Keep It On the Record

When you begin making contact with any company, whether face-to-face or remotely, you can sabotage your progress in several, effortless ways. I see multiple examples of these mistakes committed by many job seekers, some of whom become the unemployment statistics you read in articles about people who have not been able to find work for 28 weeks, or for a year or more.

The simplest, avoidable mistake is to not make notes.

When you make any contact with a potential employer or lead, you must keep a record of it. You can make your entries on your smartphone, or your tablet computer, or you can use a website like JobKatch (www.jobkatch.com). You can go low-tech and use a notebook. If you go this low-tech route get a spiral-bound notebook so the pages don't fall out.

What is critical is that you have a recording mechanism that you can carry with you everywhere, and enter information immediately while it is fresh in your mind. No, you will not remember these details tonight when you plan to transcribe them. Immediacy is paramount so you can keep the information accurate.

For every contact you make, record everything that will provide what you need to follow up on this contact. This should include

• The date of the contact
• The business name and address
• The type of contact (face-to-face, on-line application, or a paper application)

If any part of the contact was face-to-face, capture

• The name of the employee or manager you talked with, and their direct phone number (ask for their business card because people usually put their direct phone numbers and e-mail addresses on their business cards), and
• Your impression of the conversation and anything of interest the contact may have said, even if they told you they are not hiring right now.

I never want you to be guilty of the following scenario: you submit applications on-line at three websites in the morning, you talk with a manager in the afternoon, and the next day you submit a paper application at a local business. Two weeks later you cannot remember what websites or businesses to which you submitted applications, you cannot recall the manager's name or the address of the local business, and you cannot remember the date you did any of these things.

Sloppy execution means sloppy results. Write it down.