The Job Search: A Realistic Timeframe

When you first launch into a job search campaign, you will need a few days to get organized.  Depending on the condition of your resume, you may need as much as a week or two to get your documents in order. You want to make sure that you prepare your materials first when you do see a suitable career opportunity. Spend the required amount of time preparing your basic resume and cover letter format. 

After that, you should start to map out your approach.  Before you contact anyone, you will need to spend some time researching your target industries and collecting the contact information of industry leaders. You will also need to spend some time sourcing out headhunters and browsing job boards. It could be several days or even weeks before you start to hear back from any of them. If you are networking, you have to wait a few days before placing a follow-up phone call, and scheduling a meeting.  With managers’ and directors’ schedules being what they are, you will likely be looking at a week turnaround time from the time a contact agrees to meet you. Most people require a few days at least to even reply to an email from someone they don’t know. 

Remember that employers and headhunters or networking contacts already have a job and will not share in your urgency.  You may sometimes become frustrated at how long people take to respond to you, but this is because your job search is your primary focus, while they have myriad other dockets to attend to every day…Try to keep that in perspective.