This week the focus is on how to handle the bad days, the days when you’d rather just stay in bed than to face another day of job search. Believe it or not you can still be productive on those days, without having to face the public.

This blog originated from a video that’s posted on my YouTube Channel; here’s a quick link to this video if you’d rather watch it: https://youtu.be/XphrSj0rXCg

The great news about all of the social media and online networking that’s involved in job search now is that if you don’t want to personally talk to anyone today, you don’t have to! Hop online! Just be very careful go in with the mindset of staying positive.

Remember, what you say about other people says more about you than it does those other people, even online.

If you disagree with someone’s perspective, negative comments and reactions puts the spotlight on YOU more than the perspective you’re commenting on. Employers are online too, reading your comments, and forming opinions. On a bad day, it’s easy to get negative, so be alert and re-read every statement you make to ensure it’s not negative before clicking submit.

Here are some things you can work on in the rough days.

First is building or tweaking your online profiles. Between LinkedIn, Twitter, and all the other sites out there, employers are using new ways to find people. Most of these are free, and can really help.

An advantage profiles have over resumes is the length. The recommended length for resumes is a reasonable 2 to 4 pages, but online profiles can be as long as you want, and they should be long! The more keywords you have in there, the easier it is for employers to find you. They are searching for keywords, and if they are in your profile, you’ll be found more often.

Attach your resume to your profiles, and be sure to title the document with the word “Resume” and the title of the position you want in the document title name. Employers are crawling the internet with automated search tools looking for those keywords in attached documents. When you’re having an off day, update the content of your profiles.

Off days are also good to build your online connections, especially in LinkedIn.

Please keep in mind that LinkedIn is a research tool, it does NOT strengthen your personal relationships with people, that’s up to you, offline, directly. In LinkedIn, the more connections you have, the more access you have to useful information, like company target lists, and hiring manager names.

So to build your connections quickly, just go to that search box at the top of the screen and put in quotes “I never IDK”, which finds people who WANT connection requests. If you want to see how to do this, watch the video of this article where I show exactly how to do this.

The reason they post “IDK” on their profile to tell you they will not click the button that says I Don’t Know you, which can harm your status in LinkedIn. If you want more people to come to you, put it on yours! You can check out my profile for reference on how to do that. www.linkedin.com/in/paulcameron Personally, I narrow my results to 2nd level connections and people living in the United States, and again, those people want connections so you don’t need a personalized message.

By the way, send ME an invite while you’re at it and I’ll gladly accept it.

I do understand some people are only comfortable connecting with people they personally know, which is fine (although you severely limit the usefulness of LinkedIn by limiting your connections), but I have an idea for you also.

Use the Groups in Linkedin to your advantage. Join the largest groups you can find because that will give you access to millions more profiles, without adding to your personal connection count.

These are just a few ideas for the bad days, and hopefully this has inspired even more ideas for you as well while you were reading this. The important thing to know is that you can still be productive and accomplish something, even on the days when you don’t feel like leaving the house.

If this article was helpful for you, please click the Like button and/or share this so the people in your network can find it.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our free youtube channel to see my new job search videos as they come out; I posted some new videos this month that are getting great responses and I add news ones regularly.

Your Job Search doesn’t have to stop just because you’re having a bad day. You can do this. It’s time to get to work.