Top 7 tips to get job search ready

Over Christmas and into the New Year, many of you will be thinking about setting New Year’s resolutions and re-evaluating your goals. This often leads to people dusting off their CV’s and contemplating a job change.

You might be dreading going back to your current job after time off over Christmas, or you’ve got itchy feet.

Here are our 7 top tips and advice to get ‘job search ready’:

1. Clean up your social media

If you’re going to be applying for new jobs, your prospective employers, and for that matter, your recruiter, will no doubt tap your name into Google/Facebook/LinkedIn etc before they arrange a meeting with you. You need what they find to say all the right things about you as a person. Don’t get discounted because of a dodgy photo or comment – this could include things you have reviewed or places you have checked into. We’re all entitled to a private life but it is good practice to have a look at your whole online profile and delete or hide anything that isn’t showing you in the best light.

2. Update your CV

Get your CV updated and ask your close friends and family to review it for you. You need to keep it short and to the point. The person you are sending it to might have a whole pile of CV’s to read through and yours needs to be memorable and not switch them off with too much detail. Also, carefully think about your personal statement. This is the main thing a reciting manager will read through. If it’s cold and full of buzz words it won’t actually tell them anything useful about you as a person. It needs to introduce you, what you do, your key skills, what you’re looking for and why. Allow your reader to warm to you.

3. Really think about what you want

You need to be honest about your skills and where you are in your career and then decide what it is you are looking for. Also, think about the location or area you are prepared to travel within, the salary you are looking for and what type of employer you’d like. This will all help to tailor your search and will massively help a recruiter to find you the right roles.

4. Be selective about what you apply for

Getting your CV out to every man and his dog is the approach a lot of people take when first kicking off their job search. What can happen though is that you won’t hear back from the majority of applications or you’ll get a lot of rejections because the roles were not quite right. You might think this is fine because you were chancing your arm, but what will actually happen is that the rejections will dampen your spirits. This is not what you want. Resist the temptation and only apply for roles you want and think you could actually be a good candidate for.

5. Have multiple CV’s ready to send

You might have one main vision for your next job but that might include a few different industries, locations or disciplines. You will need a different CV for each of them. This means tailoring your personal statement and pulling out different elements in your job history. It happens a lot that people use one version of their CV saying they are looking for a certain type of job, but they send it to a business that doesn’t fit with the profile and they get immediately discounted.

6. Practice, practice, practice

The only way to really prepare for any future interviews or recruiter registrations is to practice and get used to talking about your achievements succinctly out loud. Get your friends and family to quiz you about your current job, previous jobs, why you want to leave, times when you did x, y and z. When you are in the car on your own, interview yourself. It might sound silly but it will really help get your facts straight and enable you to sell yourself.

7. Register with a recruiter

We would say this wouldn’t we, but it is a great help when you’re looking for a new job. A good recruitment business won’t just try and match you with their current roles, they will help to coach you, look for businesses that would be great for you and really get you ready for interviews. Looking for a new job can be very time consuming so having a partner on your side can also save you a lot of time and effort.

Then you’re ready. It might sound like there is a lot to do but it won’t take long once you get going. And if you are ready for a new challenge, it’ll be an exciting process. Start your job search now or you can send us your CV by registering on our website or email us at [email protected]