Career
Get The Job
Seven job search tips
for tough times
u DESPITE THE FACT that the unemployment rate has dropped
from 6.2 per cent to 5.8 per cent between February 2015 and February
2016, many people are still having difficulty finding a job. This struggle
can be significantly attributed to people utilising a generic and common
job search method such as the newspaper, or sites including Seek and
JobsJobsJobs. When you use these traditional approaches, you can be
competing with thousands of other people, so why would you want
to adopt a method which almost guarantees that the odds are stacked
against you?
To ensure you maximise your job opportunities, I have included seven
stand-out job search tips that you can implement now.
1) Figure out exactly what job/career you want. Before you even start
the job search process, you should have a clear picture of what you
want to achieve. For example, what is the specific job title you are looking for? What will you be doing in this role? This first step is crucial
because if you don’t know what you are looking for, you will never
know where to look.
2) Define your employer avatar. Just like business owners need to work
out their ideal audience/target market, you need to define your ideal
employer. Go into as much detail as possible including what their organisational values are, what their main concerns are, and the kinds of
people they prefer to hire, and consider whether your values, strengths
and skills align with their own. I would do a search of companies in your
local area that match the job/role you are interested in and create a
shortlist of ones to target.
3) Treat your job search like a full-time job. When clients come to me
looking for job search coaching, I always ask how much time they have
put into their job search over the past week, and unfortunately, the
response is usually minimal. If you are not working full time, then you
should be dedicating your time to your job search. If you are working full
time and wanting a new opportunity, you need to schedule at least seven hours a week to this task. I know many people who are working full
time and want a change, however, they continue to make excuses as to
why they don’t have the time, which only impacts them in the long run.
4) Only target the people responsible for hiring. Too many people waste
their time talking to people who I like to call The Gatekeeper, which is
usually a receptionist who takes your call but who is not responsible for
To help you out further, we have created FREE trials to
selected units for our online career development courses,
which can be accessed here.
http://bit.ly/KillerMindset
http://bit.ly/UncoverTrueCareerNeeds
http://bit.ly/CareerStrengthsAndSkills
14
www.smpmagazine.com.au | Autumn 2016
By Paul Ames,
Managing Director,
Skyes the Limit
Career Counselling
hiring. Where possible, always call and ask to speak to a HR manager or
person responsible for hiring.
One big thing that many people do, which rarely produces results, is
adding your resume to an online database. The reason it rarely produces
results is because people hire other people, not data about their perfect
qualifications.
5) View yourself as a valuable commodity. So many people are afraid
of really selling themselves to prospective employers for fear of looking
arrogant or cocky, but you need to be able to express confidently why
you are the most suitable applicant. A big part of this is writing an effective, targeted resume, which communicates to employers that ‘If you
invest in me, I will be an asset to your company’. Employers really want
to know that they are going to get a return on their investment if they
hire you and that’s why selling yourself is so important.
6) Record your daily actions and progress. A big killer of motivation and
drive in the job search process is not seeing any tangible progress or results. This is why I encourage my clients to create a log of their daily job
search actions to measure progress. To do this, I want you to write three
separate columns for date, action, and result. By recording the specific
action you have taken and what the result was, you start to notice small
personal wins, which in turn, motivates you to achieve more.
7) Follow up on applications. Unfortunately, 90 per cent of people never
follow up on job applications or job interviews. This can be to your detriment as it is the perfect way to grow, develop and perfect your job application for future opportunities. To effectively ask for feedback, I would
contact the hiring manager and say, ‘even though I am disappointed to
not obtain a position with you, I would love to grow, develop and refine
my application for any future positions that may arise within the organisation. I would greatly value some honest and accurate feedback on my
resume, cover letter and interview’.