SearchSmarter: 50 Ways to Get a Job

SearchSmarter is a new, periodic series that will showcase emerging tools designed to make managing your job search (or career) easier, smarter and/or a lot less overwhelming. Karen Friesen debuts SearchSmarter with a report on an incredibly cool new website,

50 Ways to Get a Job

Raise your hand if you know this foolproof, three-step formula for landing a great job.

It goes a little something like this:

Get your resume in order.

Scour the internet for a custom-made opportunity to fit your skills.

Slap a cover letter together, apply, and wait for the offers to roll in.

Oh, wait. That hasn’t been your experience?

Well, of course not. Landing the perfect job is rarely so easy. (And is anything truly foolproof?) Even if your list of accomplishments includes earning straight A’s at Harvard Business School (congratulations all three of you), finding a career you love means knowing what you’re great at and what brings you satisfaction, searching out those opportunities and convincing a potential employer that YOU are the person they have been waiting for.

Oh, and keeping calm and focused in the process.

A just launched website aims to help job seekers uncover their career purpose, take positive action, and -- importantly -- stay sane in the process. Best of all, it’s free.

Created by Dev Aujla, co-author of “Making Good,”

50 Ways to Get a Job does more than just throw out the “normal platitudes of find your passion and follow your bliss,” says Aujla. “We set out to give (job seekers) those steps in as tangible and actionable a form as possible.”

That’s right. Wherever you are in your job search, 50Ways aims to help by doling out – you guessed it – 50 different “missions” to inch you closer to your dream job.

Just starting a job search?

Click in and “Map Your Current Career Path,” “Discover How Long Your Money Will Last,” or “Update LinkedIN As Your Future Self.”

Feeling “Overwhelmed” or “Stuck”?

50Ways is on the case, with assignments ranging from “Sit Quietly in a Room for 45 Minutes” (it’s about unplugging and relaxing) and “Help 5 People” to “Remove all Tolerations” (we all have them; I just didn’t know what they were called.)

The site, Ajila explains, “is set up as a linear list of 50, but once you begin doing the exercises you will see how interrelated they all are. There is no linear way to find a job and there is no ‘right’ path through the site. Find something that resonates with you, take ten minutes, turn off your computer and do the work.”

Once you’ve moved on to applying for jobs and interviewing, missions still abound. Thought-provoking, action-packed, reflective and interactive, the 50Ways map to finding meaningful work offers activities for every mood or state of mind.

This is not, Aujla emphasizes, the path to employment that the media showcases. The exercises outlined were tested and researched over a three-year period. Choose one step, choose three or do all 50.

As Aujla says, “there are tools and exercises for everyone. Whether you are in a job currently and are unhappy or have been unemployed or under-employed for a year there are steps that will help you build momentum and meet the person that will hire you.”

Now that’s a plan we can get on board with.