4 things to do when your job search isn't working

Earlier this week I posted about a worrying trend I was hearing when speaking to people who had been searching for a new role for a few months.

The response to this post was even more concerning, with maybe 100 messages in my DMs from people who were either months into unemployment or feeling trapped at jobs they hated due to the lack of suitable opportunities.

For context, I know some of these people well and they would normally be snapped up within 1-2 months & maybe with multiple offers in that time.

This isn't a collection of bad employees or Juniors trying to get their first role, these are people from well known companies who were in high demand not too long ago.

But when I speak to these people about their job search, I would say that maybe 80% of people have been applying for jobs on jobs boards and nothing else.

Here's a few suggestions on other things you can do and how to approach your job search in these tough market conditions.

Fix your Resume

I say this with a caveat; don't obsess about your resume either. I have created a template with some guided notes to help you if you're really stuck but your resume isn't the magic wand some experts make it out to be.

The main tips for your resume:

1. Make your experience clearly visible on page 1. This might be obvious to some but I can get to page 3 or 4 before I actually know where someone has worked or what their titles have been sometimes
2. Dates of tenure should include months. 2022-2023 could be 2 days or 700+ days.
3. Use keywords. For example, if you worked for Toyota you might include Automative so that you trigger search terms recruiters might look for.
4. Give specific results of your work. Let's compare these two examples from a resume: A) I recruited Software Engineers vs B) I recruited 27 Software Engineers in a 6 month span, with an average time to hire of 3 weeks and a cost per hire of < $4000 which was a 75% cost reduction on 15 less hires in the same time frame last year.
5. Ask a friend who doesn't work in your industry to read your resume and explain back to you what you do. Repeat until they are correct. The first person reading your resume is not always a subject matter expert and people also fall into the trap of writing their resume for themselves and not for the person reading who is missing a lot of context

Network

Introverts might hear "Networking" and imagine a room full of loud men in suits launching Business cards at each other like Ninja Stars. But it doesn't have to be.

IMO, the most under utilised network is your ex-colleagues. How many people have you worked with that you liked or loved working with that you just haven't spoken to in a while. Do they even know you're looking?

Reach out and have coffees, send a text, have a coffee or beer or fermented lychee kombucha with them.

And something that can really help you with your job search is to see if you can help others with theirs. Make introductions, forward jobs you see in your network to them. Favours will be returned and all of a sudden you've got a little army of people thinking about you for roles because you helped, or even just offered to help them.

Be proactive

If you see a company you want to work for, reach out to them - regardless of if they are advertising roles or not. I can't tell you how many times people will get jobs that aren't advertised or have roles created for them. There is a little bit of hustle required but I'm not asking you to wake up at 4am and go to bed a midnight, which segues into the final tip.

Manage your time

Do not spend 8 hours a day on job boards, there's much better use of your time. When I was last in my job search I spent 30-60 minutes checking job boards for new posting, applied for any that were suitable and then moved on.

Moved on to messaging people I knew. Starting side projects to learn some new skills (I might have a podcast mic to sell if anyone is interested ??) and then also some time away from the job search.

There's only so much of this you can control so be smarter with your time and take some breaks.

It can be a mental slog going through this, not hearing back or being rejected for roles you know you can do so sometimes the best think you can do it step away from it for a few hours or a few days.