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.

Planning a job search is similar.  You need to consider how much time and effort you have to devote to it.  If you are unemployed, seeking employment perhaps should be your full-time occupation.  If, however, you are working, you need to determine the time that you will allot to your search on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Having established a time-budget, you can now proceed to determine how you will tackle maximizing your exposure within the job market.  If this is beginning to sound like an involved process, consider that the quality of your plan and job search will, in most cases, define the quality of your results.

And so, you will need to establish a plan to uncover as many relevant job opportunities as possible.  This plan should take into account the fact that, in the typical calendar year, job openings are relatively evenly split between those that are posted or advertised and those that are not.

If you consider published openings, your resources include newspapers, trade publications, recruiters who advertise openings, and of course, Internet job boards.  Therefore, you will want to designate some of your time and efforts to uncovering openings via each of these sources.  You will need to plan to check newspaper employment classifieds as well as opportunities listed in applicable trade publications.  You can research and identify contingent fee recruiters who specialize in your employment category and contact them.  Ultimately, you will want to post your resume on major and specialty job boards and set up those email alerts that will notify you of new job listings that meet criteria that you will establish.

Now, consider those opportunities that are neither posted nor advertised.  These opportunities will be more difficult to uncover, but more potentially rewarding if identified since these opportunities will have far fewer applicants.  One way to find such opportunities is through networking.  You will need to contact people whom you know that may be of assistance in your job search, as well as establish contacts with others whom you may not know but with whom you may have some commonality (alumni of the college from which you graduated, membership in an organization, etc.).

Another way to identify unadvertised opportunities is via keeping abreast with business news.  Any business event, positive or negative, may result in the need for new personnel.  In such instances, you can research the company’s organization and select appropriate management personnel to whom you will draft and send a letter acknowledging the business event and suggesting your relevant qualifications and prospective benefits to their organization. 

A third approach to reaching the unadvertised job market is blasting or mass mailing your resume.  While this approach usually generates a very low return rate, it only takes one employer contact for you to secure rewarding employment.

Lastly, contingent fee recruiters – the true headhunters – may be researched and contacted in the hope that they may be currently seeking a candidate like yourself.  As in the case of resume blasting or mass mailing, expect a low rate of return for your efforts in this area.

As you can see, developing and conducting an effective job campaign in today’s market is both complicated and time-consuming.  If you utilize these techniques, however, you may be pleasantly surprised by the result.

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.”

Consider for a moment the purpose of your job search.  If you are thinking “to find a job,” then you are only partially correct.  The purpose of a job search for the vast majority of seekers is not simply to find a job, but to find the right job – the job fulfilling a litany of different job-seeker requirements in areas including compensation, challenge, advancement, and geography to name just a few.

If your purpose is to find the right job, then you need to begin by developing or securing materials that will define and describe you to a prospective employer.  These materials may include a resume, cover letter, letters of recommendation, a portfolio, certifications, licenses, and a host of other such materials specific to the particular employment search.  Of course, the quality of these materials will be critical to your potential job-hunting success.

Assuming that these materials are of impeccable quality, however, what should be the next step in your process?  Quite obviously, the answer is to commence a job search.  Given that your goal is to find the right job, the underlying, more significant question is “how will you conduct an effective job search?”

The information and other resources available to today’s job-seeker are staggering in their volume and scale.  How will you efficiently employ the resources available to optimize the success of your efforts?

In a sense, you – as a job-seeker – are very much like a political candidate or a product or brand seeking recognition in a crowded marketplace.  How will you capture the attention of those who might might be searching for a candidate like you or who may be of benefit to you in your search?

To gain optimal exposure and recognition within your market, you need to develop a plan, an organized course of action enabling you to systematically utilize all available job-seeking resources to your maximum benefit.  Too many job candidates employ a haphazard approach in their job searches; thereby, leaving their job-hunting success, careers, and futures to chance.   Even if these candidates find jobs (as most all will ultimately do), it is unlikely that they will find the right opportunities.  And, since one job influences the next job and so on, one can only speculate on the damage done to such careers.

Without a plan, its execution, and effective materials promoting a candidate, the job-hunting process is very much like that of Griffin, the mad scientist.  Your efforts will produce relative “invisibility” in the employment market, make it difficult for you to return to the right career track, and utlimately become a source of concern and vexation in your life.

I often deal with candidates who have never had any particular difficulty in securing a top position relative to their background and level of experience, but nonetheless seem to hit an obstacle to their job-seeking success in their early to mid 40’s or 50’s.  Speaking with me, they express astonishment that their current search efforts are so far removed from their previous experiences.  They had heard and believed that age discrimination existed, but never considered that it would happen to them.

Of course, we all know that age discrimination exists and that it is illegal under Equal Employment Opportunity legislation.  Yet, not many of us consider the actual sources and motivations for the illicit practice.

When contemplated, one realizes that, as with all forms of human behavior, discrimination has its basis in primal human emotions.  The decisions made by human resources professionals and hiring managers are, like all human decisions, based upon reason, instinct, and emotion.  Hiring a job candidate is as much about appearance, interaction, and personal compatibility as it is about skills, experience, and education.

Consider your own reaction to the subject matter.  What concepts do you associate with aging?  If you are like most people, you think of loss of vigor, infirmity, inability to adapt to change, changes in posture and appearance, and perhaps even death.  Conversely, what do you associate with youth?  Health, vitality, comeliness, a thirst for knowledge, adaptability, and open-mindedness are among the characteristics that come to my mind.  And so, when one considers the emotional basis of age discrimination in the workplace, one must conclude that its roots lay at least partially on commonly-held perceptions of youth and age.

The other primary component of age discrimination, I believe, is economic.  Companies behave very much as do individuals.  When we as consumers shop for an item, we usually seek the best possible product at the lowest possible price.  The same, I believe, is true of companies.  Most companies establish compensation ranges for positions within their organizations.  When filling an opening, they attempt to begin the selected candidate at the lower end of the range for that position.  More seasoned candidates usually command, expect, and require a higher starting salary than do more youthful candidates.

Thus, for reasons of both human perception and economy, the younger candidate most often appears to be the better choice to a prospective employer.  The more seasoned candidate, therefore, must attack the potential for age discrimination at its roots.  It is imperative that he or she have better marketing materials (in the form of resumes, cover letters, and ancillary documents that do not reveal a potential age liability), a better strategy or plan to penetrate all areas of the job market, and the appropriate appearance and attitude at an interview to dispel any concerns of the hiring manager(s) associated with the candidate’s age.

Today, virtually all of us need to work – if not to provide us the means to live, then to give us a sense of worth and meaning.  And so, even those classified as “idle rich” require something to occupy their time, minds, and energies; whether that something be gaining a formal education, learning informally via travel or recreation, or volunteering services in support of a charitable endeavor.  In the latter instance, “work” – counter to the common perception – may provide no tangible benefit to the worker.

In common parlance, however, a “job” is something that one needs to do in order to be paid or, as stated in Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, a “regular remunerative position.”  In my opinion, however, the word “position” connotes something entirely different from the word “job.”  To my thinking, a “position” is a point of demarcation, a step on a path.  And, the path of which a “position” is one of a number of points is a person’s career.

While a “job” is often a means to a particular end – paying the bills, purchasing a desired product, etc., a “position” opens its holder to much more.  A “job” and a “position” may have similar responsibilities.  Yet, a “job” ceases when its function is completed or no longer needed, while a “position” inures to the benefit of its holder – providing experiences and offering the opportunity to build skills essential to advancement into other “positions” of increasing responsibility.  A job leads to a dead-end; a position to a doorway.

To an anxious job-seeker, the distinction between a “job” and a “position” is not always clear.  For the job-seeker intent on building a career, the key is in developing and executing a job-hunting plan that uncovers multiple “positions” correlating with his/her qualifications and offering stimulation, challenge, appropriate remuneration, and the opportunity for continuing growth and advancement.

Of course, any such effective job search must begin with materials of impeccable quality.  The job-seeker’s resume, cover letter, and any other ancillary documents must be articulate and must distinguish that particular job-seeker from all similar competitors.  Then, those documents must be used in a way that enables that job-seeker to optimize his/her exposure within the targeted job market.

While we may all fantasize about the delights of living and “working” in a Garden of Eden such as that experienced pre-Fall by Adam and Eve, the reality is that our careers and our lives are of our own making.  How we prepare and how we act are determinative of the success and prosperity we will enjoy in this life.  Each step that we take is influenced to a great extent by the previous one.

The end-result of combining the best possible materials with a sound job-hunting strategy is the uncovering of multiple opportunities from which the job-seeker can analyze and select those “positions” most appropriate and beneficial to his/her desired career path.  Make no mistake – a successful career begins and matures in accordance with a well-defined plan supported by the job candidate, his/her qualifications, and the marketing materials enabling that candidate to secure the right “position” to advance his/her career path.  Anything less leaves one’s career to chance.