One common problem jobseekers face in their job search is getting — and staying — organized.
Alison King has created a course — Get Organized to Get Hired: Organize Your Job Search, Reduce Overwhelm, and Get Hired – Quicker! — full of actionable tips and techniques to help jobseekers organize all the documents, communications, and appointments throughout the job search process. “The course is especially targeted to jobseekers who plan to apply to 10+ jobs and need help keeping all the administrative details straight!”
The course is designed for anyone (“any industry, job title, or experience level,” King says) who is preparing for — or in the very early stages of — their job search, whether they are looking to move up in their current industry or switch to a new career.
King recognized the need for a course after conducting her own job search and realizing it was confusing trying to track all the details for multiple job applications. “It’s especially challenging for people like me who are not super-organized by nature,” she noted. “During my own job search, I got organized by necessity — not because I love organization — so I wanted it to be accessible to people like me.”
The course is quick — “about an hour to get through it,” King says — and offers low- and no-cost solutions so jobseekers can apply the tips immediately and feel confident and organized as they start their job search process. It includes templates for LinkedIn networking, tips for digital file organization for different versions of resumes and cover letters, and a spreadsheet to use to track all the jobs they apply for.
“This was the course I wish I had when I started my own full-time librarian-to-copyeditor job search in April 2022,” King says. “It had been a few years since I’d done a job search, and I had NEVER done one where I applied to more than five jobs.”
“The admin work got overwhelming so quickly, and I felt like my head was spinning all the time with emails, interview scheduling, and networking,” she adds. “Although I had seen some career pros allude to certain aspects of job search organization, I couldn’t find all that information in one place. When my job search ended four months later (and not a moment too soon, because otherwise I’d be going back to my school librarian job in September!), I knew I had to share the systems I developed with other jobseekers. My search was stressful, but these systems made the admin part far more manageable!”
The course is $49 and is self-paced so students can go through it at their own pace. Use promo code RWD10 to save $10 off the course price for a limited time. (Enter the promo code on the checkout page.)
For career colleagues considering creating their first — or next — course, King offers a peek into her course development process.
“My challenge is that I get really inspired to write a course, (so I) write a ton of it at once, and then leave it unfinished for too long. I lost momentum for months … or maybe a year? Seriously, I have multiple docs on my (hard) drive of potential course content in various states of ‘done-ness,’” King says. “There was some imposter syndrome mixed in there too, since I’ve only been writing resumes for about three years.”
When creating the “Get Organized to Get Hired” course, “I think I finally just set a date that I needed to release it — for my own sanity,” she added.
King also says the “Career Colleague Teachable Tribe” (CCTT) courses offered by BeAResumeWriter.com were helpful.
“I was part of both CCTT sessions Bridget offered. The sales page template was a life-saver. I had never written a sales page before, so that was a big block to launching.”
King is already working on her next course. “With my most recent course about cover letters — which I started writing ages ago during the first CCTT — I got motivated to finally finish while at the NRWA conference. I’d go back to the hotel at night to write and while touring Colorado after the conference. I told myself I needed to finish it before I landed back home in Philadelphia because otherwise, I was likely to let it linger again.”
She reports she did finish writing the cover letter course on the plane ride home and is launching the course soon.
“With the cover letter course, I actually used ChatGPT to help fill in the blanks where I was getting writer’s block. It took a lot of adjusting the prompt (“make it shorter” and “make it less formal”), but that was enough to work with as a base before making it my own tips and voice,” she said.
King also said she used some of the Pass-Along Materials content from Bronze membership in BeAResumeWriter.com to fill in the blanks in the content and help with creation of the downloadable files she created for students.
“Ultimately, I need to remind myself that ‘Done is better than perfect’ and that I can always go back and adjust things later … so just launch the darn thing!”
For more information about Alison King and her courses, visit:
Royal Career Academy
King Career Services
Alison King on LinkedIn
