As we often tell our clients, it is very likely that you will eventually get a job in your field. That is rarely the challenge. The challenge is getting a job in your field in the place that you want to live and with a salary that would make you happy. If you love living in Tallahassee, Florida then how are you going to feel if the only job offer you can get is in Waxahachie, Texas? Would a move across the country cause a disruption in the lives of your spouse and your children? Of course it would. Would accepting a 35% cut in pay to stay in Tallahassee make you feel any better? Maybe, but it certainly wouldn’t make you feel good.
Take a moment to consider the true cost of a move in this economy. If you make $80K in Tallahassee, Florida and you get a job offer in Waxahachie, Texas for $80K, you may be looking at a $50K capital gains loss. What?! How so? If you bought your house for $250K and are trying to sell it in the worst housing market since the Great Depression what do you think you will be able to get for it? Wow, and to think that house could have sold for over $300K just a few years ago! You may have to sell your home for $50K less than you paid for it if you have only been living in it for a short time.
Our message is that you will want to have choices when considering a job. To have choices you need to have offers. To have offers you need to work on your job search with unbridled discipline. It is too expensive not to. The job search can be a real downer. Staying motivated and productive every day is absolutely essential to having an outcome you can be happy with. Sometimes just starting your job search is all you need to do to be productive all day and this is what we are encouraging you to do. Committing to working at it every day, at a certain hour and for a certain duration is extremely important. Share your regimen with your spouse and your children and let them know how important it is that you be allowed to work hard at your job search. If the prospect of writing one more resume or one more cold call makes you nauseous, commit to a smaller work window than you normally would. Commit to as little as two hours if you have to, if that is what it will take you to just start your job search. If you are still nauseous after two hours, you met your goal and can stop for the day. However, refrain from committing to a duration that you cannot fulfill or will discourage you from just starting your job search the next day. You will be amazed at how long you will stick with your job search if you can just bring yourself to the table. Again, it is not easy, but this works because so many have succeeded in overcoming this dilemma so often.
We also encourage you to invest in a solution that will minimize any aspect of the job search that you find so distasteful. Job search tools can do a lot to eliminate the tedious, repetitive work that drains the energy from so many job seekers. They can also serve as a means to set goals every day and stay focused, ultimately leading you to becoming an energetic, motivated job seeker.
The cost of not having any choices is too expensive to ignore and you do not want to have to pull up your stakes to move to another part of the country. This is what we are talking about when we encourage you to control your destiny. This economy has put a lot of people in an extraordinary circumstance that will call for some extraordinary discipline to weather. Simply starting your job search everyday can be the linchpin event that will lead to the job that will provide the security and happiness we are all looking for. Stay regimented in your commitment to land a job and you will truly find yourself in a position to control your destiny.
