After working with many long term unemployed job hunters, I have found that several common themes stop job hunters securing employment.
This ten step plan will help overcome these obstacles and clear the path to your new career. Long term job hunters after securing work often report that other areas in their lives improve including confidence, family relationships, stress levels, self esteem and their quality of life.
A career coach can help you move forward with your life, your career and your future.
The Ten Step Plan
- Have a Clear Career Goal: Have you ever been to the supermarket not knowing what you want to buy for tea? Do you find yourself walking down each food section without choosing a product? It is the same with job hunting if you don’t have a career goal you will find it hard to apply for vacancies no matter how many job search websites you use.
You need to find a career that you will be passionate about, a job where you will wake up wanting to go to work – if you could choose any career and there were no restrictions, what job would you want to do? If you can find a career that suits your personality traits you will be successful as your values, beliefs and identity will match the job role.
- Job Requirements: Once you have a job goal, your next step is to understand what skills, qualities and qualifications are needed for the position you will be applying for. You can easily learn this from reading job adverts, job specifications and job profiles. By recording the employer’s essential criteria on your CV, Job application and discussing how you possess these essential skills during the job interview, you will double the amount of job offers you receive.
- Where are vacancies advertised? Depending on your job sector depends where the positions you will be applying for will be advertised. As some job sectors rely heavily on job search engines, others will only advertise on their company website, while others prefer to receive speculative applications. A good starting point is the sector skills council.
- The Speculative Approach: Remember, not all jobs are advertised often due to the cost of job advertisement. We just mentioned the speculative application; I have added this as a separate bullet point as there is a 40% success rate in using speculative applications. A speculative application is when you send a speculative letter and CV asking if the employer is currently recruiting.
- Know the Industry: Become an industry expert, showing your industry and knowledge expertise on your application form and during the interview will increase your job offers, as employers often think if you understand the industry and job role you will enjoy and do well in the position.
- Believe in Yourself: As well as not having a job goal, not believing in yourself is one of the biggest barriers job hunters have. In some cases this lack of self belief has stopped people attending a job interview, even when the candidate had made it to the interview venue.
An NLP Life Coach can help you improve your confidence, for now imagine you are a confident person, how would you stand? What is your confident posture like – do it now, is you head looking up or down, what will you say to yourself. Already you are starting to feel more confident by imagining that you are confident. If you believe you can pass job interviews you will!
- Telephone Skills: I am always surprised that more job hunters have a fear of talking to employers on the telephone then they do talking to interviewers face to face. The secret to passing telephone interviews is practice, you would prepare for a face to face interview and you also need to practice for a telephone interview.
- Interview Questions: from following the above steps you now understand about becoming an industry expert and you know the essential criteria needed for the position you are applying for. From this you can confidently predict the interview questions and prepare your answers. Remember to have a list of questions to ask the employer.
- Keep A Record: It is important to keep a log of the jobs you have applied for, this way you can follow up unsuccessful applications and gain feedback from the employer. Often job hunters will gain a job interview and forget the position they have applied for which will lead to poor interview preparation. A job log will help you stay on track.
- Keep Your CV Updated:Once you have been successful with your job application, continue to update your CV with your new position, duties and any new training. This way if you are unpredictably made redundant your CV is ready to go. Often employed people who are not job hunting accidentally come across an excellent opportunity and having an up to date CV will allow you to apply for the position straight away. If your current CV does not secure you job interviews use a CV Template Package to update your current CV.
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