Approach your job search as if it were your job. Behave as you would if you were working for someone and were responsible for outcomes.
How you act during your job search will tell potential employers a lot about how you’d be on the job.
Let’s say you’re a project manager. Would you have fear about contacting someone to ask them for help with a project? Maybe. And you’d do it anyway, because you are responsible for completing the project. So treat your job search as a project to manage, and see if it changes your attitude.
Perhaps you are someone who loves relationship management – clients, customers, staff, stakeholders. If you were on the job, would you call someone cold to ask them for information and advice? Sure you would! So treat networking as if you were applying your relationship management skills on the job.
For example, go on LinkedIn, connect to people you know and come up with great reasons to connect with people you don’t know but who could perhaps be sources of information. Join groups and participate in the discussions. Be visible! Create relationships with new people by contributing to discussions, answering questions, offering resources, “liking” their posts.
You say you deliver results and will do whatever it takes to get the job done. Yet you won’t pick up the phone to call a potential employer to see if they got your materials, or to make a personal connection. You “don’t want to be pushy.” Why not? Would you be afraid of that on the job? Probably not. So why fear that now? If the employer doesn’t want someone who will go to any lengths to get seen for an open position – – then it’s not the “right fit” job for you anyway.
Job search offers many great opportunities for you to show how you’d be on the job – so take them all!
