35 Things To Make You Look, Feel & Be More Productive While You Look For Your Next Job

Marketing Unfiltered 39 - How To Make The Most Out Of Your Job Hunt

📝 JULY 25th | EDITORS NOTE 📝

Greetings, Marketing Leaders ☀️!

This week, I’m starting with something a little differently with an AI Joke: I asked Claude for 5 marketing-related jokes and here’s the best one…

Two marketers are lost in the desert. One says,
"Don't worry, I'll create a lead magnet to attract rescue helicopters."
The other replies,
"Great, but what's our nurture sequence if they don't convert to actual rescue?"

It might make you chuckle this morning…

We have another great resource from Harry, who offers 35 ways to handle and get the most out of your job hunt.

Thanks for reading again this week and have a great weekend (cheering on the Lionesses on Sunday 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿⚽️)!
Danny Denhard - Let’s connect on LinkedIn

FINALLY A USEFUL GUIDE!

35 Things To Make You Look, Feel & Be More Productive While You Look For Your Next Job

35 Things To Make You Look, Feel & Be More Productive While You Find Your Next Job

A/ The Top 8 Useful Things I Realised While Job Seeking

1. Losing your job takes you through a whole holiday of travel experiences:- one day you're flying, then the worst happens and you're treading water. You try desperately to stay afloat, but fear, lack of confidence and fiscal fear drags you under - which eventually migrates into drowning. No matter how strong you are, you’ll have days when you can’t see the surface, but you CAN swim back up there.

2. Time is your friend dressed up as your enemy. Waking up with that feeling of dread, watching your bank account tick backwards, spending hours scrolling jobs you would never have considered until your back was against the wall, tick tock, tick tock… Flip it on its head – when was the last time you actually had ‘time’? It’s a blessing – a majestic and precious resource, and it’s FREE! Use it productively, waste it, sleep through it, exercise with it – it’s yours, it’s wonderful and it won’t be here forever.

3. Don’t get annoyed with recruiters and talent teams – remember, if you think the market is treating you badly, it’s just as bad for them, if not worse. Dissing them will just get you on their Blacklists. So don’t fire off angry emails and posts when things don’t go your way or you get ghosted. Write them if it makes you feel better, sure – just don’t hit send as you’ll need those bridges one day. If nothing else in here is useful, you’ll thank me for this advice down the line.

4. Make a game of job seeking – one hour of job seeking, one networking meeting or one solid application is one point, good for a long walk to a waterside pub. A decent interview or positive feedback is three points, which equates to a steak dinner. Get to ten points? Well, that’s a night out, for sure. New job = holiday. It’s a miserable process and it can take a looong time (trust me) so why not own it and make it fun?

5. The job market is in flux, so why not pivot with it? The economy is in meltdown, AI is apparently the cause of - and the answer to - all of life’s problems (Chapeau, Simpsons). Ageism is rife, JD’s change, thousands of applicants auto apply to hundreds of soulless  ATS systems, professional courtesy is a long forgotten myth and everything sucks. Perhaps NOW is the time to step away from the career you never really enjoyed and do that thing you’re good at, you’re passionate about and you’d excel in? You know as well as I do that you’d be AMAZING doing that thing you love, so if not now, then when?

6. When you’re waiting to hear news, the silence is DEAFENING. And yes, you feel powerless half the time, but it’s like dating:- you need to create a desirable, confidentand differentiated public persona which looks attractive and reliable to businesses. In your head, pretend you already have a job offer in hand, grill the interviewers hard on the key elements of the role and business. Make them desire you so they want to chase you above the hundreds of other lookalike candidates. 

7. Nobody really cares – I mean, of course, some people care – they care how you are, but don’t imagine everyone is out there doing the work for you – that’s on you. Grit your teeth, swat away the inevitable disappointments and self-doubt, celebrate the wins no matter how trivial and embrace the fact that when you get to where you’re going, it’ll be down to YOU, because YOU refused to eat sh*t lying down

8. Your self-confidence and self worth will both take a hit, no matter how bulletproof you think you are. Desperation, apathy and ghosting gets us all, eventually. You wonder what you need to do, what you’ve done wrong, why nothing is happening, whether you need to pivot into plumbing and more. It’s natural, it’s painful and it’s inevitable, so don’t think you’re special, weak or alone. You’re not. 

9. Compromise isn’t the same as failure. 

10. The world is moving fast, especially for us marketers, and upskilling is more essential than ever. With all this wonderful time (and a newly polished CV to fluff) find new things to become an expert in. I leant into AI, creating images, data analysis skills and had a go at building agents. I focused on improving my writing, both by reading and writing every day. Then I took up metal detecting – not marketing related, you might think, but optimising my own TikTok channel certainly is.    

B/ Look After Number 1

As the Snickers X Tinder partnership headline would say (if it existed):- ‘You’re not you when you’re desperate’

1. Exercise – nothing will pull you out of a funk better than serotonin with a shot of fresh air

2. Read – self-improvement and learning is one route, but use all this wonderful free time to read those books you’ve been too tired to get into

3. Enjoy Yourself – They say you can’t hurry love, and you can’t hurry a job search, either. So, while you wait for a you-shaped role to emerge in this calamitous market, catch up with the friends you’ve ghosted when your career was going terribly well rather than terribly badly

4. Sleep – it’s a wonder drug (one I’ve suffered cold turkey withdrawal from whilst job seeking), so get to bed early, wake fresh, keep the coffee intake reasonable and let your brain switch off properly

5. Book in a mental health MOT – therapy, rest, acceptance and self-realisation aren’t woolly buzz words – they can be solutions. Your mind is an engine – service it regularly  

C/ Weaponise Your Job Search 

1. Tailor your CV and cover letter for every job you go for. In this horror show market, one perfect application has a better hit rate than 1,000 generic Hail Marys

2. Don’t burn time – you can search and apply for all relevant jobs in the first 1-2 hours of the day. There are no prizes for doing an 8 hour shift, so get the grunt work done then move onto more productive things (see section A)

3. Recruiters and Headhunters aren’t wizards – they can’t magic roles from thin air. Some are more communicative, others have higher EQ, many will ghost you for lack of anything worth discussing. Build relationships with them but only as one part of a wider strategy.

