We geeks love our toys. ThinkGeek has led an industry on new toys, but many of us revel in our old toys as well. The quest to find the last comic in our collection, the last Star Trek model, or an old first edition Heinlein novel can be pretty compelling.

Darth Vader bank Say you’re looking for some crazy collectible. Maybe it’s that Darth Vader coin bank that says “Impressive, most impressive” when you give it a nickel. Where are you going to find this most
elusive of tchotchkes? (Yes, I know, they’re actually easy to find.)

First place you look is on eBay. You go surfing around, and sure, there are some Vader toys that are pretty cool, but not what you want. You could make do with an R2-D2 bank, but again, it’s not what you really want. You check Amazon Shops and Craigslist, but
come up empty there as well.

Are you going to say “Oh well, my Vader bank must not exist.” Of course not!

You’re going to keep searching. You’ll scour the web, finding other potential sources for your elusive quarry. You hit the streets, visiting collectibles stores, talking to the people who work there, asking if they have suggestions on what to score your treasure. Plenty of stores don’t even post their goodies online.

Sometimes you stumble across an excellent score, and it feels like you just lucked into your find. Fact is, if you weren’t out looking, that “luck” wouldn’t have struck.

So why don’t job hunters treat their job hunts the same way?

Many job hunters get up in the morning, check Dice and CareerBuilder and Monster, don’t find the job they want, and conclude “Nobody’s hiring” or “There are no jobs I want.”

Or maybe they figure that they’ll go pursue a job that might be interesting, but isn’t really what they want, settling for the R2-D2 bank instead of the Vader bank they really one.

You’ll call or email companies that you’d like to work for, and if they’re not hiring, you’ll ask for suggestions on other places to check.

The big job boards are the eBays of job hunting. They’re the first place you look, but rarely the last.

Don’t stop looking if you come up empty. Certainly you must not conclude that because you haven’t found what you wanted in the first, second or third place you’ve looked, that it must not exist anywhere.

You don’t have to be so diligent in your hunt, but you’ll lose the job opportunities to those who are.