#Career #JobHopping #MidCareerJobSearch #JobSearchChannels #PersonalTakeaways
The spring banquets are over, which means job-hopping season is just about here
Below I'm sharing what I've pulled together from my own career and from watching people around me look for work — I hope it gives you some useful advice if you're job hunting right now.
The people around me are on average anywhere from young adults to middle-aged, and most have over 10 years of work experience, so if you're also a mid-career job seeker whose liver has seen better days, this might be worth a look.
Key takeaway:
Looking for a job is essentially a marketing campaign, except what you're marketing is no longer a product but yourself. And if you're going to market yourself, then exposure matters enormously!
After all, no matter how good a product is, if it never gets exposure, consumers won't know it exists, let alone buy it. If even great products need marketing, then ordinary products need marketing exposure all the more.
Besides scrolling through job sites while you're between jobs, what else can you be doing?
If you work for a foreign company or overseas, update your LinkedIn, and also check FB/LINE/social media industry groups — new openings show up there all the time.
If you're a high-earning professional, you can also proactively reach out to headhunters you know — that's another channel for getting yourself out there.
(A little secret: so even while you're still employed, when a headhunter approaches you, there's no need to shut the door — one more contact is one more lead you can use for a future move.)
Next comes peak socialising season — start setting up chats or meals with people in your industry.
Former bosses, former managers, former colleagues (assuming, of course, you didn't part on bad terms),
And if what you studied at school is the same field you work in, going back to your professors, reaching out to classmates, seniors and juniors are all excellent options. In short, put the word out through every channel that reaches people in your field: "I'm looking for a job." At the same time, these conversations let you pick up the latest information about what's happening in the industry.
After all, if you've been at the same company for a long time, you may have no idea what the industry looks like now — the current market conditions, what your peers are being paid, where the industry is heading. Talking with people in the same field lets you update your own intel, and with that intel you can make a much more reasonable call on what compensation to ask for, and get a clearer sense of your strengths and weaknesses.
Job hunting is a contest of information-gathering ability, and that's especially true for people in specialised professions — a lot of professional roles circulate only within the bubble.
Take my own case: my company is essentially a software outsourcing shop. If I have an opening for an experienced engineer, posting on 104 would not be my first move. I'd first ask around among colleagues, industry peers, and classmates (if I'd graduated in the field) — work through everyone I know in the engineering circle — and only if that turned up nothing would I post a job ad in industry groups.
And only if that still didn't work would I finally open a 104 listing.
The reason is actually very simple: posting on 104 costs money.
From the employer's side, if you can find someone without spending money, of course you go with the cost-saving option first.
The other reason is that when someone comes in through a referral, you can do a reference check right at the moment of referral — What are they good at? What's their work attitude like? What's their personality like? Even better if you can find out what projects they've been on and what they were responsible for. That lets you quickly assess whether they're a fit for the role and the company culture, and where they'd best be placed.
This is why people say "a lot of the good openings never make it onto job sites" (though I won't deny that job sites do still have good openings) — because once word circulates internally, the role gets taken by whoever was able to get the information.
So, again: "job hunting is a contest of information-gathering ability" (underline that).
This matters more and more the older a job seeker gets, because objectively speaking our livers, our stamina and our time can't compete with younger people's. Where we have the advantage is expertise and experience — but when the employer doesn't know you at all, it's hard for them to judge whether you really are that skilled or experienced. Having someone refer you at least means there's a person willing to vouch for you. It's not 100% reliable, but at least there's a channel for finding out more.
From my own experience, when I was younger, throwing my CV onto job sites was a reasonably effective way to find work; as you get older, you start needing people to do word-of-mouth marketing for you.
If you're an older job seeker like me, then besides scrolling job sites, open up your contacts list and the friends list on your social networks and reach out to the people you're close to — and even the ones you're not close to but who work in the same industry. Going to industry gatherings and meetups is another way to add channels to your job search.
Of course, openings come in all shades of good and bad; the above only offers ways to come into contact with more openings — whether a given role is a good one is still for the job seeker to judge.
If you want to make a move but aren't clear on the direction, or you're not good at interviews, don't know where your strengths lie, or don't know how to write a CV that markets you well, you're welcome to book a time with me for one-on-one career consulting.
Wishing everyone a new year in which you find work you can settle into.