BOULDER, Colo. — As I waited at the grocery checkout, the shopper behind me asked, "You give workplace advice, right?"

"What's on your mind?" I replied, and she said, "How many hours a week do you suggest devoting to a job search?"

"It depends," I said. "It's a full-time job search?"

"Yes," she said.

"There's an hour-by-hour job-search schedule on my blog, for 25 hours a week," I told her. "Could you manage that many hours?"

"It's not me," she sighed. "It's my husband. He's not putting anywhere near that much time into it."

Yikes, I thought, I'd rather not get in the middle of a domestic altercation, here in line. "Some people are really efficient," I said.

"He's efficient, but he's not really job-hunting at all," said my fellow shopper.

"If he was laid off," I said, "he's been through a tough time. It takes a while to recover."

"He was laid off Thanksgiving week," said the job-seeker's wife. "He took the month of December off, and January too. I think he's applied for three jobs so far. He says none of the posted jobs are interesting. He's waiting for the perfect job."

"That's a common scenario," I said. "A job search is hard work, and it's tedious. It's easier to disqualify jobs from consideration than to apply for them. Holding out for the dream job is a typical, understandable --"

"Stalling technique?" asked the lady with the cart.

"It's normal," I said, "that, and busying oneself with household projects, like organizing the --"

"Garage?" asked my checkout-line-mate. "Yes, yes! Garage reorganization is his life, and after that, the kids' playroom. These projects are more fun than a job search. He doesn't need time management -- he needs a nudge in the right direction."

"Here's one idea for him," I said. "When the perfect job presents itself, he won't want to be scrambling to write a beautiful letter, mine his network for contacts, get his LinkedIn profile polished and generally get his ducks in a row. He should do all those things now, in the service of opportunities he could take or leave. If the dream job comes along when the job search engine is revved and running, he'll be glad. If he's going to make mistakes -- and who doesn't? -- better to make 'em on jobs he's so-so about, right?"

"That's good," she responded. "I'll share that tip with him."

"Another thing," I said, as the checker waved me forward and scanned my Soopercard. "Dream jobs are almost never advertised. The savvy job-seekers are the ones who go after not-necessarily-dreamy jobs, and then convert those jobs into great situations once they're in them. Your husband could wait forever for his dream spot to show up in a help-wanted ad. If he gets into a good company in a less-than-nirvana job, half the battle is won -- maybe more than half."

"What is that blog address, anyway?" asked the lady, and I swiped my credit card and said "PracticalJobSearchAdvice.blogspot.com" at the same time. Will the blog plus the tip get the job-search-staller off dead center? I hope so. In this job market, the quicker to action and the more tuned the job-search engine, the happier the outcome -- not to mention, the less stressful the grocery shopping.

Liz Ryan is the CEO of Ask Liz Ryan, a Boulder human-resources and career-development consulting firm. She can be reached at liz@asklizryan.com.