Early in your search, you're likely to have a tremendous desire to stay at home and lick your wounds. Don't. You need to get yourself ready as quickly as you can to make the necessary contacts to get things moving. Still, you may make a grave error if you begin contacting people and companies before you really know exactly where you should be heading. You need to organize yourself and develop your marketing strategies first
At this time in your life, your goals and your life in general have undergone major changes from what they were when you were younger. Before you rush into a new job based on your old goals and life style, evaluate carefully where you are right now-and where you want to go. Chances are that you should change your life goals. You probably no longer really want the job that was your ultimate goal 10 to 20 years ago. Or, you may have already reached your initial goal and it's time for you to reset your goals instead of drifting aimlessly through this period. Take the time and effort to study yourself now. You may be surprised to find out how different your current needs and wants are from those you had in your twenties, thirties and even early forties.
Don't rush into a new job that is unsatisfactory for you just because you want to be employed. Far too many people who do this find themselves unemployed again after a short time. They may quit or be terminated-or remain in an unhappy and possibly dead-end situation.
You don't want to repeat their errors. You want to deal with the reasons other than general business conditions which explain why you were terminated from your previous position. You need to take enough time to determine the work environment in which you will be most successful. You should adequately survey the job market, and determine what you could do best in that market. You also need to take the time to determine what market segments exist, then select the market segment which best matches your overall life goals.
Make Valuable Contacts
Since it may have been years since you've looked for a job, let's review the importance of using your contacts. This is an important part of surveying the market and determining the market segments that currently exist. It is also one area where you as an older executive have a leg up on younger job-seekers. You already know many people in your industry and your community, and have most likely developed a larger range of acquaintances and business associates than the younger person.
As you're aware, two job markets exist, the visible job market, represented by jobs listed in newspaper advertisements, with state employment agencies, through executive recruiters, employment agencies, trade associations and college placement services; and the invisible or hidden job market, containing jobs which will soon be available due to retirements, expansion, under staffing, budget increases, or which might become available if the right person applied. These latter jobs are usually known to only a few people within an organization. Even the human resource departments are often unaware of their existence. At any given time, about 75 percent of the job potential is in this invisible market. Entry to this market is largely through personal contact. (Not what you know but who you know is often what counts here!)
In the early stages of your job search, you may not yet be aware of possible employment opportunities. You may have been so buried in your own job or situation that you haven't kept abreast of employment options in your industry or area of specialization, let alone in the general world of employment. Your first inclination is to buy the Sunday paper and begin searching there. That's a valuable activity, but not nearly as likely to be immediately productive as is looking for information through the people you know. In keeping with the idea that you are marketing yourself, you should survey the job market-and part of that is to survey the market through the eyes of your friends and acquaintances.
Your purpose: to get whatever information they might have about the job situation. You aren't begging them for a job, but just their assessment of what is happening in their business or industry. Ask them to give you the names of friends or acquaintances of theirs who might be willing to provide information and possible leads to companies that are hiring. Then use the first group of friends' and acquaintances' names as an entree to the next group of people.
Don't restrict the number of people you talk to. You need to get the big picture of the job market. Almost all your managerial skills are transferable to other businesses and industries, so don't just investigate the business or industry you've recently left. You also need to be aware of possibilities which you could qualify for with minimum additional training. Investigate small businesses of all types; city, local, state and federal government possibilities; the nonprofit sector; and start-up industries as well as big business.
Most of the new jobs these days are in small- and medium-size business and industries where you will have a better opportunity to access decision-makers directly. And where-as an older employment prospect-you will have a better opportunity for employment.
