Job seeking can be stressful, even for the most organised person in the world, so it’s really important to have a plan in place for when you sit down at your computer with a huge mug of coffee ready to take on the daunting world of job applications.
With so many jobs on the market, and so many ways of discovering them, coming up with an easy way of accessing the most relevant jobs to you will save you hours of time and ensure that you don’t miss out on the perfect role.
Here are my top tips on how to create the perfect job seeking strategy and land that dream job.
1) Set Up Job Alerts
A great way of accessing the most relevant jobs to you is to set up job alerts on niche boards such as Bubble Jobs (shameless plug!). This will save you lots of time as you can set up a job seeker account, choose the industry, seniority and location of your desired career and you’ll get an email every time a relevant role comes up on the site. Easy!
If you’re not sure of the exact role that you want, you can set up more than one job alert until you find the perfect job for you.
2) Google Alerts
Another way of discovering great jobs is to set up a Google Alert. All you have to do is sign up for alerts with relevant keywords like “digital marketing jobs Manchester” or “social media jobs London”, and every time that phrase is mentioned in a blog or news article, you’ll get an email with a link.
This is a great way to discover jobs that haven’t necessarily been advertised on the big jobs boards or on social media. It’s also perfect to keep up to date with the jobs market in your industry. Alternatively, a similar – and sometimes better – web monitoring tool is Talkwalker Alerts, which works in pretty much the same way as Google Alerts.
3) Job Search Engines
Don’t fancy checking out all of the job boards, recruiters and direct employers and just want to find all of the jobs in one place? Well, you can!
Job search engines/aggregators like Indeed collate vacancies from across the web and pull them together on their own site, giving job seekers a simple way of finding new jobs across multiple industries. You can also sign up for job alerts on these type of sites by putting in keywords and locations.
Another perk of these sites is that, instead of having to create another account, you just get redirected to the jobs boards that the job was originally posted on.
4) Social Media
It should go without saying by now that social media is a great way to discover vacancies as well as build relationships with key decision makers at companies you would love to work for.
The possibilities are endless when it comes to social media, but a good place to start is to follow all of the relevant jobs boards, the direct employer career accounts and recruiters across all social media platforms.
Once you have connected with everyone, make sure you don’t miss out on vacancies when you’re offline. This can be done by setting up Twitter lists to check regularly, or even by setting up notifications of your favourite accounts so you are notified every time they tweet.
(Side note: In terms of getting yourself out there, make sure you contribute to Twitter chats, LinkedIn groups and Google+ Communities to ensure that you’re always going to be seen by those key decision makers.)
5) Dedicate Time
When you’re unemployed, one of the worst things about job seeking is that it takes up a lot of your time, but you’ve got to make sure you free up some time for yourself to make sure you don’t go crazy or burn yourself out!
Schedule in two or three hours each day to dedicate to searching and applying for jobs, as well as networking with hiring managers and people in the industry on social media.
8) Have a Positive Mindset
Finally, one of the most important parts of your job seeking strategy is to make sure that you have a positive mindset when applying for jobs.
Don’t get disheartened when you receive the umpteenth rejection email, or don’t hear anything at all. It’s important to always be looking forward. By all means seek feedback from unsuccessful applications, but never let rejection get you down. You will find your perfect job eventually – promise!
So there we go, some helpful tips on how to create the perfect jobseeking strategy,
Do you have any other nuggets of wisdom to share with job seekers? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @BubbleJobs! :)