This post originally appeared as issue 36 of the Daily Job Hunt email. Sign up for kick-butt career hype in your inbox each morning.
Go try stuff
Fresh week! Let’s get ‘er going.
Why not try something new? Poke around, play, test, tinker, and allow yourself to fail.
– Reach out to someone new on LinkedIn, and be real (and maybe funny!) in your message.
– Cold-email companies rather than just apply on the job board
– Share a blog post about a hobby (which can signal your value)
When you do new things, it taps into your primal need for novelty.
And it makes the job hunt fun!
Go do stuff, and see what happens. Why not?
Working at a coffee shop IS experience
We usually down-play our past experience working in so-called “menial” jobs like barista or waiter. Don’t! Think through your work and learn to sell skills like grit, empathy, and work ethic gained there. Here are a few 20-30 minute podcasts on how to do this.
– Transferring Skills from a Cafe to a Startup (w/ Kasen Wysong)
– From Serving to Startups (w/ TK Coleman)
– The Nuts and Bolts of Using Your Transferable Skills in Food Service for a Tech Role
As Kasen says,
“When you’re at the cash register, you have to be interacting. So, through that, I learned how to carry a conversation, which was a big thing, because especially at a coffee shop, your main goal is to turn one-time-customers into regulars.”
Quote of the Day
“The key to success is failure”
– Michael Jordan
