Job hunting or job seeking is the activity of trying to find a job or employment. One may be looking for a job, due to unemployment, current job dissatisfaction, underemployment, or a desire for a better position.

Job-Hunting Strategies That Actually Work

Many job hunters lack confidence and consider their job search as an uncomfortable and distasteful experience filled with frustration, stressful encounters with strangers, a loss of control over their life and a prospect for personal failure. Job hunting can be difficult, but it doesn't have to be! With proper preparation and a positive attitude, looking for the right job can be an opportunity to actually boost your career.

Prepare for Success

Finding a job requires preparation. To do it right, start with a thorough self-assessment that includes exploration of your work and school history, military service, hobbies, volunteer activities, ambitions, preferred lifestyle, values and needs. From this review, determine which occupations best match your personality style and then establish appropriate job-hunting goals. If you find this step difficult, seek assistance from a professional career counselor.

Prepare your resume and portfolio of accomplishments, organize a support group of friends and relatives to help you conduct your job search, and you're ready to begin.

Emphasize the Positive

Just as important as good preparation is the right mental attitude. Job hunting will most likely take time, so pace yourself accordingly and be patient. It will also require you to occasionally operate outside of your comfort zone. Control your fear of the unknown, welcome the challenges that await you and be willing to explore new experiences. See the job search process as what it really is -- an opportunity to explore and evaluate new career options that can add value and enjoyment to your life. Don't allow your fears to govern your behavior. It's difficult to see the real world when your head is buried in the sand.

Choose the Correct Strategy

Once you know what type of employment you're looking for, you're ready to start seeking a position. Research has shown the most successful job seekers use a variety of these job-seeking strategies:

• Direct Employer Contact: Research and identify employers for whom you'd like to work. Contact each employer by letter or phone, indicate how you can be of value and ask for an opportunity to visit and discuss employment opportunities.
• Use Your Network: Contacting as many people as possible is a highly effective way to find a job. It is estimated that 50% or higher of all jobs are found through networking. Contact your relatives, friends and professional colleagues and ask them to share valuable advice and employment information. Remember, the more people working with you, the more leads you can produce.
• Employment Recruiters: Contact employment recruiters who place people in your career field and industry.
• State Employment Service: Each state offers a wide variety of information and assistance designed to help you find employment. Check out their career centers for valuable information on career and industry trends, salary surveys, job-hunting tips, interview techniques and more.
• Online Job Portals: These online job portals have made the process of job hunting much more convenient by maintaining a huge database of all available jobs at one place. By following some simple steps, a job seeker can submit his/her resume and the rest is to be done by that job portal. The benefits of applying on online job portal include:

1. Online job application process is time saving
2. You get relevant jobs that match your qualification
3. You get fast reply
4. The database is not restricted to any particular industry or region
5. Jobs are well sorted as per different parameters for accurate match
6. This process is free of cost

• Placement Office: If you're a college graduate, contact your placement office and inquire about employment assistance, including job leads, available to graduates and alumni.
• Professional Associations: If you work in a professional career field, several state or national associations likely exist and provide career information and services to members. Find associations in your field through your local library and contact them to ask about employment assistance.
• Job Hotlines: Employers nationwide have created job hotlines that you can call -- usually via a toll-free number -- to learn about employment openings.

Job-Hunting Strategies That Really Don’t Work

The following strategies that can hurt your chances of getting a job offer:

Applying to Every Job You See

You may figure the more resumes you send out, the better your odds are that one of them will get a response. That’s only true if all the resumes you submit are for jobs you can actually do. Applying indiscriminately to every position being advertised accomplishes little more than wasting your time and the recruiter’s.

Overloading Your Resume

Many job hunters think the more words they cram into their resume the more impressive it will look.

There are two things wrong with that idea. First, in this tough job market, employers want a specialist to fill a particular niche, as opposed to a candidate who claims they can do everything. Second, recruiters just don't have time to wade through long resumes, which means the short ones get read first and more often. You may indeed have the exact skills required, but if they're buried in a mountain of irrelevant details, chances are the recruiter will never see them.

Mistaking Nagging for Eagerness

It’s true that you’re expected to follow up at key stages in the recruiting process. But nobody wants you to contact them every single day and remind them of your interest, get a progress report, share additional information about yourself or learn more about the job. That's not being enthusiastic—that’s being a pest. Equally irritating actions include sending a gift, making a Facebook friend request and overnighting or hand-delivering materials.

Approaching Strangers on Social Media

Reaching out to strangers on social media like LinkedIn to ask them to refer you into their company.

Using the Identical Resume

Using the same resume for every job you apply for is also a bad strategy and pointless.