Why Your Job Search Is Failing

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

There are almost as many reasons a job search fails as people who play professional sports worldwide. Here are several:

Focusing on the big picture but not the little picture.

Focusing on the little picture, but never on the big picture.

Focusing only on presenting your competence, but not delivering soft skills.

Especially with senior professionals, thinking they know how job hunting works.

You don’t take the time to rehearse the answers to predictable interview questions based upon your background and the position you are interviewing for.

Thinking you know how to interview because you’ve hired people before.

Not asking for advice/support. You show that by continuing to hit your head against the wall expecting to get a better outcome.

Thinking you know how to negotiate for yourself because you crushed some small vendor in a negotiation 5 years ago.

Knowing enough to be dangerous to yourself but not enough to be knowledgeable.

Not taking the time to identify what’s important to you in the next job or organization, or how to identify it when they see it.

Never identifying the institutional friction that will make it hard to…