Commanding officers and enlisted service people in every branch of our military often strategize and live by an interesting and sound concept whose adage advises, “If you want to eat an elephant, eat it one bite at a time.”  Unless stranded on the African veldt or the jungles of India with the barest of supplies, our armed forces are not advocating initiating a giant barbeque featuring a pachyderm as the main menu item.  Rather, the United States military recommends that, when confronted with an enormous task, one should break it down logically and methodically into manageable parts and then tackle each portion one step at a time.

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“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.  Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…” 
(John Donne, Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions)

The English poet John Donne expressed this sentiment almost four hundred years ago.  Yet, it seems particularly appropriate today.  Bad economic news abounds across the globe.  And, since domestic business in every nation is dependent upon global markets for significant portions of their revenues, the American sub-prime mortgage crisis has spawned a worldwide economic meltdown of epic proportions.

Recently, in the U.S., CitiBank announced plans to lay off more than 50,000 employees nationwide while senior executives of the three major domestic automobile manufacturers pleaded their cases before Federal legislators, desperate to obtain funding that would enable their corporations to stay afloat.  Added to the unprecedented federal bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs, and AIG, these more recent developments indicate that as the “bell tolls” signaling layoffs and unemployment for millions of Americans, it also “tolls” an alarm for the rest of us who are still employed.
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One of the questions that clients frequently ask me is “how can I conduct an effective job search?”  While some of the tools used to conduct a job search today are the same or similar to those used decades ago, much has changed.

At one time, an effective job search entailed simply checking the employment classified section of the area’s Sunday newspapers and responding to advertised openings.  Today, such an approach seems parochial at best and patently ineffective at worst.

Today’s job search, if one is seeking the right position, is akin to a marketing campaign.  If you were planning a product marketing campaign, you would establish a budget and determine the allocation and mix of media you would employ to transmit your marketing message.  The exact nature and content of your message aside, you would consider all the media channels – print, broadcast, Web, outdoor, etc. – and determine how to structure your campaign to optimize its effectiveness within your budgetary constraints.
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“The Invisible Man” was a novella penned by H.G. Wells in 1897 and popularized to succeeding generations by the classic 1933 motion picture starring Claude Rains as Griffin, a scientist who develops an invisibility theory.  Griffin postulates that by changing a person’s refractive index to that of air, the subject’s body would neither absorb nor reflect light and, thereby, achieve a state of invisibility.  He ultimately uses this process on himself, attains invisibility, cannot return to a visible state, and, as a result, is driven to insanity.

You may be asking yourself, “what does this have to do with my job search?”  At first blush, one might discern no connection between the respective subject matter of the story and that of your job search.  The surprising answer, however, is “more than you can possibly imagine.”
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