Landing Is For Pilots, Not Job Seekers

There’s a term in the job search community for when you find a job. You “land” a new job and you send out a “landing announcement” to your network so that everyone knows you are off the market. Sounds like a positive thing to “land”, right? Of course, it is a very positive thing – don’t get me wrong.

But I have a different take on it. To “land” suggests to me the end of a precarious journey, a bumpy flight on “out of work” airlines. If you take that analogy a bit further, you can envision other job seekers on the flight with you and others on planes that left Chicago a few hours later who will eventually land. Still others did not impress in their last interview and were bumped from their flight, forced to wait for the first flight in the morning. Remember all the white knuckled passengers on your last flight?

If you have a solid job search strategy, however, the flight does not have to be bumpy. You will not have to wait in line at the gate hoping you get on the flight. Instead you can rest easy in the Red Carpet Club sipping a cold beer. Having a strategy not only gives you a specific plan of attack but it also provides confidence, clarity and the opportunity to actually enjoy some time off as you look for a new role.

So I’ll suggest a new term for job finders called “Arrival”. Next time you find that great new job, you can say you’ve “arrived” as if you knew it all along. Arrival sounds like it happened under your own control – in a way that was predetermined through a intelligent approach and a efficient work ethic. Instead of landing on a 737 with 165 other passengers, you will “arrive” in a 1974 Triumph TR6, with wind whipped hair and a tan.

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