Job searching can be a real challenge in the best of times. With a recession in the forecast for 2023, job hunters may face even more challenges than in normal times. It may mean more competition for fewer positions in the year ahead. While some jobs will be more plentiful than others and people with certain skill sets will always have advantages, it still makes sense for anyone on the hunt to develop an effetive strategy.
Whether you’ve conducted a job search in recent years, it’s been a while since you were on the job hunt, or if you’re brand new to the workforce, we wanted to provide some tips to help your search to go more quickly and end successfully.
Tap Into your Network
If there is one strategy to focus on when it comes to conducting a successful job search, it would be hard to argue against networking. Tapping into your personal or professional contacts is a proven strategy for having more success in your search. Over time, we all meet people in our personal lives or careers, and those people know other people, etc. When it comes to getting an introduction to a company for a possible role, which would you rather pursue:
1 – Submit your resume through a job search engine or email it to the company’s HR department.
2 – Getting an introduction to the hiring manager through a connection in your network.
I can’t think of any scenario where option #2 isn’t the obvious choice. Getting an introduction to someone at the company you are exploring is certainly no guarantee of obtaining a job offer. However, you get to skip the first and often most challenging part of the job search process, getting your resume noticed by the hiring manager. In many companies, HR departments receive an excessive number of resumes and applications for every open position, especially desirable ones. So, one of their first jobs is simply to widdle that pile down by excluding as many resumes as possible. It’s a numbers game. Tapping into your network may allow you to skip this step and at least have your resume in the list that is shown to the hiring manager.
You may think that networking works best for people who have been in their career for a while, and you aren’t wrong. Over time, people naturally build their networks and if you put effort into it, you can build a very large network during your career. However, if you are newer in your professional career, don’t think this means that networking can’t work for you. Your network may be smaller to start, but you likely still have one. Look to family, friends, classmates, teachers/professors, etc. Your network will evolve over time, but chances are you have one already and just never thought of it from this perspective.
Online job boards
Just because we think networking is the best initial strategy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look at other avenues as well. One big challenge is simply discovering what jobs are available. This is where online job boards can be extremely helpful. Instead of having to go to every company website and look through open positions, you can leverage various online job boards that aggregate information about job opportunities from potentially thousands of companies.
This makes searching for open positions so much less time-consuming and will help you identify companies that you might not have even considered previously. Basically, it’s taken what used to be an incredibly manual process and make it simple, and automated
While the capabilities of various job boards vary, running basic searches for keywords is standard and many boards allow you to create automated searches and notifications when jobs meeting your search criteria come up.
In fact, online job boards are a perfect complement to networking activities as you can identify open positions on a job board and then tap into your network to see if you are connected to anyone at the company who can help you get an introduction. Using these two strategies together can be a powerful combination in helping your job search have a great outcome.
Recruiters
Many businesses turn to recruiting firms to fill their open positions. Depending on the industry you are looking at or the level of position you hope to find, working with a recruiter or headhunter might be quite beneficial for your job search. Typically (but not always) larger companies are more likely to make use of an outside recruiting firm and it is most likely it will be used for positions at the manager or more likely director level and above.
So, how do you take advantage of recruiters in your job search? While recruiting firms are hired by companies, they also work to build pools of potential candidates. So, recruiters often like to meet professionals in various stages of their careers, whether they are currently searching for a job or not. Successful recruiters may have relationships with some candidates for many years, helping them find positions at different companies over the course of their careers.
First, you may want to tap into your network to identify successful recruiters in your industry. If you’ve been in a career for a while, you might be surprised to learn you are already connected to a few on places like LinkedIn. Once you identify some recruiters, it’s time to reach out and connect. Some will take a more personal approach and others will simply have you submit a resume with some job search goals. From there, you may end up having a phone or video conversation with the recruiter to discuss open positions they may be working on.
While working with a recruiter probably isn’t a great option as your only job search strategy, as part of a more holistic search process, they can be very beneficial.
Try a combination of these job search strategies and you just may find the job you’re looking for in record time!
