Step 6: Outreach

Time for the rubber to hit the road. Having identified three firms in my top 10 that are currently hiring (Google, EA, and LucasArts), I put the outreach plan into action.

Key Insights: As a bit of a perfectionist, it was hard at first to give up the idea of writing super personalized messages to each of the contacts at my target firms. However, once I accepted the booster-testing method, I really got on a roll, sending one message after another without mental blocks.

Time Savings: Estimating that a typical personalized message would have taken me at least 30 minutes per contact, I saved three hours by reaching out using the 2HJS method.

Stress Reduction: Not hyperventilating about picking just the right words in each message definitely took another 10 mm HG off the ol' BP!

Step 5.2: The Results Are In!

Sorry for the delay sports fans! Exams, holidays, and on-campus interviewing put my job search experiment on hiatus as the calendar flipped over.

But I'm happy to report that I'm back in action - and back with the much-anticipated results of my social question-answering service test:

As you might recall from last time, I was trying desperately to track down a connection at Dreambox, a small educational gaming firm that was in my top 10. And so I turned to both Aardvark and Facebook Questions for help.

Alas, it looks like the final outcome was... a tie. Neither service was able to turn up anything, although at least Aardvark sent me a nice follow-up.

Maybe the lesson here is that I need to work on my network as well as my job searching!