Just because new jobs are being creating every month, don’t get fat and lazy about your job search.

There are still hordes of people looking for jobs, and they’re your competition. So you need to be smarter and more strategic than the 8.3 million people who are job hunting right along with you. Here are two things smart and strategic job hunters do.

1. They go beyond the help-wanted postings on-line and in the paper.

   The first place you probably think to go to is company career Web sites and spots like Monster.com. That’s fine, but not particularly strategic for two reasons. One, everyone else is doing that. And two, many, if not most jobs are never posted in these places.

   According to a recent New York Times article, Monster’s new employment index of online demand for workers “detected strong demand for workers in smaller and medium-size companies—those with 1,000-2,500 employees.” In my book, that’s not exactly small. What about those truly small companies—ones with a couple hundred or less than 50 employees—where many of the jobs are waiting for the right person to come along, but you’ll never find posted on-line? (Trust me, there are plenty.)

   Their index also showed that the most sought-after workers are in sales, business and financial occupations, computer and information-technology support and administrative functions. What if you’re not in those fields?

   I talk to hundreds of people and I’ve still only met a handful who ever found a job through an on-line ad. Most jobs are still found by old-fashioned talking to live humans.

   A recent Execunet survey of 952 executives said networking with personal and business contacts was the most helpful strategy in their job search. Over 40 percent said they secured their current or most recent job through their personal or business network, compared to 26% who were recruited by a search firm. Twenty percent said they got interviews from Internet job postings, but only 9% of their jobs came from Internet postings.

   This approach doesn’t just apply to executives. I’ve met administrative assistants, writers, accountants and marketing professionals who found jobs talking to people who referred them to people they knew.

2. Practice "learned optimism."
   

   There has been a lot of talk recently about how many people have simply stopped looking for a job. Yet I don’t know anyone who has actually stopped looking.

   But I have met hundreds of people who send out letters in dribs and drabs and wait for responses. And when they don’t hear back they get deflated and defeated and don’t follow up or send out any more letters for a week or two.

   You can either be an optimist or a pessimist in this process. In his book, Eliminate Stress From Your Life Forever, William Atkinson refers to Martin Seligman’s book, Learned Optimism, which talks about what determines how you see things.

   One of those factors is “permanence.” When something bad happens—like getting rejected—the pessimist assumes the situation will remain permanent. In a job search, this is the “Why bother doing anything? No one’s hiring and they never respond anyway?” attitude. The optimist, on the other hand, assumes it’s temporary.

   Another factor that affects how you see things is “pervasiveness.” When something bad happens, the pessimist assumes everything else will go bad. The optimist figures the negative experience is an isolated thing.

   The learned optimist explains good events as permanent, and pervasive, sums up Atkinson. Bad events are explained as temporary and limited in scope.

   Since there are plenty of highly qualified people out there, employers have the pick of the lot and therefore, the advantage. Create your advantage with a strategy based on the power of human relations and the power of positive thinking.

© by Andrea Kay