Here are 6 Strategies for Conducting a Job Search When You Have No Time
The thought of taking on more is daunting when you’re already working a full-time job and caring for a family or other loved ones. What do you do if you need a new job yesterday but don’t have hours a day to look for one?
The solution is to examine your routine in minute detail and break down your day into manageable chunks.
6 Steps to Job Search When You Don’t Have Any Time
Following the steps outlined below will help you determine where you’re spending (and wasting) time, carve out small chunks of time to make steps toward your larger goals, and improve your focus.
1. Start a Time Audit
A five-minute time slot may seem impossible to find in a jam-packed schedule. Planning your job search effectively can be greatly aided by conducting a time audit for a week prior to starting your search. Not only will conducting a time audit help you in your job search, but it will also give you a greater sense of mastery over your schedule and your life.
Though straightforward in theory, consistent application calls for gentle prodding and persistent effort. Suppose you want to monitor every 15-minute period for a full week. A simple spreadsheet can serve the same purpose as a time tracking app, which some people may find more convenient. Every 15 minutes throughout the day, you will keep track of what you do with that time.
Since you won’t be actively seeking employment while sleeping or at work, there’s no point in keeping track of extended periods of time. You should schedule out your time from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, including all breaks and meals in between. The vast majority of people have found that setting a timer on their phones serves as a useful reminder to keep them on track when it comes to time tracking.
2. Search for Minutes, Not Hours
Find times that are relatively brief so that you can reclaim them. Your time audit may reveal, for example, that while you may have felt your evenings were full, you actually spent 25 minutes mindlessly scrolling through Facebook notifications.
Or, you may find that you spend the same amount of time each night preparing the same lunches and could save yourself some time by preparing everything in advance on Sunday. You may find that you have an extra ten minutes to spare on weeknights now.
3. Pay attention to short, important tasks.
Ten minutes might seem like too little time if you’re only concerned with major tasks, like updating your entire resume or applying to five new employers. When broken down into smaller chunks, even longer tasks can be accomplished in as little as 10 to 15 minutes.
Consider some of the tasks you can complete in those tiny time slots:
- Add thoughtful comments to a post on LinkedIn
- Post industry-related news to a LinkedIn group
- Reach out to a previous manager to ask for a referral
- Research a company’s social media and “About” page
- Tailor your resume summary to a specific role
- Explore daily job postings on a particular job board
- Send a follow-up email to a recruiter or hiring manager
4. Set goals that are SMART
Setting SMART objectives is a key component, along with uncovering spare minutes. In case you haven’t looked into setting goals in a while, SMART goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely (or Time-sensitive)
When you make a SMART goal, you write down what you need to do, when you need to do it, and how you will do it.
For example, you can set aside 10 minutes in the morning before work to look through your favourite job boards and mark at least one job for further action. Then, you could use your 15-minute break in the middle of the morning to look at that company’s social media and website. Using this pattern, you could go back in the evening to change your resume to fit the job you are applying for. Even though you aren’t concentrating for an hour at a time, you will have spent time every day on one high-quality job submission.
5. Time to Set a Timetable
The key is to know exactly what you want to do before your time comes. That way, you won’t have to waste time trying to figure out how to spend your time most effectively. To get the most out of your time, you need to know how you’ll spend it before you start your day or get to a set time.
That might mean you spend 15–30 minutes on Sundays setting up your schedule for the week. Or, if your schedule changes every day, you might do better if you made a list of things to do each night before you went to bed.
6. Focus Your Cognition
To get the most out of your short time slots, you need to focus on your work. This isn’t always easy to do, but try your best to stop distractions before they happen.
If you’re a parent, this might mean finding a favourite read-aloud channel on YouTube or saving special toys or colouring books for that time of the day.
Most of us also have to turn off our phones for 15 minutes and turn off notifications when we want to pay attention. Think about what usually pulls your attention away, and make a plan to stop those things from happening.
To Make the Most of Your Free Time When You Don’t Have Any
Job searches can be long and take up a lot of time. If you only focus on the most important things that need to be done, planning a job search when your life is already busy can be overwhelming and make you feel like giving up. You might be surprised at how much progress you can make on your job search goals if you work on them in small bits of time instead of big chunks.
One more way to be successful is to give some of your tasks to other people. At home, that might mean ordering takeout some nights or asking your partner to make dinner a few nights a week. Someone else doing some of your job search tasks is another way to delegate your time.
Finding good, real jobs that you want to apply for is one of the most time-consuming parts of looking for a job. We can help with this. We have a whole team whose job is to find and check that legitimate flexible jobs are available.