Disclaimer: This is a story I wrote back May 2022 when I lost my job when the COVID pandemic began. You may have already read it on my LinkedIn profile. I am adding it here as a test article while I get this blog up and running. (I can’t write and build at the same time… left brain vs right brain!)
I’ve had a lot of very positive feedback over the past few days about the great role I have just landed with a fantastic company? (Back in 2022, remember.)
Everyone wonders how I did it?
What was the magic sauce I used? How did I find a job, any job let alone such a great one, during such a desperate time?
So in the interests of sharing, here is what I did.
(Warning: long article, so read at the peril of your time!)
1. Recruiters are human, not miracle workers!
Over the past three months, I have spoken to at least a dozen recruiters to get a feel for the market and to try to pick their brains about how bad, good, or just plain silly, job hunting can be.
Their advice has been as varied as the seasons in Melbourne with their prognosis as prescient as a weather forecast on even the most predictable of days:
“Yes, the market is down, and it’s going to get worse.”
“No, it’s not that bad, things have to pick up”
“It’s not looking too good for people like you at the moment”.
“It can’t last forever, can it?”
These are some of the take-away discussions I had with recruiters as I tried to “gauge the market”. But how can anyone gauge anything at the moment? We’re in the middle of a pandemic that no one alive has ever experienced. All bets are off.
Most us are not even sure we can make it to the supermarket and back without risking our lives, so anyone who thinks they can predict the employment market is probably living off baked beans in a bunker in their backyard, and I’m not sure I’d trust their advice at the best of times, let alone during Armageddon.
Despite their best intentions, the recruiters don’t really know. No one really knows. So forget the crystal ball. And stop expecting a recruiter, or anyone else, to solve your dilemma. It’s up to you!
2. So skill up!
It’s a pandemic, you can’t leave home, you don’t have a job, your kids should be settled into homeschooling by now, so what are you waiting for?
I work in IT and IT is constantly changing. New technologies are breaking all the time. Old skills fall by the wayside. You need to stay current.
For me, it was a Masters of Data Science focussing on Strategy and Leadership. No, I don’t want to be a data scientist: I’ll leave that to the much smarter and more focussed grads streaming out of university faster than a Bayesian algorithm.
But I do want to be involved in this next big wave, and use my 20-odd years of IT experience to manage a data project or even a data practice.
To do that, I need to skill up, learn the fundamentals of Data Science, and take it from there. I’m only on my third unit, but already I’m way ahead of many of my peers whether it was the mean, median, or mode that made them an average jobseeker?
Every company I know either has an analytics/data project on the go, or on the horizon. And they all need people to help them make heads and tails of it all.
And no, the Masters didn’t land me my new job, but it certainly came up in the interview.
More than that, it proved that I was not sitting around gazing at my navel and was willing to get out there and keep myself current.
That’s a huge plus at any time, but even more so when things go south as they have recently.
3. Give your Resume some CPR
I’ve written elsewhere about this, so keep it short here.
Your resume is your professional face to the world. Make it interesting, put some life into it, and tell your story.
If an employer doesn’t want to hear it, then do you really want to work for them?
(All my interviewers at my new company read my resume end-to-end and used some of the buried detail to liven up the interviews. This is a company I want to work for!)
4. Focus your efforts: no flame-throwing
I’ve heard of one person applying for 600 jobs in 3 months!
Do the maths: that’s about 10 jobs per weekday, every day for three months. Or one job every hour even assuming a long day.
I touch type about 30 to 50 words/minute, and even then it takes me about 40 minutes to punch out a first draft cover letter.
It takes about twice as long to correct it the letter, and then tweak my resume, and probably another hour to address any specific job criteria.
Then a bit longer to proofread it, push it through Jobscan (see my other article about this), and then Grammarly to double-check it.
By now I’m topping 3 hours, and that’s not counting the hour or so it took me to find the role on Seek or LinkedIn in the first place.
So anyone who is applying for 10 jobs a day is just flame-throwing their resume at anything vaguely relevant on the web.
And like all good flamethrowers, they burn any chance they have with a generic resume, and at best a two-sentence application (most likely a “plea” – see below) to be considered for the role on offer.
Conversely, with so many people on the job market, now is the time you really need to hone in on the right job to match your skillset.
You need to spend the time to sift through the thousands of misnamed, and incorrectly advertised jobs, to find the one or two that are posted each day that actually match your resume.
