Using Trello to manage a career search

#100DaysToANewJob Day 6

Week 1 for any project is critical. This early foundational work sets you up for success. For #100DaysToANewJob, I took two distinct actions:

FIRST: I hired a career coach. After reaching out to Shelly Gehshan, MPP, PCC, a former colleague at The Pew Charitable Trusts, she provided me with a referral list and I interviewed a handful of coaches, all impressive and thoughtful. Ultimately, I decided to partner with Chrissy Macken, from Blueprintgreen Career Coaching & Consulting. I described my project and my goals, as well as how I envisioned working together and we were on the same page immediately. We had our first call yesterday.

SECOND: I set up my job search as a Trello board (pic attached), that Chrissy and I can collaborate on. I’ve used Trello as a tool in my last job search as an application tracker. I love it. But it’s much more suited to being a project board. So, I spent a few hours each day researching career searches that work like projects, especially those that access the “hidden job market”.

As a result, the #100DaysToANewJob project has 5 phases:
1️⃣ Develop Career Assets
2️⃣ Identify Advisors/Supporters
3️⃣ Target Companies/Industries
4️⃣ Activate Personal Network
5️⃣ Track Progress and Lessons

Alot of this is based on the work of the Career Network Ministry (managed by Debbie Replogle + others), an impressive volunteer-led community I highly recommend. Each one of these stages has a few major actions underneath them. I expect that phases 1 and 2 will take about 30 days, but setting things up this way allows me to work on the other phases at the same time to have them ready when the time comes.

For application tracking, this time around I’m using Teal, which I only learned about recently (thx to all the #layoffs). It’s a job-tracking tool that allows you to save jobs as you visit the page and use all the features you would of a #crm like HubSpot, which I used when I ran my speaking business.

The biggest benefit so far, in the first seven days, of organizing my job search this way, is that it is putting me in charge of what is normally a slow, dispiriting process. In fact, as I was typing this, I got a call with a rejection for an #executivecommunications job I had interviewed for at a major hospitality brand. I don’t have time to mope, because I have this project to work. A project I own. And enjoy. That’s what I consider “career agency”. The first step anyway.

#100DaysToANewJob DAY 7

Any questions? Happy to answer.