Looking for a part time job, or full time one, can be a very frustrating task, particularly if you are not sure where to begin looking for a job. In the past Jobseekers had to mainly rely on newspaper advertisements to find employment opportunities but these days there are thousands of part time job vacancies quite literally at your fingertips thanks to the Internet.

However the number of sites and range of job vacancies on offer present an almost bewildering choice if you haven’t already got a clear idea of what you are looking for. That’s why it is essential to do a bit of planning before diving straight into the jobs listings.

If you read yesterday’s post you will remember that I urged you to create a list of your goals for 2009, well now it’s time to dig out your list of goals, review it and we’ll start adding some more information that will help guide you towards finding the right part time job for you.

The first thing to do is to look at the goals that you wrote down and put a monetary value to each one, this will help you determine the kind of salary you are going to have to achieve in order to reach your goals. Obviously the scale of your goals is going to determine the type of job you need to secure and the timescale for reaching your goals. So, if you set really ambitious goals you are going to have to find something a little more lucrative than evening bar work or  flipping burgers, but if you have big, ambitious goals, don’t downsize them just yet as I will be discussing some part time jobs that can achieve pretty impressive returns in due course.

If your goals are more modest, say a good holiday, some new furniture or a new dream kitchen then I want you to put down the value of your goal on your list and then below that calculate how much you would need to save each week to achieve your goal by this time next year by dividing the value of your goal by 50.

Now that you have a target weekly salary it is time to start thinking about your job preferences, then we will be able to start looking at the types of jobs that are suitable.

Try and answer the following questions and write your answers on the page containing your goals:

• Where do you want to work? (at home, indoors, outdoots or in a specific area)
• When do you want to work? (mornings, afternoons, evenings, weekends)
• Is there anything that you would really like to do?
• Is there anything you really don’t want to do?
• What previous qualifications or experience do you have that might be relevant?

The process of just thinking about your preferences and writing them down will help you narrow down the range of suitable jobs much more quickly. Once we start looking at job categories you may need to adjust your goals or preferences but don’t do that just yet. The main thing to do at the moment is to write down your goals and preferences and visualise them. Try closing your eyes and picturing yourself one year from now having achieved your goals. Let your imagination wander a bit and embellish the mental picture you are creating, then take a snapshot of that mental imagine. Perhaps you are lying on a sun drenched beach, perhaps you are pulling up outside a swanky restaurant in your new car. The important thing is that you create a vivid mental picture of you achieving your goal as we will come back to this and use it to help drive you forward towards achieving your goals. Simply visualising yourself achieving your goal is an important first step on your way to achieving it.

Spend some time thinking about your job preferences and dreaming about your goals before we start drilling into your preferences and starting to come up with some job categories.

Until next time…