December Job Search Tip: Nobody Is Hiring, But You Should Be Getting Ready

Job search secret.

Nobody is hiring right now and almost nobody is doing anything to get ready for hiring.

So if you are looking for a new job in 2024, there are some crucial things that you can do during the month of December to get ready.

Because here's the thing, in March, April, May, when hiring really picks up, there's too much to keep up with, right?

There'll be too many jobs posted, there'll be too many interviews to go on.

and you're not going to have time to get recommendation letters together to get your resume and cover letter squared away so december when nobody's doing anything everybody else is worried about the holidays and finishing out the year if you want to get a good job for 2024 This is the time to take action.

And the two specific things that I want to encourage you to do in the month of December are first, to ask for recommendation letters.

Ask about 15 people to write you a draft recommendation letter.

And what that's going to do is two things.

First, it's going to make it easier for the person to get you something, even if they don't feel like it's perfect.

And second, it's going to make it easier for you to ask for revisions if their recommendation letter is not perfect, or if you need to tweak it for a particular type of job that you're applying for.

So ask about 15 people for draft recommendation letters.

You can offer to write them letters.

Everybody kind of understands this is something everybody needs to be doing.

And go beyond your immediate supervisor, right?

Like definitely ask your immediate supervisor.

anybody in that world, but also think about other people that you've worked with outside of your particular work location, outside of your school, maybe outside of your district entirely, agency people, university people, people that you've done professional development with who can speak to your qualifications even if they don't work with you directly day to day.

Those kind of looser ties can often be some of your best references.

and like often your best references are not going to come through for you you know if you have a bad relationship with your immediate supervisor or if they just don't follow through i've seen that happen to lots of people you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to references so ask about 15 people and shoot for getting about 10 recommendation letters that you can use and some of them won't be very good but if you've got 10 you've got plenty to work with The second major thing you can do during the month of December is work on your resume.

And I see so many resumes that are either hideous or they look really nice, but they have the wrong information in them.

Like one of the things that a lot of people load their resume with is skills.

Oh, I'm really good at this.

I'm really good at that.

I have all these skills.

I'm trained in this.

I'm trained in that.

And skills play a very different role from accomplishments.

Like accomplishments in a resume are evidence.

Skills are claims and you don't want to have any unsupported claims in your resume.

So the way to fix this is to revise your resume so that rather than listing skills, it lists your accomplishments in each role that you've held.

And there are some specific sections that you should include and specific sections that you don't need in your resume.

And I made a document for our members last year and ultimately decided to make it free.

It's at principalcenter.com slash blueprint.

I call this the resume blueprint and it takes you through section by section exactly what needs to be on every page of your resume for any education job, whether that's at leadership, teaching, coaching, central office, whatever you're looking for.

You wanna include those sections and no others.

So again, that's principalcenter.com slash blueprint.

I was basically explaining this to my clients individually.

I was finally, I was like, I'm just gonna type this up, make it available.

Initially, we sold it and I was like, let's just make this available to everybody.

So principalcenter.com slash blueprint, we'll get that to you for free.

If you're looking for a little bit more guidance in terms of the overall job search process or 2024, go to principalcenter.com and look for the liftoff webinar.

You should see it right there on the main page.

Did this very recently and you can access that on demand right at this moment.

We'll take that down at some point, but principalcenter.com slash liftoff.

is where you will find that.

And I'll give you the whole strategy of getting ready for and pursuing the job search.

Because if you want to get the good jobs that are not heavily advertised, that are not vacant for a while, the districts that have very low turnover, the districts where people are happy and they're quiet about it, they're not, They're not trying to fill a thousand vacant positions because it's good to work there.

Those are the jobs you really have to be prepared to compete for.

So principalcenter.com slash liftoff for the webinar and principalcenter.com slash blueprint for that resume blueprint.

Let me know if you have any questions.