I’ve been unemployed for about 5 months and to be honest, I could have been searching harder. Mailing out resumes and writing cover letters is just such a tedious, disheartening process.

Actually, I’m glad I didn’t waste any more time because I just discovered a much better way to go about this. Research shows that anyone unemployed needs to:

1) Get Off the Internet

Richard Bolles, Author of What Color is Your Parachute, says research has shown only 4% to 10% of job seekers who search solely through the internet actually land jobs.

2) Save The Stamps

Only 7% of job hunters who relied solely on snail-mailing out resumes landed jobs.

3) Go To The Phone Book

Make a list of companies that you want to work for and that you can do something for, regardless of whether they have any vacancies. Call them up. This method resulted in success for 69% of seekers that used no other method. Job seekers who used this method solely within their own city had an 84% success rate.

Option B) Go Door to Door

People who went straight into the buildings of companies and asked to speak with someone had a 47% success rate landing jobs.

The main point being: stop hiding behind your resume. In automated and image-dominated times, employers might just want to talk to a real person. When I land a job I’ll post an update with how long this method took. Hopefully not another 5 months!