Are you a morning or night person?
➔ Especially in the age of remote work, there is much talk about shifting employees’ work schedules to accommodate their respective lifestyles – flex time is the modern term. If that concept works in the actual workplace, why would it not work for you in your job search?
So, what is your best time of day? According to the BBC, “It’s estimated that some 50 percent of the population isn’t really morning or evening-oriented, but somewhere in the middle.” The rest seem to be split between early birds and night owls.
Depending on where you fall on that chart, most experts agree that some people perform better early in the day, while others don’t start to be productive until some time after lunch.
Just what does any of this have to do with your job search? It could be a lot. When you consider that the most important part of your job search is the personal, face-to-face time that you spend with your contacts, doesn’t it make sense to try to funnel those interactions when you’re at your best?
Reaching your peak
If you’re a morning person, concentrating your most important activities early in the day should enhance your chances of landing a position. For a morning person, setting up information interviews as breakfast meetings as opposed to an after-work drink would definitely be in your favor. As your internal clock starts to slow in the afternoon, this would be an ideal time to answer emails, draft cover letters, etc. Anything where you don’t have be “on!”
If you can’t function clearly before lunch, schedule your live calls and interviews in the afternoon. Save the morning for those tasks where you don’t have to have one-on-one contact with anyone. Use your mornings for doing background research on people and companies, or for working social media sites such as LinkedIn, or going to the library.
Sure there are times where an afternoon person is forced into a 9:00 a.m. interview, but where you can control the clock, early bird or night owl, turn it to your advantage.
Are You a Morning or an Evening Person? — This survey will let you determine if you are a morning or an evening person. Take the survey.