Chapter 4: Being Your Own Recruiter
Treat your search as a project
The single biggest difference between people who move quickly and people who stall is whether they run their search like a structured project or let it happen to them. A good recruiter works to targets, tracks activity, follows up consistently and reviews what is and is not working. You should do the same for yourself.
The bigger picture
Recruitment consultants typically work from a pipeline: a defined number of new contacts, applications and follow ups each week, reviewed against results. Very few job seekers apply the same discipline to their own search, and it shows in how quickly they lose momentum after the first few rejections. Treating your search with the same rigour a recruitment desk would apply to a live vacancy is one of the most reliable predictors of a shorter time to placement.
In practice: James's tracker
James built a simple weekly tracker with four columns: role applied for, date, method of application, and next action date. Reviewing it every Friday afternoon took fifteen minutes and gave him a clear, evidence based answer to the question that used to keep him awake at night, which was whether he was doing enough.
In practice: Louise's channel review
Louise had been applying steadily for six weeks with no clear sense of what was working. Building a tracker retrospectively revealed that direct applications through company websites had a response rate three times higher than applications made through a single large job board. She reallocated her weekly time accordingly, cutting board applications in half and doubling direct approaches, and her interview rate improved within a fortnight.
- Applying to roles reactively as they appear, without any weekly target or plan.
- Losing track of which applications are still live and which need a follow up.
- Judging progress purely on how busy the search feels, rather than on what the tracker actually shows.
- Abandoning a channel after one or two attempts, rather than giving it a fair, measured trial.
A note of supportOne of the most difficult parts of redundancy is the sudden loss of structure and control that a job previously provided. Building even a simple tracker and a weekly rhythm restores a genuine sense of agency at a time when it is easy to feel that everything is happening to you rather than being directed by you. This is not a minor administrative benefit. It is one of the most protective things you can do for your own wellbeing during the search.
- Build a simple tracker covering every application, contact and follow up.
- Set a weekly target for new applications and new networking contacts.
- Block a fixed weekly review slot to assess progress and adjust your approach.
- Bring your tracker to your next coaching session so it can be reviewed with fresh eyes.
This programme gives you frameworks and actions. Your coach is where they become genuinely yours. Rather than arriving with answers, consider bringing these open questions into your next session and exploring them together:
- What does treating this search as a project change about how you feel towards it?
- Where are you most tempted to let structure slip, and what tends to be happening when that happens?
- What would genuinely be enough effort this week, realistically rather than ideally?