5 Job Hunting Tips If You Can’t Do Another Year At Your Job
It takes roughly five months, from start to finish, to get a new job.
So, if you’re serious about pursuing a new role or getting your foot in the door in a new industry in 2023, you need to start getting organised now.
Here’s how to go about it.
1. Do your research
Salary still tops the polls when it comes to what workers want—research conducted by Indeed and Glassdoor using a database of millions of employee reviews and salaries globally found that higher pay is still the primary reason people move jobs—but benefits and values are also huge drivers.
If you feel like the company you’re currently working for doesn’t offer you the right health or parental benefits like insurance or maternity leave or it falls short on its diversity and inclusion (D&I) or ESG (environmental, social and governance) policies, or lack thereof, you can usually access annual company reports online and identify what the company really stands for on the topics above.
For example, Google and Monzo publish annual diversity reports, Klarna details its sustainability aims on its company website and ITV has established a reputation of working towards disability inclusion thanks to its internal policies and its partnering with disability equality charity, Scope, to promote understanding of invisible disabilities in the workplace.
2. Craft your cover letter and CV
When job hunting, sending the same CV to every potential employer simply won’t cut it for a number of reasons. For starters, it’s essential to create individual applications based on the job description of the role you’re applying for.
Not only will this help your skills and experience stand out and impress the hiring manager who has been tasked with sifting through the hundreds of applications in their inbox, it will also help you beat the applicant tracking system (ATS) bots (99% of Fortune 500 Companies are believed to use this kind of software to filter applicants).
And don’t skimp on your cover letter either—according to Jobbio’s Hiring Intelligence Report 2022, 46% of hiring managers say a well-crafted cover letter immediately sets an applicant apart from the competition.
A recent survey by ResumeGo backs this up: applications with a custom-tailored cover letter have a 50% better chance of securing an interview over those that don’t have a cover letter or have opted for a generic cover letter than doesn’t reference the specifics of the job at hand.
3. Marie Kondo your professional particulars
While setting up a colour-coded spreadsheet might not immediately spark joy, keeping all of your essential documents like a master CV and cover letter along with prepared answers to some of the most common interview questions in one place will immediately help you feel more organised.
Keeping everything safely stored in an online drive is the best way to do this or why not go one step further and keep a record of every job you’ve applied for, including details of the application process, who the hiring manager is, and the stage of the interview process you’re at. You can also insert company details (gleaned from the research you’ve already done, see points one above) so you have them to hand ahead of an interview, saving you even more time. Win-win!
4. Give your socials a spring clean
Yes, your Instagram might be set to private and you possibly haven’t logged into Facebook since the dawn of the decade, but ensuring your professional online presence is up to date is essential.
When reviewing candidates, recruiters will usually cross-reference your LinkedIn profile as the first port of call before considering you for a role. This gives you the perfect opportunity to ensure even more information about why you’re such a stand-out candidate reaches them, so share any relevant work achievements, update your skills and don’t be shy about hyping up ways you positively contributed to your workplace.
5. Capitalise on your network
The era of Zoom coffee mornings is thankfully over, and in-person networking events are expected to return to pre-pandemic levels once more in 2023. If you caught up with your professional peers over the festive period or attended any new networking events in 2022, now is the time to reconnect and get a face-to-face coffee in the diary.
While these kinds of meetings aren’t job interviews and shouldn’t be treated as such, informal meetings are a great way to stay in the loop about what is going on in your industry and also voice your intent that you’re looking to make a move in 2023. In fact, data compiled by TechJury found that 95% of professionals find better business relationships are built through face-to-face meetings.