Use Holiday Season Profitably: Broaden Networking Horizons To Boost Employability

The holiday season does not only mean tucking into mounds of turkey, shopping, visiting family members and just having a rollicking good time. Hidden within it are great prospects for enhancing your employment prospects, improving your job search and helping you to develop connections that could help you land the job that has proved elusive so far.

The holiday season is the right time to re-tune your job search and give it a brand new look. Redesign your business cards; update your website and LinkedIn Profile.

Business cards are often the first impression you create on the person you are interacting with. Make your card more businesslike in appearance. You could even ad some social icons or have a more corporate like email that will give your card a corporate look.

If you have your own Website it is a great source for providing in-depth information to your potential employer. Having your own website also conveys a sense of seriousness and earnestness. Add more personal information on the website. Change your aspirations and goals and make them more precise and job-oriented. Remove anything on your website that could put off your employer – the picture of your tattoo, elaborate explanations of the Hollywood stars you admire and other trivial matters are best expunged from the site.

Have postings of your accomplishments, your work experience and referrals from various people. They make for impressive reading and it is much better that a potential employer reads them, rather than you ‘brag’about them.

The LinkedIn Profile is also of great importance as more and more employers are resorting to it to look for appropriate candidates to fill their vacancies. So clean up your profile, get it up-to-date, and make it look outstanding for prospective employers.

Sending Christmas cards by mail has lessened greatly as people prefer to send electronic cards. Before the onset of the net, people would get deluged by the avalanche of cards that they would receive during Christmas. Now it is the opposite, people welcome cards as they have become rarer.

Make a special card and send it people, other than your family, who you feel can be helpful in getting you a job. It will help refresh their minds about who you are and help you break the ice when you meet them next. Just the fact that you sent them a card will go a long way in getting their attention when the time comes to ask them for their advice and support.

Evaluate the direction you want your career to take.  Hark back to the past and ask yourself some searching questions. What did I do to try and find a job? What did I do wrong that I couldn’t find one? Should I change my career goals or revamp my job search modus-operandi and start anew?  

These questions may be difficult to answer honestly because they contain bitter truth that is often hard to swallow. But taking the time to self-introspect will go a long way in helping you remodel your job search and put you on a career path that could significantly impact your life goals as well.

So even as you are packing presents for your family and friends, unwrapping presents that you have received, tucking into delicious festive food, don’t forget that it will be worthwhile spending some time away from all these. It could help redefine and reshape your career path and show how you can reach there.