Cutting Down the Numbers

What do I want to know?   Hmmm…

First – HOW MANY?   There are seemingly a gazillion jobs out there,  from top dog to dog walker (and who says one is more important than the other?)   What are the numbers, and how do I cut them down quickly.

As usual in the job search, for every opinion, there is one that is equal and opposite.  So the urge to make this manageable is followed by ‘Do I really want to cut them down?”   Shouldn’t I be open to as wide a search as possible so that I hit THE JOB  - which may not be a perfect hit.

Let’s be real, how many jobs can I look at once before I start to glaze over.   Probably, not that many.   This indicates that I REALLY need to be able to zero in effectively.   Can this be done?

EFFECTIVE ELIMINATION…what I really need is the ability to slice off the jobs that don’t match me.   I need to enter “IT Auditor” and not end up with “Avon Lady ” (that’s was a real example…believe it or not!)  

I’ve already run some of the main pitfalls here.  Entering “IT Auditor” can give me every instance of ‘it’ within the board’s database if the settings are not right.    And then there are searches that just don’t work.   You ask for a 50 mile radius of Danbury, Connecticut and the jobs are in Kentucky.   There even was one (the board shall remain nameless) where the jobs were in Malaysia.   Yuck.

I’ll layout ‘The Plan’ formally in phases with objectives and metrics.  I’ll add the first phases to the blog so you can see where I’m going, but because my objective here is not to bore you to sleep, I’ll post the boring stuff elsewhere after the first few sections.   This blog will have the fun stuff and the quirky comments;  I’ll worry later about where to announce the findings.   To make this sound ‘professional’ (which covers a multitude of sins) the first two sections will be “Brainstorming” and “Fact Finding”.   You have been warned…reading these is optional!

I have decided to take a look at some big boards first and get past the worst case of job offering overload.    Monster, Career Builder and Indeed come up as my unscientific ‘Big Three’.   

So we’re off….