- Make Job Seeking a Full-time Job: Don't look at job seeking as something to be done in your spare time; treat it as a full-time job. Devote about one-half of each day to finding job leads and arranging interviews. Then spend the rest of the day going out on actual interviews. Follow this schedule every day until you get a job.
- Use Friends, Relatives, and Acquaintances: as Sources of Job Leads. Make a systematic effort to contact friends, relatives, and acquaintances as a primary source of job leads.
- Use Standard Scripts and Forms: Have standard scripts and forms on hand, and use them when contacting friends or employers, writing letters, making telephone calls, and keeping records.
- Obtain Facilities and Supplies: Before you even begin job seeking, obtain and prepare all the supplies and services you will need—for example, telephone, typewriter, photocopies, stationery, postage, newspapers, and a work area.
- Obtain Unpublicized jobs: Obtain interviews for jobs that haven't been publicly advertised or that may not even exist yet. This will result in the discovery and actual creation of job openings.
- Use the Telephone as Tour Primary Contact for Leads: The telephone, rather than letters or personal visits, should be your main method of obtaining job leads and arranging interviews.
- Use the Classified Directory (Yellow Pages) of the Telephone Book: Each day, use die Yellow Pages section of the telephone book. It can provide you with new lists of potential employers who may have unpublicized job openings.
- Emphasize Your Personal and Social Skills: Your work skills aren't the only thing that deserves attention; you also need to emphasize distinctive personal and social skills. Stress these personal skills in your resume, in making contacts to obtain leads, and in the interview.
- Use One Job Lead to Uncover Others: Turn unsuccessful job inquiries into job leads. This will generate a continuous fresh supply of leads and contacts.
- Arrange Second Contacts and Callbacks: Arrange a second contact with an employer, following an interview, to help the employer decide in your favor. Similarly, arrange a callback with a highly attractive employer. This will give you quick access to information about forthcoming openings.
- Arrange Transportation: Arrange transportation to job locations that would otherwise be inaccessible. This lets you consider a greater range of job possibilities.
- Approach Former Employers: Approach former employers for job leads as well as actual job openings
- Obtain Open Letters of Recommendation: Obtain open letters of recommendation that will give interviewers all the information they need to reach an immediate decision.
- Write a Resume: Your resume should stress personal skills, attributes, and functional work skills — not give a formal listing of job titles.
- Train for the Interview: Learn how to act during an interview and how to respond to common interview questions.
- Prepare an Interview Checklist: Make up a list of actions to be covered during any interview. After each interview, review this list immediately to highlight omissions or problems that might need correcting for the next interview.
See Also: How to Answer the “Tell Me about Yourself” Interview Question
- Place Job-Wanted Ads: If you have great difficulty finding a job, place a job-wanted ad in the newspaper. Word the ad to emphasize your positive personal and social attributes.
- Identify Non-employment-Derived Work Skills: Identify all marketable work-related skills that you may not have acquired from, or that may not be related to, other previous paid employment.
- Structure a Job-Seeking Schedule: Use a form to plan each day's schedule of interviews, calls, and visits.
- Keep a Leads List: Maintain a running record of job leads. This helps you organize contacts with callbacks to potential employers.
- Keep Progress Charts: Keep a formal record of your job-seeking activities. This allows you to make a quick evaluation of your progress and—if you're having trouble finding a job—to pinpoint possible reasons for this difficulty.
- Contact Job Supervisors: Contact potential job supervisors, rather than personnel staff, in a company. The supervisor usually plays a critical role in hiring decisions, and also sometimes can create a job that's especially geared to the skills or attributes of a particular applicant.
- Consider Relocation: If you can't find a suitable job locally, learn how to get one in another location.
- Deal Positively with Tour Handicaps: Learn how to deemphasize and discuss apparent handicaps, such as a physical disability or a prison record, and how to view them positively.
- Write Letters for Job Leads: Write to people for job leads, using sample letters and forms as models.
- Enlist Family Support: Enlist the support of your family or roommates and tell them specific ways in which they can help.
- Provide a Photograph (Optional): When possible, personalize your resume by attaching a photograph.
- Understand Employment Applications: Learn how to emphasize your positive attributes when answering typical questions on employment application forms.
- Consider Many Positions: If you consider many types of positions, you won't restrict yourself to just one type of job.
published January 19, 2013
By Harrison Barnes, CEO and Founder - BCG Attorney Search 
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The very idea of job hunting may elicit a variety of negative reactions, ranging from fatigue to grim determination to despair. After all, if your only alternative were to pound the pavement, classified ads in (clenched) hand, to compete with countless other equally grim or desperate souls, you'd have a right to feel bad. However, the job-searching process doesn't have to be grim; the Job-Club method offers several specific, systematic methods that yield a personal sense of accomplishment as well as a probable job. These are the procedures you'll be using:
Alternative Summary
Harrison is the founder of BCG Attorney Search and several companies in the legal employment space that collectively gets thousands of attorneys jobs each year. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placement attract millions of reads each year. Harrison is widely considered the most successful recruiter in the United States and personally places multiple attorneys most weeks. His articles on legal search and placement are read by attorneys, law students and others millions of times per year.
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