How Do You Job Search?

Dear About.com, You said that freelance writers need to job search every day. How do you balance that? I've noticed that applying for jobs can take several hours, especially if you send a unique resume and cover letter. At this rate, I'll have to make searching my full time job. How can you do that?

Thanks for the question. Now, I did say that you have to job search regularly, but I did not say that you have to do it every day. Here's my job searching schedule:

1. Once a day, I search through about a third of my freelance writing job bookmarks.
2. Writing, editing, copywriting and blogging jobs that interest me are copied and pasted into a Word document. I do this because many jobs get taken down quickly, especially those on Craigslist.
3. I then begin my work for the day. Although I recommend that writers apply to jobs quickly, my work load usually pushes this task off to the afternoon.
4. After lunch, I take the Word document out and apply for about 10 jobs. If there are more than 10, I only apply for the ones I am most interested in and most qualified for. The freelance writing jobs out there are so plentiful that, you're right, applying could indeed become a full time job.
5. I spend one morning per week writing queries and pitching magazines. The accepted pitches bring in about 10% of my income right now.
6. On weekends, I will scroll through Elance to see if there are any companies looking for editors or writers. I don't much bother with individuals on Elance, as I've found, like many of you, that they're looking to pay less than I am willing to accept. In a typical week I will only contact one or two jobs via Elance.
7. Last, but certainly not least, I often spend evenings submitting fiction, essays and poetry to literary magazines and other outlets. At this point, the accepted pieces don't make up very much of my income at all.

That's my freelance job search system. True, it does take quite a bit of time and energy to stay in the black as a freelancer. I estimate that about 4 hours per week total goes into my job search.

One way around this is to really try to get those one or two ongoing clients that use you regularly, thereby reducing your need to keep searching. Another way to jobs is word of mouth. Last, but not least, I get one or two clients per week come to me either through this site or my personal website.

Hmm, reading this back, I realize you're right. This is a lot of work! Readers, what's your job search strategy? Should I really be spending 4 hours out of 35 on searching? Yikes!