Job search resources are more plentiful than you know.  Actually the whole world is at your fingertips if you can train yourself to think like a library operates.

Many moons ago (we won’t discuss how many), I worked in my university’s library as part of my work-study program while in school.

At the time, it was a somewhat interesting job working in the periodicals department, but I was at that age where I would have much rather spent my time lounging in the sun doing nothing.  C’est la vie.

It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that this experience actually helped shape my critical thinking skills.

Because of all the resources I was using, if I didn’t know the answer personally, I knew which ones would.

But what this time taught me the most was that I needed to be resourceful and think things through.

Using a process of elimination that exerted critical thinking skills enabled me to able to zero in on what I needed.

It’s not magic.  Nor is it luck.

Mostly, it is about hard work and sheer persistence… that’s the magic sauce that will give you what you want.

Everyone needs to put some elbow grease into the search, and not throw up their hands in frustration if they don’t immediately get the information they want.

Let’s play this scenario out:

You are looking for a job in a specific field, but are starting from scratch. You don’t know anyone, and you don’t know what jobs are out there.

Here are some steps demonstrating how you can think like a library:

1)      Do a Google search of “industry field name” – see what companies come up.

2)      Go back and do another Google search under “News” to search for that target company in the news.

3)      Go to their website to learn more about what they do.

4)      Using the company website, follow them on social media.  Note: larger companies on Twitter may have a separate HR or recruiter account so you could be interacting with them directly.

5)      Follow the company on LinkedIn to get any news updates.

6)      Start using LinkedIn to find people who work at that company.

7)      Look at each person’s profile to see the types of professional memberships they hold, and make note of them so you can join them too.

Still stuck? There are tons of ways to dig up business information tools using Boolean searches.  Don’t know how to build a Boolean search string? There are a lot of tools on the web, but borrowing a page from recruiters’ playbook used to search for top-tier talent, you can set up a search for a particular company’s HR manager by typing into Google:

(“Human Resources Manager” OR “HR Director”) AND (Company Name)

You’d be surprised how much info pops up using these tools!

If you want to learn more about Boolean search strings to uncover hidden data about target companies, you can Google the term to look for online tutorials and instructions.

The information and job search resources you desire are right in your reach.