The 1-hour/ 7-hour/ 40-hour per week job search

Meta-level job search advice on what to focus on depending on how much time you have

In coaching job search candidates, I consistently find meta-level focus to be the problem getting in their way.

I think I’ve figured out the problem. They’re taking advice for people who aren’t in their situation. What you should focus on varies by which of the 3 types of job searcher you are:

Taking advice for a 40-hour job searcher when you are a 7-hour job searcher doesn’t work. Today, I’ll break down how to figure out meta-level focus for you.

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Today’s Post

Words: 5,883 | Est. Reading Time: 27 mins

• General principle

• The 1-hour job search

• The 7-hour job search

• The 40-hour job search

• The value of the unconventional

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Aakash, here. This is part of the newsletter’s ‘Getting a PM Job’ series. You can choose which series you are subscribed to on the account page. You may want to toggle this section off when you’re not job searching.

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General Principle: Adapting to your situation

If there’s only one thing you take away today, let it be this general principle: You need to focus on the single area of the funnel, going down, where you are weakest.

There’s basically three steps to do that.

Step 1 - What is your funnel?

These are the steps that you should collect data for in your job search:

Step 2 - From the top, where are you stuck today?

The next question is: where are you stuck today?

Let’s use a real example. I was chatting with someone who said his job search recently measured up as:

• Applications: 100

• Outreach to people: 725

• First round interviews: 8

• Second round interviews: 3

• Final round interviews: 1

• Offers: 0

He’s been at the job search full-time for a year. What’s the area that’s broken?

Challenge yourself before reading my answer.

(blank space)

It’s getting first round interviews. As a 40-hour job searcher at this for a year, he should be getting more interviews.

If he was a 1-hour job searcher, it might have actually been okay to have a first-round interview every other month. But full-time, he’s not interviewing enough.

Yes, it does seem like he has some problems with his ability to convert interviews. But, the numbers are small. And, most importantly: spending too much time there is focusing on an area of the funnel he’s not even at yet.

He’ll have ample time to improve his interview skills by actually getting interviews. But focusing too much on interview prep, at the expense of improving his ability to get interviews, is a waste of time at this point.

That’s why the general principle is to go down from the top of the funnel. Find the place where your funnel is breaking from the top, then relentlessly focus there.

Step 3 - What is the highest percentage thing you can do?

Now that we have consensus on the area to focus on, the next question is: what is the highest percentage thing you can do?

Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all. So, the next question is: should you keep doing what you are doing now, or do you need to do something differently?

For our example, the next step was to break down the funnel within a funnel.

What were the micro-steps between the 725 messages sent in outreach and first round interviews?

• Outreach sent: 725

• Messages opened: 100

• Messages replied to: 6

• Interviews from emails: 2

• Job applications replied to: 2

In this funnel, going down from top to bottom, there’s clearly a problem in messages opened.

Potential problems in messages opened can be broken down into:

• Who you target

• What platform you send it to them

• When you send it to them

• What your subject says

So, that’s what we worked on fixing. We came up with a new strategy for who to target, by platform, when to send it to them, and what it says. That’s clearly the highest percentage thing we could do.

And it all goes back to the general principle: fixing the area of the funnel that’s broken, top down, with the best activity we can find.

Now, let’s get into some recommended activities by hours of the week available.