How to inject fun into your job search

You’re probably thinking, “Jobsearch isn’t fun, it is anything but that.” I don’t believe in approaching life that way. If you make something fun, you will enjoy doing it and you may even do it better. I make games out of things I have to do. I set up little competitions with myself.

For example, when I recognized that I had let my content marketing strategy slip, I set goals to get back on track. You may not have noticed but most blogs have an archives section somewhere on the sidebar. I just moved mine to the new widget section on the bottom of the home page and each blog post. The original purpose was to help readers find additional posts but I find it useful to encourage me. 

How to inject fun into your job search – Analyze and Set Goals

I check how many posts I have written against prior months and then I set goals to produce more content so I can say that I beat the record for a certain month. When I looked back at 2014, I saw that most months I had written only 6 posts and one month I had written 5 posts.

I was very busy in 2014 with wonderful new clients who filled my days but that didn’t mean I should drop the ball and quit writing. For those of you who understand content marketing strategies, you know that it isn’t all about volume but it is about consistency. Since the end of June, I have consciously played this game. In July, I produced 11 new blog posts. In August, I produced 16. In September? You come back and check on October 1.

How to inject fun into your job search – Celebrate success

With this post, for those of you who are curious, I just changed the widget. Scroll down to the bottom of this page. This is my 800th blog post since I started this blog in October 2008. I didn’t just start writing. I deliberately sought out experts to learn this new skill, content marketing, which few people in my Wausau, Wisconsin area knew about in those early years. I didn’t let that deter me though.

I had the world-wide web to learn from so I started studying people who spoke to small business marketing or marketing in general and learned their strategies. When I determined that it was time to focus solely on the career industry and drop the nonprofit contracts that had provided the base to our family income for almost 20 years, I sought out an expert and hired him. I learned strategies for marketing with social media.

This was at the height of the recession so for people who think venturing out in a job search is scary, launching marketing plan in the midst of the recession to grow your small business and expand nationally (and globally) should have left me shaking in my tennis shoes. But it didn’t — because I made that a game too.

How can job seekers inject fun into their job search?

1. Set goals. But don’t get uptight if you miss them. Make it fun. Push yourself a little harder.
2. Understand that you have to do things one-by-one. You may not have a new job or career change by tomorrow but step-by-step you will get there.
3. Find opportunities to expand your network with quality contacts. You have the world-wide web to search. On a given day, I speak to friend throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and multiple other places. You never know who knows who these days.
4. Do your research on your past accomplishments. One of my executive clients was having a great time looking through old files to find her old resumes. Take a trip down memory lane to find your history.
5. Frustrated because you don’t remember your accomplishments and you can’t dig them up? Schedule lunch with a former colleague or coworker and have them help you remember things you did or your company did.
6. Study and learn. Not only did I learn about content marketing, I expanded my expertise in job search and professional resume writing. This year I have already earned my Certified Master Resume Writer (CMRW) designation. I continue to learn and have several courses and other certifications to complete.
7. Find an accountability partner. I have a friend who is relaunching a business in Georgia and we are now challenging each other in multiple areas. How do you think I will complete those courses? She’ll prod me.
8. Hire an expert. The small business marketing coach I hired made the learning fun. He taught me serious lessons but it was fun to learn them from a master.

If you take life too seriously, you will get stressed out. Injecting little fun exercises in your job search will make you smile. You create your own competition!

Need help? Hire me, Julie Walraven, Certified Master Resume Writer. I can take the pain out of writing your resume and even make it fun. We work together to discover those forgotten contributions and position you to win your next role. To find out how, Click Here.

Photo Credit