4. Focus on LinkedIn Jobs, recruiters and, crucially, your network. The non-advertised roles your professional contacts know about (and can vouch for you on) are the hidden gold. You can read a comprehensive guide to customising a more effective approach in this Marketing Unfiltered article)

5. You don’t get any presents by hosting a pity party – get over those nagging fears and ‘woe is me’ thoughts asafp – they’re valid, sure, but about as useful as pastry pants. 

D/ Magnify Your Personal Brand

1. People can’t hire you if they don’t know about you. Amplify yourself.

2. This could be on LinkedIn - comment as much as you post if you want maximum reach and engagement. This MU article summarised the findings of an experiment I ran about what tickles the LI algo off the back of a viral post

3. Write, speak, rinse, repeat – say yes to any and all PR opps whether they be Podcasts, article quotes, writing or conference speaking. Even if you find this stuff hard, it’s free and if nothing else is good fodder for your CV and profile

4. Get a new LI headshot – you don’t have to pay for it; just get the best high res photo you have and use AI to optimise it. Then redesign your LI header image to say exactly who you are and how amazing you are – it’s a massive billboard and it’s free – but I bet you’re not exploiting it

5. Keep in touch with recruiters so you’re top of mind. I send an email monthly which feels like the Goldilocks frequency, and I write personal updates for each recruiter with amusing stories about my job search, hobbies and PR wins just so my email is a tiny bit more memorable than the other hundred desperate generic candidate notes they’ll get that day 

E/ Don’t Give Up, Give Back

1. The annoying truth is that the job market is crap, and it might take you a while to get employed again. Get over that fact now and do something positive instead

2. Rather than whipping yourself with metaphorical birch twigs, you could use your oodles of experience to mentor younger folks in your line of work

3. This isn’t an entirely selfless act – while they’ll benefit from your objective advice and knowledge, you’ll extend goodwill in new and hitherto unexplored directions

4. Chances are professional bodies in your industry have mechanisms for mentorship in place already

5. So, lean into self-improvement by helping others improve themselves

F/ Money, Money, Money

1. We might say we love work, but none of us would show up if we weren’t paid to do so. If you’re not working, you can use all this wonderful free time to mitigate spending. You’ll not only extend your runway but also set yourself up to be more cash efficient when that lovely salary does start rolling in again.

2. Review your direct debits – cancelling a couple of TV channels and subscriptions can rapidly add up to Hundred $ in savings every month

3. Renegotiate standing orders – I bet you can get way better deals on your mobile and utility bills

4. Shop clever – I lean into LIDL, ALDI and TK Maxx anyway. If you like steak and wine, there are some corkers to be had in the value supermarket meat, veg and wine aisles, too. Are you a curry fan? Great! Now, finally, you have the time to master the Dishoom cookbook cover to cover

5. Gamify your frugality. Set yourself a challenge – see if you can find £500 in monthly savings in the next week and if you manage it, treat yourself to a date night. You’ll still be 400 quid in credit, and you’ll be happier, too

I genuinely believe that how you handle yourself when things are shit is the true reflection of how far you've come, and the person you really are. Being unemployed can make you feel like a failure, but it absolutely, unequivocally shouldn’t. In a modern marketing career, it’s as common as a typo in a CRM email or an ill-advised social post, so stop beating yourself up, recognise it’s simply a product of circumstance and soon enough you’ll be stuck in a meeting, dreaming of the days you spent your mornings sat in your PJs, crafting AI enhanced cover letters to appease thankless ATS Gods.

Then again, maybe not…

» Connect with Harry on LinkedIn or buy his book as a gift

Want some other MU articles to read this weekend

• CMOs: Here’s how and why to assign an AI leader

• The evolution of the CMO role and what’s next 

• Why playing the game is not optional for Marketing leaders 

5 Takeaways From Last Week’s MU Article

The 5 takeaways from Harry’s take on Clarkson’s Hawkstone beer ad MU38.  

• Provocative: Jeremy Clarkson’s new Hawkstone beer ad was intentionally provocative and “designed to be banned,” leveraging controversy and his fame for viral PR rather than traditional advertising.

• Virality > Paid: The ad mimics tactics used by brands like Paddy Power, aiming for social media virality and press coverage instead of paid media, with the ASA’s slow response used as a PR tool.

• Clarkson’s Army: Clarkson’s massive, loyal following amplifies his stunts, making risky, irreverent marketing effective for him; this approach is an important lesson, as it would likely fail for less famous brands.

• Risky: The ad’s controversy creates headaches for marketers, as CEOs may pressure teams to replicate viral success without understanding the unique context or risks.

• Booze Boost? While Clarkson’s business ventures are successful and boost local economies, the marketing style is divisive and arguably irresponsible, especially for alcohol brands.

The CMO Takeaway:
Controversy and fame can drive viral marketing, but this playbook only works if you have a megaphone and a character larger than life like Clarkson.
Most brands should focus on their own lane and their approach, not manufactured outrage.

Thanks For Reading This Week ✅

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Danny Denhard