How to structure your week when you're job hunting full time

Mornings for applications, afternoons for people

If you think most clearly earlier in the day, give the mornings to the work that needs concentration: reading ads closely, tailoring a CV, writing a cover letter. Afternoons suit work that involves other people, and that is the part many job hunts neglect.

A workable split looks like this:

The conversation matters more than it looks. Plenty of roles are filled through people who already know the candidate. In SilkRoad's Sources of Hire report, covering 2016 hiring at more than 1,000 companies, employee referrals delivered more than 30% of hires; it is an older, overseas figure, not New Zealand data, and it counts referrals for advertised roles too. A conversation can open a door that an application would not. Our guide to getting a job in New Zealand covers where the jobs are and how to reach them.

Two hours a day is enough if it is the right two

The hours that count are the ones spent on tailored applications, preparation for interviews you have, and conversations with people. Scrolling job boards for an hour feels like work but produces very little.

So set up job alerts on the sites you use, and let them bring the ads to you once a day rather than searching from scratch each time. Save the promising ones as you see them, then spend your focused time on the few that deserve a proper application.

When an interview arrives, it takes priority. Move the hours from applying to preparing, because an interview is the step closest to an offer.

The rest of the day is not wasted if it is not spent applying. A short course, volunteering, or keeping a skill current gives you something to talk about in interviews and helps fill a gap on your CV. It also gives the day a shape, which matters more the longer a search goes on. If you are on Jobseeker Support, ask your case manager what training they can help with before you pay for anything yourself.

A weekly review on Sunday

Twenty minutes at the end of the week keeps the hunt on track:

• What moved this week: replies, interviews, rejections.
• What has gone quiet, and needs a follow-up or closing.
• Which roles to apply for next week, and which to let go.
• One thing to change, if something is clearly not working.

The review is also where you notice patterns. If you have sent twenty applications of one kind and heard nothing, the answer is usually to change the kind of role or the application.

Protecting exercise and rest

A long hunt is tiring in a way that is easy to underestimate. Rejection and silence are hard to take day after day, and without a routine the days can run together.

Build the rest in deliberately. Exercise most days, even a walk. Keep regular sleep and meal times. Take at least one full day a week off the hunt, and do something that has nothing to do with work. Rest is what makes the following week productive.

If the hunt is affecting your sleep, mood or health, talk to your GP. It is a common effect of a long search and there is support available.

Logging everything so the week is visible

A record of what you did each week does two jobs. It shows you, on a flat week, that you did in fact work hard. And if you are on Jobseeker Support, it is the easiest way to show Work and Income what you have been doing. There is no universal weekly quota: under the Social Security Act 2018 (sections 144 and 146), people with work obligations must take reasonable steps to find suitable work and report as Work and Income reasonably requires. Our guide to job hunting on Jobseeker Support covers the obligations in more detail.

Log applications, follow-ups and interviews against each job as they happen, with the date. A minute a day is enough. In jobtracker.co.nz, each one logged against a job counts towards the week's effort on the dashboard, against a weekly goal you set yourself, and builds the Work and Income record by date. You can see a real week of it in the demo, which opens with no account.

Let the week show what you did