I would rather have steak stapled to my body and be thrown into shark-invested waters than have to go through a job search." - Lilith Lysistrata, happily employed Data Analyst, in a posting to a networking forum.

Perhaps you feel like Ms. Lysistrata quoted above. She is not alone in disliking the process of hunting for a new career position - many people find job search to be stressful and unpleasant. Facilitating a career transition can be challenging, but here are some ways to make it more manageable and less awful:

• An important part of job search is focus. First, define what you want. Next, write a structured game plan to outline how you plan to get it. A famous Harvard study found that of a graduating class, only 3% of the students formulated specific goals.
  Decades later, researchers found that the 3% who set clear goals had greater financial net worth than the other 97% combined. (Goal-setting works in the non-financial areas of life, too).
  
• Stay focused on the present. Don't think, "I hate doing this and I'm going to have to keep doing it every week for month
  after month..." In psychology-speak, exaggerating the bad is called, "Awfulizing." Instead of awfulizing, just set weekly goals.
  Then report your progress to someone. Accountability greatly increases your probability of success.
  
• Vary your approach. For every six resume / cover letter packets you send to a prospective employer, attend a professional event in your industry. Choose events that offer both the opportunity to learn something new and to meet other professionals.
  If you can't say for sure which events would be helpful for your particular circumstances, back up and spend some time clarifying where you have been and where you want to go next. Invest some time in self-exploration rather than spinning your wheels by prematurely trying to implement a job search without a road map.
  
• As you begin to implement your game plan, pay attention to the feelings that arise. Sometimes action creates momentum that fuels forward progress. But other times, action triggers resistance. Kurt Lewin, a well-known social and organizational psychologist, said that the best way to understand something is to try to change it. When change triggers resistance, explore the resistance, because doing so yields clues to feelings that may sabotage your career success.
  
• Use feedback from each step of your job search to improve your efforts in the next step. If your resume is not generating interviews, ask other people for an honest critique. If there is some consensus about room for improvement, make some changes and then market test the revised version.
  
• Once you have interviews scheduled, make sure you can quickly and concisely summarize your professional strengths in relation to specific job opportunities. Because the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, be sure to arm yourself with specific instances of concrete accomplishments you have achieved. If you stumble on an interview question, learn from the
  experience and refine your presentation for the next time. But don't forget to be human. No one wants to hire a robo-interviewee who sounds like he/she memorized the latest self-help advice from a best-selling interviewing guide. And never say that your greatest professional weakness is that you are a perfectionist!!
  
• Finally, once you land your new job, cultivate good karma by being responsive and courteous to prospective job seekers
  who contact you in your new role as a representative of your employer.
  
  Happy Hunting!