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** Organization Tips & Strategies **
A range of techniques can be employed to help stay organized, focused and efficient.
Key benefits from any amount of organization include time management and perhaps most important,
a sense of control by you over the job search process. Being unorganized just makes working the
process that much harder. Managing parts of the process that are under your direct control, will
minimize the inherent stress of a job search.
If a system or technique is not comfortable or easily mastered by you, you will either give up its use or spend inappropriate levels of time managing it. Keep it simple and manageable and make it part of your daily routine. It does not have be highly technological to be effective, anything that is reliable and routine can work.
A single location can be portable if you keep all of your key materials in a big folder or on a laptop PC.
By core written pieces--folder for your base resume; a folder for your basic cover letter or thank you note, etc.
For each job lead as it develops
Copy of original job description
Copy of resume posted (if applied online)
Separate e-mail folder to organize correspondence
For specific steps of the Process management
Productivity tracking --(pre-formatted spreadsheet provided
here
Notes from Job Search Work Team
For managing contacts
Master Contact List --(pre-formatted spreadsheet provided
here
Contact and/or correspondence log for all types of contacts--networking thru hiring manager
--(pre-formatted spreadsheet provided here
For miscellaneous Job Search items
Expenses
Articles and other paper of interest
If using a personal computer …
Keep files on a memory stick (flash drive).
They are very convenient and portable, and you don't necessarily have to lug your PC around.
Label it with your name and contact info on it, in case it gets misplaced
BACK IT UP FREQUENTLY, especially after significant time has been invested in its data.
Suggest copying it once a day to your PC hard drive. While the chief benefit of a memory stick
is that it is convenient and portable, it is also therefore more susceptible to loss or misplacement.
Enhance the usefulness of your e-mail
Ensure you can access your e-mail from other places besides just your
own PC. Often you can access your e-mail from other places to keep up
with key communications.
Learn how to organize folders within your e-mail. If not sure, contact
the e-mail provider to learn how. This way you can keep all correspondence
from each job-lead in one folder for easy tracking of opportunity development.
Learn how to send out "timed" e-mails to yourself that you can use as a reminder
to yourself to followup on key opportunities.
Consider using online reminders to make sure you don't forget key followups
Several exist and can be found by simply Googling on "Online reminders"
Capture stuff online to a file on your PC for future reference
By capturing copies of "stuff" you find online you will reduce the amount of paper you have to keep track
of. Almost anything you see on line, be it a job description, a link to a website or just a funny picture
on a website can be stored in a file using one of several possible techniques:
Saving
Often times by right-clicking on an image seen online a menu option will appear labeled
"Save target as" to save a copy of it on your PC.
Sometimes in a PDF document, there is a File/save menu option in the upper-left hand corner
that can be used for saving documents.
Copy and Paste
Copying can be done by:
Highlighting an area on a screen to be saved (via left-click and hold) while dragging the mouse
over the desired material. Then pressing Ctrl & C keys down simultaneously to make a copy.
On a non-Mac style PC, pressing the "PrtSc" key (usually about 2/3'ds across the top row)
will make a mirror image copy of what you see on the screen.
Pasting is then done different ways depending on how the material was copied.
Before pasting, of course some sort of receiving file is necessary to store the pasted material.
This can be any of the main three MS products -- Excel, Word, or Powerpoint.
In any of these programs try clicking on the paste icon on the screen or through the Edit/Paste
menu option. Sometimes you will have to play around with Paste/Special to get the right past
method and make the material most readable.
Another paste method is to press Ctrl and V keys together.
