next step in jobsearch planning is to prioritise them. From the prioritised list, create a set of goals that can be easily measured. A technique for doing this is to review them against the SMART principle. This way it will be easy to know when a goal has been achieved.

Goals should be SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based.

The acronym SMART has another variation, which you might use to provide a more comprehensive definition for goal setting:

S - significant

M - meaningful

A - achievable

R - reasonable

T - tangible

This provides an alternate definition that will help you to be successful in your job hunting.

When you run your jobsearch planning project take a moment to consider whether your goals are SMART goals.

Once you have established a clear set of goals, they should be recorded in the project planning records. It can be a useful reminder to also include the needs and expectations of your stakeholders as a motivating factor to help you keep on track..

This is the most difficult part of the planning process completed. It's now time to move on and look at the project milestones.

2. Establish Project Milestones

Using the goals you have defined in step 1, create a list of things the jobsearch planning project needs to deliver in order to meet those goals. Specify when and how each milestone must be delivered.

3. Create a Task List

Identify what needs to be done to arrive at each milestone identified in step 2. For each task identify the following:

• The amount of effort (hours or days) required to complete the task.
• How you will carry out the task.

Once you have established the amount of effort for each task, you can workout the effort required for each deliverable, and an estimated end date.

A common problem you may discover at this point, is when a project has an imposed deadline that you may be tempted to 'move the goal posts'.

Step 4: Making It Happen

You now know what you are trying to achieve (find a new job); you know when you want to achieve it (your end date) and you know how you are going to achieve it.

TIP: Its impossible say precisely how long it will take to find a new job, because the variables of location, skills, industry, how much you earn and how well you interview will all have an effect, but you should plan for say 6 months if you are relatively senior, or 3 months for a more junior role. The nearer you set the end date in your jobsearch planning, the busier and more frantic your job hunting will become.

Working on that time-scale, your job search planning should include applying for advertised vacancies, networking for jobs with your personal contacts, social networking on line and even using a direct approach to firms that are not advertising for new employees. You must aim to set up a sufficient number of both formal and informal (networking) interviews to guarantee at least some job offers and this means determining how many interviews you think you can physically handle in one day or one week and so on.

Congratulations. Having followed all the project planning steps above, you should have a good project plan for your job search. Remember to update your plan as the project progresses, and measure progress against the plan.

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