• Decide what you want: The foremost important thing, the day you start evaluating a new job opportunity, is what kind of roles you are looking for. Are you looking for vertical growth or Horizontal growth? Are you changing because of responsibilities change or CTC jump? Are you open to relocation, or are you looking for a role at the same location?

• Identify your Target Audience: After Visualizing yourself in the role you are targeting, identify your target audience. Identify who are the people who will be hiring you. Make a list of organizations and the right stakeholders in those organizations who will be decision-makers for you. And believe me, your target audience won’t be more than 50 people at this point

• Work on Your Resume: After identifying the target audience, start working on your Resume. Remember, you are making your Resume, not for yourself but these 50 people. Identify their pain areas. Visualize what skills they are looking for and build your Resume as per their requirement. Highlight your skills and back them with achievements you’ve had in your career

• Optimize your LinkedIn Profile: This is the most crucial step when planning a new role. LinkedIn profile is your face value. How you look to the outside world is what makes all the difference. Remember, LinkedIn is not your Resume. The Language you use on LinkedIn is not that of a Resume.

• Simple Difference is – The Resume is your achievements (what you gave to the organization) | LinkedIN is your responsibility (what organization gave to you)

• Grow your Network: After Optimizing your LinkedIN profile, start networking with people. These people should be of your domain, Industry, and Seniority—one level above and one level below. You have a limit of sending 100 requests per week—exhaust that. And connect with people who are active on LinkedIn. This audience will give volume to your profile

• Differentiate between Bulk and Niche Audience: The audience you identified for yourself initially, those set of 50 people, is your Niche audience. These are hiring people, and you need to keep a close eye on their profiles. The bulk audience is the people that add volume to your profile. These people help grow your network and develop a mutual network between you and your Niche connections

• Content for Engagement: There is no point just growing your network until you don’t engage with them. And the only way to engage with your audience is through content. You cant knock at the doors asking for a role. So share your knowledge, experiences, learnings about your domain, and leadership attributes on your wall in the form of posts and articles.

• Remember! If your wall ( LinkedIN wall) generates traffic for LinkedIN, then LinkedIN will also start prioritizing your profile. So keep writing, sharing, commenting, and posting.

• Find relevant JDs and Stakeholders: Keep the notification on for all the relevant keywords for yourself, and the moment you find a JD open, find the right stakeholders for that role. Who will be the business profile interviewing for this role? Who is the HR managing the role? Create a network of Niche connections around this JD. There will not be more than 5 to 6 Niche connections against each JD

• Create a Sale Pitch message: Create a Strong sale pitch message to showcase why you are best suitable for the role. Get connected to the Niche Audience. You can even send InMail ( if you are a Premium account) And send them your sale pitch message. Refrain from greetings and Hi-Hello messages. Come straight to the point

• Plan content around JD: Parallel to the above steps, plan the solution around the JD. Every JD has a hidden problem. You need to identify that, propose a solution and make a post of it. Publish that post on your wall and send the link to the Niche stakeholders of this JD. Sharing the link is creating a Pull factor for the audience

Remember, the job hunt is a full-time job and above ten steps is a step-by-step approach to make that next move possible.

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance