Tracking Job Search Progress
Charting Career Transition Growth with a Positive Outlook
It is important to track or chart your job search progress. By doing so, you are able to “fine tune” or re-adjust some of your career goals. You also expand your range of target industries or organizations, in line with the responses and feedback you receive from the job market.
Suggested ways in sustaining your level of confidence and motivation are as follows:
- review your accomplishments
- upgrade and continuously identify your skills
- maintain a positive attitude
Reviewing Your Accomplishments
Know what you have accomplished. Prepare an in-depth study and inventory of your past accomplishments. A thorough effort in this area will provide you with the following:
- An immediate awareness of things that you have done well
- The necessary information to identify your skills
- The base for a strong resumé and a solid job interview.
Express your work accomplishments. You can express your work accomplishments by writing down briefly what you did, not how you did it. Remember, these values which are beneficial to employers require a quantitative measurement to substantiate them.
Here are examples of the general results in improving of quality most frequently expressed in accomplishments:
- Established an administrative process
- Increased sales
- Increased profits
- Improved productivity and team work
- Planned a program from scratch
- Reduced costs
- Reduced time of operations
Upgrading and Identifying Your Skills
Many job seekers are either too general or too narrow when selling their skills and capabilities to a prospective employer. Keep in mind that your objectives are to be able to define yourself by your skills and competencies. Attend seminars or courses if necessary. It is important to articulate them to an employer’s needs, and to know which of your skills are most in demand within the job Market.
Maintaining a Positive Outlook
It is a good idea to develop personal strategies which will help you maintain a positive attitude throughout the period of your career transition as a job searcher.
Stress can exist in a number of areas of life at different times, sometimes concurrently and can result in adopting a joyless, negative frame of mind which is both destructive to self-confidence and obvious to those with whom you come into contact.
To assist you in developing and maintaining a positive frame of mind, it is important to keep a “healthy” outlook in other areas of your life surrounding your job search period. For example, you will be able to cope better if you are physically and mentally active - a regular exercise or a walk, visit to your local library, or pursue a rewarding social life where your interest lies, instead of isolating yourself.
