What you’ll learn:
- Dating for single professionals applies the principles of job hunting to partner search.
- Before I became a matchmaker and dating coach I worked in HR and observed how people approach job searches.
- My client Sarah was a successful professional who was just “waiting for love to happen”.
- Not many single professionals are able to use their job seeker skills in their efforts to find love.
- Preparation, consistency and putting effort in the dating process will quickly pay off.
The type of smart, strong and successful single professional men and women that I work with are proactive in all areas of their life… except for one.
When it comes to LOVE, many wait for “it” to magically happen on its own.
Are you guilty of this, too?
If so, you’re not alone.
There’s a better path to take besides waiting around and hoping it will somehow happen for you one day, and that’s exactly what I want to share with you today. Dating for single professionals is not that different from searching for a new job. You can trust me on this – before I became a successful elite matchmaker and dating coach I had a successful career in recruitment and headhunting!
Building A Successful Career Takes Effort
Think about this: When you decided to get a degree, you did everything to make it happen. You went to the best schools, studied hard, invested your resources, and stuck with it even through challenging times until you walked off the stage with your degree in hand.
When you started looking for a job, you were proactive.
You put in the work, attended networking events, and checked for job opportunities in newspapers and online. You submitted applications and worked with headhunters. You wrote a killer CV and when you were fortunate enough to be invited for an interview, you did your research, always showed up looking sharp and prepared to answer any questions thrown at you and of course you followed up with the company afterwards.
Once you were hired, you invested your time, energy, and resources in your career, constantly improving yourself to be the best possible at your job and advancing through the ranks. You may have invested in additional training and courses, always working hard to evolve your career.
Growing your career takes perseverance and effort
Love Doesn’t Happen By Chance
Yet, for some reason, when it comes to love and finding the most important person with whom you will spend every day for the rest of your life, we often don’t innately think to apply the same principles and many single professionals expect “it”– love– to just happen by chance.
So, you wait. And wait.
And think: “Maybe “it” will happen next month, maybe “it” will happen next year…”
And you can stay stuck like that for the rest of your life.
In other aspects of your life waiting just wasn’t an option. If you came to a standstill, you looked for solutions, and thought, “What can I do to move forward?”
Until you realize that you need to take this same attitude to your love life, nothing will change. In my dating coaching programs for single professionals, we proactively work on giving chance a chance by creating opportunities to meet people of the opposite sex.
Realizing that finding the most important person in your life requires an investment of your time, attention and effort is key. Your life partner will not just fall from the sky. Treat dating and finding love with the same respect and dedication as other life goals, not a “nice to have.”
Don’t Give Up On Dating After A Few “Failures”.
Let’s examine this more closely. Imagine you want to start looking for a new job. If you’re applying for a position, you wouldn’t send a half-baked resume and motivation letter.
So why are you throwing together a half-baked online profile, not doing much of any follow up and wondering why you’re not getting quality responses or qualified candidates?
Think about it: when applying for a position, you are lucky when you receive an answer right away. Sometimes you go through six rounds of interviews for a position, and it still doesn’t work out. Often you don’t hear back from potential opportunities that you thought were a perfect fit. Sometimes after a long and promising recruitment process, they choose the other candidate.
It can be incredibly frustrating when looking for a job. But… you don’t give up! You keep your end goal in mind and continue to invest your time and effort in finding and acting on new opportunities to land a great position.
Why, then, do some single professionals want to quit dating after a few disappointing experiences?
Sarah Couldn’t Find The Right Partner
Like many of my clients, you probably feel fulfilled in most other areas of your life. But you haven’t been able to crack the code on dating.
Last year, I had a client, Sarah, who was frustrated beyond belief and told me she was willing to “do anything” to finally find love.
She’d been single for five years. She claimed she had been looking for a partner for five years.
So, I asked her a question that I ask all of my clients, “What concrete actions have you taken to find your partner?”
It turns out that even though she claimed finding the right partner was her top priority and that she was willing to “do anything” to finally find love, she hadn’t really done much at all.
Sarah told me she had registered on a dating site two and a half years prior but that she hadn’t gone on any dates! When I asked her for more details, she shared that she had created a profile but had not reached out to anyone. She checked her account one or two times a month, but no man contacted her. So not shockingly, nothing came from it.
When you commit to something, like dating on dating apps, do it well! It takes strategy and consistency. Without momentum, it won’t take off.
The dating app algorithms work so that if you aren’t active, you get penalized and don’t show up in as many matches. It makes sense for the app as they want to actively match people who are actively looking, not the people who are just browsing. If you’re not active, then your profile will logically become inactive.
Your dating profile should represent who you are
Dating For Single Professionals Is Like Looking For That Dream Job
I encouraged Sarah to set up a new account to get a fresh start with online dating. She only had one picture, the same one as her LinkedIn profile and had very minimal information about her personality.
Remember, you are trying to give someone who has never met you a glimpse of who you are. Is a business portrait and a stale profile truly representing who you are?
As Sarah started to sort through profiles, we discussed the ones that caught her eye. “Look at this guy! He seems incredible, he loves traveling and hiking like I do and has incredible pictures! We seem to have so much in common!”
Sarah had nothing in her profile to indicate that she enjoyed traveling or hiking so why would someone like this gentleman think it would be worth messaging her or have any idea they shared interests? I shared this with her and encouraged her to update her profile.
Make sure your profile is an accurate representation of who you are, what you enjoy, and what’s important to you.
Think about your dating profile like your personal resume.
This is all the information that someone has about you before they can make a decision to swipe right, reach out or respond to your message. Give enough information to attract the type of person you want and repel the ones you don’t.
Many clients will show me their dating app profiles and I can see in their history that they respond to two or three messages and then give up. “I never found anyone interesting or anyone that I had a connection with,” they tell me.
Well, of course, that’s the case after just a couple of messages. Look at your side of the conversation–did you seem like someone engaging and interesting from the man’s point of view?
How can you expect to see someone else’s best when you’re not giving your own?
Show up (especially) online.
Change Your Approach To Dating
You wouldn’t give up if this were your dream job you were going after, so don’t give up on the possibility of finding your dream partner either.
Still haven’t found ‘the one?’ Start transforming your approach to dating. Dating for single professionals is not so different from job hunting. Click here to watch my free training to discover “Why You’re Still Single?” and stop making the same mistakes that are keeping you single.
