Aristotle is reputed to be the first to observe that “Nature abhors a vacuum.”  In this case meaning, if you suddenly have 40-80 hours per week of free time, you will hear this whooshing sounds as others instantly fill them.  And, there is often no rhyme or reason to how they are filled.

Families, friends and organizations all find it irresistible to help you use your new-found time.  Perhaps no single request takes much time, but together they can be immensely time consuming.  Even a 10-minute errand can cause you to lose focus for an hour or more.

So, you need to stake claim to your own time, right away.  Let all these constituents know there is a lot to do in a job search and that is your absolute priority.  Ask them not to make assumptions about your availability, or place demands on your time they wouldn’t have when you were employed.

The next big issue is you and your calendar.  Suddenly your calendar is empty where it was always full before.  Don’t let it stay that way.  Fill it in!  If you don’t have appointments, so what?  You have plenty of work to do.  Think about what those things are; when they should be done and in what order.  Then fill in those projects and tasks on you calendar just like you do with meetings.  Think of them as meetings with yourself, if that helps.

Filling in your calendar helps you in three ways.  First, it forces you to think about your time and priorities–i.e. do some planning. 

Second, it forces you to see what you will be giving up to meet a request for your time from  family, friend or organization.  Now, just like when you were employed, when someone asks for your time you will say, “Let me check my calendar and see what commitments I have.”  You then have to reason through the consequences of any changes you make, or new commitments you take on. 

And third, it provides a certain inertia to keep you moving ahead and on task as each day unfolds.  The calendar is there, urging you to complete something on time and move on to the next priority.

Most people either haven’t done a job search before, or haven’t done it well, so don’t forget to communicate with family and others about what you are spending your time on, why you are doing it, and what progress you are making.  Support increases in proportion to understanding.

Take control of your time NOW and you will progress much faster to your re-employment goal.

But, time for all of us is limited, so what is the best way to spend your job search time?  Combing the Internet for job postings?  Posting your resume on company sites?  Meeting with people?

Knowing that I am a very big proponent of networking, you may be surprised at my answer.  First, it depends on where you are in the search process.  Let’s assume you have completed your preparation phase–resume in place, game plan ready, skills finely honed.  When you first leave the nest and launch into your search, you will want to dedicate yourself to filling the resume pipeline.  Post your resume on job boards.  Send your resume to recruiters.  Respond to ads you have been seeing.  Post your resume on targeted company sites.

But, you want to set yourself up so you don’t have to spend much time on these things after the first couple of weeks.  Set up “agents” on the job boards so you will be automatically notified when a new job is posted that fits your search criteria.  Create ad response letter templates so you can make tiny changes and very quickly prepare a letter.  In other words, make yourself very efficient in an administrative sense.

You have seen in my other posts that networking produces the connections that lead to about 60% of landings [job acceptances].  So, what I want you to do is carve out time in proportion to the effectiveness of this market channel.  If you are doing a full-time search that means networking occupies about 24 hours per week [60% of 40].  That includes meetings, phone conversations, email, record-keeping–anything you do in connection with this market channel.

Consider also how to best spread your time across the day.  During the 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. time period you will want to do as much phone contact and face-to-face meeting as possible.  Use evenings and weekends to do things like interact with job boards, post your resume on company sites, write letters and emails.  Although job search is a full-time job, the workday schedule must be adapted to get the best results.

It makes sense to maximize your time spent in the most productive, least competitive market channel–networking.