Three Things You Can Do While Looking For A Job

There are only so many hours per day that you can spend surfing job sites and tweaking your resume.  Here are three things you can do to help enhance your prospects while looking for a job.  Your goal is to make it easy for an employer to choose you and these simple things will help.

1) Stay Current

Keep up with any innovations or reforms in your industry.  Subscribe to relevant trade journals or other publications and keep up your membership in any professional organizations.  When you’re out of work this may seem like an uneccesary expense, but prospective employers will find it easier to hire you if you can demonstrate up to date knowledge of your industry.

2) Stay Connected

Nobody likes the out of work friend that badgers everyone they know for a job.  Maintaining your friendships in your industry however is a great way to hear about job openings, often before anyone else does.  Word of mouth jobs often come with personal reccomendations which make it that much easier for a prospective employer to hire you.

3) Stay Involved

Social networking isn’t just a Facebook page and online contacts.  Get involved and stay involved in your community.  Join a fraternal organization, volunteer for a political campaign or a youth center.  Share your time with your church or other charitable organization.  Volunteer work can turn into a paying gig, but it also will help you make local contacts that can lead to word of mouth jobs and volunteerism will plug holes in your job history on your resume.