- Define objectives operationally.
- Create a plan and modify it when necessary.
- Identify milestones and measure progress against them.
- Coordinate several activities that are proceeding at the same time.
- Manage time effectively.
- Keep the project team motivated and on track.
One of the keys to reaching objectives is to define them specifically and concretely enough to provide day to day direction for your project. Objectives defined in this manner are what I term operational objectives because they guide the daily operations that result in reaching objectives.
"Finding another job" is a reasonable objective with which to start your search. But one of your first tasks as project manager will be to refine this objective. To do so, you will have to think systematically about your values, priorities, and financial needs. In addition, you will need to gather more information about the labor market so that you can define your employment objective in a manner consistent with market conditions.
Guide yourself through activities that will help you explore yourself vocationally and provide the information base necessary for re fining your employment objectives in terms of your skills, values, and preferences. Understand and examine in depth the process of gathering information about the current labor market so that you can translate your skills, values, and preferences into vocational objectives consistent with the current needs of employers. Refining and redefining your objectives is a process that will continue through much of your job search as you gather more information about yourself and about current needs of potential employers.
Creating and modifying your plan
The seven steps outlined earlier provide a skeleton plan for managing your job search. As your search proceeds, you will need to break these steps down into more specific tasks geared to your particular situation. If, for example, your objectives involve relocation, your plan will include tasks like researching employment opportunities and living conditions in other geographical areas and arranging for interviews during extended visits to target areas.
Identifying milestones and measuring progress.
In addition, you will need to develop a schedule for completing specific tasks; this schedule will help you stay motivated by providing milestones against which to gauge your progress. Staying motivated can be difficult when you have no external sources of reward and you are aiming at a goal that will probably take many months to reach. Milestones provide you with opportunities to reward yourself for what you have accomplished before you have achieved your ultimate objective.
Coordinating activities
As mentioned earlier, you will often be working on activities associated with several different steps at the same time. You will, for example, gather and analyze information throughout your job search, and you will use this information to refine your vocational objectives throughout much of your job search. Meanwhile, you will need to create or update a resume, write cover letters, make phone calls, and go out on both informational and employment interviews. You will need to keep track of your communications to make sure that you follow up on possibilities in appropriate ways at appropriate times: you can't neglect to send thank you notes after informational interviews just because you need to write cover letters in response to help wanted notices in this Sunday's paper.
You will need to switch hats often and rapidly as you make your vocational transition. Sometimes you will be a writer, sometimes a researcher, sometimes a traveling salesperson, and sometimes a telemarketer. Sometimes your focus will be inward, sometimes outward. Sometimes you will assume several different roles in the course of a single day. Switching among several tasks and roles without neglecting any one of them will require you to be organized and to keep good records.
One of your first tasks as project manager, therefore, will be to set up an office for yourself, if you are provided with office space and services as part of an outplacement package from a former employer, you will be a step ahead. If not, you should begin immediately to set up a work space at your home or in the home or office of a friend or relative. Having a dedicated work space is important psychologically as well as logistically. Most people find having an office an inducement to working, even if the office is nothing more than the corner of a room equipped with a plank of plywood held up by filing cabinets from which a phone and a typewriter can be operated.
Your office should be a place that everyone with whom you live recognizes as yours alone. When using it, you should be as free from interruption by family and friends, as you would be if you were working for someone else outside your home. Keep all papers and materials related to your job search in your office, and use your office for all search related activities, including activities like reading through the business section of the newspaper. When you are not visiting organizations, plan to spend six to eight hours each day working in your office.
Equally important is to leave your search activities behind when you leave your office at the end of the day. Don't let your search spill over into every other aspect of your life. If you devoted four or five hours a week to a hobby while you were employed, continue to do so as you search for new employment. If you normally watched TV with your family for an hour or two each evening after coming home from work, keep up the practice as you conduct your search. You should not feel that you must work exclusively on getting a new job until you land one: while you are looking for paid work, you still have a life independent of your efforts to earn a living. Don't neglect it. Instead, plan for it and coordinate it with your search activities.
