When you’re ready to change jobs, it’s good to take some time and prepare for your job-search project!
Here are the basic steps in your Whole Person Job Search process.

Look Back
Look backward at your path. Write your life story or tell your story to a friend. You’ll remember important things you had forgotten. What does your path so far tell you about yourself? You won’t solve your job search in your head. Listen to signals from your body, too!

Look Forward
What do you want to accomplish in your life? How can your next job move you down your path, instead of just paying your bills? How can your life goals intersect with your job search? Since you’re job-hunting anyway, why not shoot for a job you’ll love rather than just the easiest job to get?

What Pain Do You Solve?
Your power is in your understanding of the Business Pain you solve for your employers and/or clients. You need to be intimately familiar with the pain you solve. Think about your most triumphant stories at work, in any job you’ve ever held. Forget about your “skills” and answer the question “What Business Pain do I solve?”

Set Your Career Direction
Now you have a lot of information. You can set your new career direction. Maybe it’s identical or similar to the career direction you were following before you started job-hunting. Maybe it’s wildly different from any career direction you’ve followed in the past.
It’s up to you. You don’t need permission from anyone to make a career change. You need to give yourself permission!

Brand Yourself for the Direction You Chose
Now comes the fun part. You’ve chosen a direction for your job search. Now you get to brand yourself for that direction! You are going to look to hiring managers who see your Human-Voiced Resume or your LinkedIn profile as though you were raised in a petri dish to do the job you’re targeting!
You’ll take the hiring manager’s perspective as you write about yourself. Branding isn’t scary — it’s fun! You’re going to sound like yourself, and not a Star Wars battle drone, when you brand yourself in your LinkedIn profile and your Human-Voiced Resume.

Price Yourself Like a House
You have to know your market compensation level for every type of job you’re pursuing. You can’t leave it up to an employer to decide what to pay you. You have to price yourself like a house.

Create Your Target Employer List
You’ll make a list of the employers in your area most likely to be experiencing the kind of Business Pain you solve. Your Target Employer List will guide your job-search efforts and help you project-manage your job search project.

Design your Job Search Strategy
You need a strategy the way any marketer does! You’re going to choose channels for your job search. Recruiters might be one channel. The direct approach to hiring managers using Pain Letters should be a prominent channel in your search, and you might other channels working, too. You’re going to design a timeline and weekly goals for your job search. A job search is a job, after all!

Work Your Plan
Now you’re going to dive into your job search and work your plan! You’re going to research employers on your list and follow the ones you’re interested in. You’re going to use LinkedIn as a research tool and write and send Pain Letters every work day. You’re operating in consulting mode now. This is a very different way to job-hunt!

Build Your Network
Your network is not only an amazing source of job-search information and introductions but your principal mojo-builder in both directions (yours and theirs!). You’ll network every week, rain or shine, and take baby steps into networking if it hasn’t been your habit so far.

Poof! You’re a Consultant
You’re not a job seeker anymore. You’re a consultant! A job search is only a search for a long-term consulting gig, after all. You’re going to focus on Business Pain, and it comes in many more shapes and sizes than just a 40-hours-per-week salaried engagement. You’re going to slip through keyholes to have conversations about pain and solutions even when there is job opening posted (or maybe especially then!).

Reach Out to Hiring Managers
The centerpiece of your job search will be your direct outreach through Pain Letters to hiring managers at their desks. You will amaze yourself with your research skills and your strategic dot connecting once you get going!

Interview with MOJO
You’re not going to interview like a Sheepie Job Seeker anymore. You’re going to Interview with MOJO and probe to learn more about the Business Pain your hiring manager is struggling with. That’s empowerment!

Get the Job You Deserve!
What’s the point of all this activity? To get you the job you deserve!

This post was edited from a Liz Ryan article.