How to find a good new job

This advice on how to find a new job will help you get back into good employment fast in spite of the awful state of the jobs market.

Be warned – the advice given by Job Centre staff on how to find a new job doesn’t work that well (especially if you’re after professional jobs). Job Centres’ guidance on how to find a new job will have you scurrying after every vacancy, regardless of its suitability and the chances of you being offered the job, just to prove you’re genuinely looking for work. This approach to job search infuriates employers and wastes job hunters’ time and energy.
You’re better off developing your own strategies to find a new job, then persuading your Job Centre advisor to let you try them.

The best way to find a new job is to do a little hard thinking plus basic research and a bit of project management planning.
You find a new job by researching your job market and the right niche for you within it. Go online, tap in [your job title] jobs. Do a broad UK wide search first, just to get a feel for the jobs market, then narrow it down to the locations you’d consider working at. Do you see a reasonable number of vacancies offering salaries you’d find acceptable? If not, you need to track down a more promising career path rather than simply find a new job.

There’s a reasonable number of jobs at the right level – are you a good candidate for them? If there’s a shortfall in your skills and qualifications that hampers your job hunting, the “find a new job” project must include discovering how you top them up at least cost to you.

As you go through all the UK jobs advertised online, take notes of the exact words employers use to describe their jobs and what they want from applicants. You find a new job by giving recruiters the “messages” they want to hear about you, in the words they themselves use.

Now think about project managing your “find a new job” programme on your PC. Set out on your work plan / electronic diary each job hunting task (eg “use Tuesdays for networking activities”, together with the results you expect to achieve from them (eg “Tue wk 1 -make 1st approach to 5 contacts on networking database, aiming to achieve at least 2 useful pieces of job market information / further contacts”). Regularly monitor whether what you do to find a new job is producing the results you’d hoped for.

Don’t forget to reward yourself (quickly and often, lots of small rewards) for all the hard work you’re putting into your campaign to find a new job. Job hunting is draining, demoralising and thoroughly awful. A bit of spoiling does wonders in restoring your energy levels and helping you stick to the task unfazed by reject letters and other disappointments.

Authored by Guest Blogger

Linda Whittern, Director of Careers Partnership (UK).