Having a sense of urgency is the best way to manage your job search. Timing is everything and this certainly applies when searching for a job.
A phrase that recruiters (and other sales professionals) often use is “time kills deals.” In other words, the longer it takes to get a deal done, the less likely the deal will happen. Building momentum towards a deal getting done is like a ball rolling where the faster it rolls, the harder it becomes to stop. But once the ball stops it’s hard to get the momentum back and can take a great deal of work to get the ball rolling again.
Sometimes when the momentum is lost in a job search, the hiring manager almost forgets all the things they may have liked when they interviewed you so the opportunity quickly gets lost.
Sitting back and waiting for a job to land in your lap is not going to happen and chances are that you will do a lot waiting as it is for companies to respond to your application, conduct interviews, conduct follow interview, do references and make the offer. You can’t afford to wait for things to happen because chances are that once you start applying for jobs, you’ll be waiting for the company to respond.
When you are waiting for a response from a company, you are at their mercy because they are working on their schedule at that point.
I’ve seen cases where a hiring company I’m working with comes to me looking to hire someone and tells me that they are desperate to find this person and they’d like to hire them as soon as possible. I find them several great candidates that I send them…
…then they tell me that the hiring manager has gone on holiday for two weeks and they can’t do anything until that person returns.
Unless the company is truly desperate to hire someone – perhaps in the case where the person who previously held the job quit suddenly or was fired – you are probably going to work off of their schedule so you might be waiting around as it is so having a sense of urgency early in your job search is the best way to go.
Treat your job search with a sense of urgency.
Also, don’t confuse urgency with desperation.
No one wants to hire a desperate person so ensure that during the interview process, your enthusiasm for the job doesn’t come across as desperation to leave your current employer.
