Your job seeking experiences
Discussion
I thought it may help a few of you job seekers to post some advice based on my experience of looking for a new job. I was looking for a mid level marketing job and so some of this may/may not apply if you are in specialist/very junior or very senior roles.
1. Expect nothing, it sounds a little dramatic but if you expect every call from a recruitment consultant or job you apply for to result in anything at all you won’t last long! Every call I took from a rec consultant involved me being enthusiastic and positive, putting the phone down at the end of the conversation and forgetting about it. It really is a case of ‘1 in 100’ go further (we for me anyway). It’s the same for job applications too. This also, unbelievably can apply to roles you’ve actually interviewed for!
2. Get your CV on every job website you can, from all the main national ones to local ones (do a search for ‘Recruitment agency <your local towns> to find more). Reupload your CV every few weeks as recruitment consultants like to see CVs that show people are looking now.
3. You’ll be bombarded with job alerts from the sites! Spend no more than an hour a day applying otherwise it’ll grind you down (IMO).
4. Get up at ‘work time’ every day, even if there’s not much to do, don’t start lying in, it’ll kill you when you do get a job!
5. CV content – I had over 25 variations of CV as I constantly improved it. Get people on here to help and take advantage of free CV reviews. My CV was far stronger by version 20!
6. Don’t forget LinkedIn and even Gumtree for jobs.
7. Recruitment consultants you meet will remember you better and you have better chance of being considered for new roles they have.
8. Go on to Monster or similar and make sure you have good answers to all the main questions they could throw at you. I had a sheet of the main questions and my answers which I read through before interviews.
9. Use LI to view the profiles of the people who are interviewing you.
10. Send them a ‘thank you for your time etc’ email afterwards (because other candidates won’t).
11. Think carefully about what they want, not what you have done.
12. There will be points when you wonder if you’re employable! You are, lots of people go through this.
13. You can be lucky and get the first job that comes up but it could take months. Be prepared for this.
14. Companies frequently ‘pull’ jobs in the middle of the recruitment process, this happened to me 3 times and rec consultants said it’s far from uncommon.
15. Don’t undersell yourself, this can lead to interviews where companies just see you as over qualified, wasting everyone’s time.
Feel free to add your advice below…
1. Expect nothing, it sounds a little dramatic but if you expect every call from a recruitment consultant or job you apply for to result in anything at all you won’t last long! Every call I took from a rec consultant involved me being enthusiastic and positive, putting the phone down at the end of the conversation and forgetting about it. It really is a case of ‘1 in 100’ go further (we for me anyway). It’s the same for job applications too. This also, unbelievably can apply to roles you’ve actually interviewed for!
2. Get your CV on every job website you can, from all the main national ones to local ones (do a search for ‘Recruitment agency <your local towns> to find more). Reupload your CV every few weeks as recruitment consultants like to see CVs that show people are looking now.
3. You’ll be bombarded with job alerts from the sites! Spend no more than an hour a day applying otherwise it’ll grind you down (IMO).
4. Get up at ‘work time’ every day, even if there’s not much to do, don’t start lying in, it’ll kill you when you do get a job!
5. CV content – I had over 25 variations of CV as I constantly improved it. Get people on here to help and take advantage of free CV reviews. My CV was far stronger by version 20!
6. Don’t forget LinkedIn and even Gumtree for jobs.
7. Recruitment consultants you meet will remember you better and you have better chance of being considered for new roles they have.
8. Go on to Monster or similar and make sure you have good answers to all the main questions they could throw at you. I had a sheet of the main questions and my answers which I read through before interviews.
9. Use LI to view the profiles of the people who are interviewing you.
10. Send them a ‘thank you for your time etc’ email afterwards (because other candidates won’t).
11. Think carefully about what they want, not what you have done.
12. There will be points when you wonder if you’re employable! You are, lots of people go through this.
13. You can be lucky and get the first job that comes up but it could take months. Be prepared for this.
14. Companies frequently ‘pull’ jobs in the middle of the recruitment process, this happened to me 3 times and rec consultants said it’s far from uncommon.
15. Don’t undersell yourself, this can lead to interviews where companies just see you as over qualified, wasting everyone’s time.
Feel free to add your advice below…
Nice initiative, but I think it lacks context. Are you giving advice to someone applying to be a white van driver, or a nuclear fusion technician specialising on a very particular model of reactor? I'm sure you'll agree there's some difference in the process...
Some of this advice I agree with, other clauses not so much, but the bottom line is there are differences depending on the person, skill level and job in question. Best thing we can do IMO is know our worth and always put some money away for a rainy day when employed. The rest is mostly down to social skills I find, as this seems to be the deciding factor more often than one's CV.
Some of this advice I agree with, other clauses not so much, but the bottom line is there are differences depending on the person, skill level and job in question. Best thing we can do IMO is know our worth and always put some money away for a rainy day when employed. The rest is mostly down to social skills I find, as this seems to be the deciding factor more often than one's CV.
Derish said:
Nice initiative, but I think it lacks context. Are you giving advice to someone applying to be a white van driver, or a nuclear fusion technician specialising on a very particular model of reactor? I'm sure you'll agree there's some difference in the process...
but, in the first post...Undirection said:
I was looking for a mid level marketing job and so some of this may/may not apply if you are in specialist/very junior or very senior roles.
From October 2014 to September 2015 I was out of a steady job. I didn't put in that many applications because I wanted specific jobs and wasn't willing to settle for a crap one. To keep funds rolling in I did a zero hour contract job for 6 months but that work soon dried up. I found it challenging getting replies and I was a bit down about the situation. I decided that it was in my best interest to tell a white lie on my cv. I know quite a lot about cars so I claimed that from October 2014 to August 2015 that I worked for a small car dealership that had went bust. I then started circulating this CV out and all of a sudden I had 6 interviews lined up in the space of a fortnight. I went to all 6 of these and was offered 2 of the roles. I accepted one which is still my current position to this day and I have just been kept on. It has all worked out well for me and I have no regrets.
What I learned through this experience:
- Do plenty of research and convince the employer why your skills would benefit the company
- If you have an employment gap stretch dates and if need be make up a job to pull the gap. Be careful when doing this and make sure that you know what you are talking about when questioned about it.
- Recruitment agencies are a waste of time. Only apply direct to employers and you will be fine.
- Dobt lose motivation and look after yourself during your unemployment spell. I kind of treated mine like a gap year
-
What I learned through this experience:
- Do plenty of research and convince the employer why your skills would benefit the company
- If you have an employment gap stretch dates and if need be make up a job to pull the gap. Be careful when doing this and make sure that you know what you are talking about when questioned about it.
- Recruitment agencies are a waste of time. Only apply direct to employers and you will be fine.
- Dobt lose motivation and look after yourself during your unemployment spell. I kind of treated mine like a gap year
-
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