Three women from my last LYJ (Love Your Job) Search Class had interviews this past week. How did they line them up? Not by painfully slogging through online job boards or agonizing over cover letters but rather with tiny actions that had immediate and big pay offs in surprising ways.

1. As I wrote about in Ask Three People to Name Your Strengths, one woman asked her former colleague for feedback on her best attributes. After she was done raving about her, the next thing she knew an interview was lined up to work at her colleague’s new company in a role that is exciting to her.

2. Another jobseeker set up a call with her sister’s friend who works at a small firm that sounded interesting and along the lines of her ideal next job. The goal was to learn more about this woman’s career path and what the company was like. A week later she was interviewing for a job that her new contact referred her to and is close to a promising offer.

3. A third person in my class took the necessary steps to put together an online portfolio of her work in order to apply for a freelance copywriting position. While she never ended up applying for that job since it didn’t seem like the right fit, the online portfolio allowed her to dash off an application for another company that was a much better role, and full-time. Three days later she was brought in for an interview and is on to the next round in the process.

In each of these examples, there was surprise at how quickly things moved forward with minimal effort. While it’s true that in many cases the job search process involves hanging in there through 3, 4 or 5 interview rounds, sometimes getting your foot in the door for that first step requires much less work than you might imagine.