You need to be a 99% fit for the role. Not just in the top 20% or even top 5%, but in the top 1% match to the role.
That takes time. Don’t rush it, don’t just go for any job no matter how ill-fitting. This is your career at stake.
5. Stick to your guns: but forget the shotgun!
So focus your efforts, but stick to your guns.
By that I mean, don’t sell yourself short.
Don’t go for a job well below your level of experience because you probably won’t get it anyway (who would employ someone who will walk as soon as the market picks up) and will be bored very quickly.
And as with the flamethrower, don’t just apply for any and every job that you have done in the past 10 years.
You have built a career that tells a story: why go back two chapters? It’s only a pandemic for heaven’s sake. The sky has not fallen in nor has the job market.
You might be out of work for a little longer this time, but if you go back two steps now, how long will it take you to make up that ground?
6. Networking: the water cooler has COVID, so use LinkedIn!
Okay. So you’ve spoken to 5 recruiters this week, you’ve sent your resume to the Mardi Gras for a facelift, you are only applying for three jobs a day, and you have promised to ignore at least two of those that make you look like a desperate grad again.
Now what?
Its 2.30 in the afternoon and your kids won’t let you near the Xbox now that homeschooling is over for the day.
And you can’t really walk the dog again, besides its raining again. (C’mon, it’s always raining in Melbourne, so yeah, the 3rd dog walk for the day can wait).
But you still haven’t heard anything… not a whisper out of the recruiters, not a ping from an employer. Wonder why?
You need to give your LinkedIn profile a boot up the proverbial.
Linked In is like any social network. It feeds off activity. No activity, no action.
When was the last time you posted something?
Anything?
So you wonder why no one is calling?
And I don’t just mean “Liking” something.
Just like Facebook, we all love it when our friends comment on our latest home renovating disaster or cooking flop as it gives us something to respond to and start a virtual chat. A “like” is just that… okay, I’ve seen you but have nothing to add.
Your LinkedIn profile is exactly the same. Feed it properly and it will respond.
I subscribe to Linked In Premium (free plug here @LinkedIn,… so how about a discount next month?) so can watch the “Who viewed (my) profile” line graph, and I can see the numbers jump each time I post something.
See the graph below…the first two peaks are when I posted earlier articles, the third when I changed my status due to my new job.
Everything before June 29 was BMLIRU: Before My LinkedIn Rev Up. That August 10 dip was when I was too busy with interviews (and my birthday as well!).
So you can see the activity. You post, you get viewed, people remember you, you get a job. Simples really!
You might think who cares? Well, recruiters do and your network does.
I’ve had a least half a dozen contacts reach out to me with unadvertised jobs that they had heard on the grapevine, and they did so primarily because my LI profile was bouncing up and down in their feed.
You need to be ACTIVE to get NOTICED!
7. Don’t do Desperado
Finally, one last piece of advice.
Don’t plead!
I’ve seen a few LI posts from people explaining how they lost their job due to COVID (so did thousands of others), explaining how skilled they are (so are thousands of others), and then pleading for a job because they are so special (so are thousands of … you get the drift).
Pleading is NOT a good look. It never is, never was, and never will be.
Pleading has even less chance of working when thousands of others are in the same boat: a boat that the very people you are pleading to might soon be in as well, so keep the desperados at bay.
8. Takeaways
So to sum this all up:
- Talk to recruiters, but don’t expect them to solve world peace.
- Learn something new, or at least do some online training (LinkedIn has a stack of courses that are added automatically to your profile when you finish them – another plug for you LI. Do I get my discount now? LOL).
- Blow up your resume, and start again by telling your story. See my other article on this.
- Ditch the flamethrower, you’ll only burn your time.
- Ditto for the shotgun, scatter gun always makes a mess.
- Activate your LI profile, you need to be heard to be seen.
- But don’t sound desperate…. Only you can pick yourself up!
And yes, I did all this and more (homeschooling, walked the dog, kept fit, etc, etc). For me, it was only natural to keep myself busy.
It wasn’t that hard. I just do what I always did.
I worked it: I worked it hard, and I worked it smart.
I tried different approaches and changed my tack when needed.
I bent and swayed as I twisted and turned to match the flexing market
In the end, I landed an amazing job, with some super clever and super dynamic people in a company that is changing the world.
All that work paid off. And I couldn’t be happier!
9. Message to all recruiters: help yourselves!
To all my friends and the many recruiters I have spoken to, feel free to use this article as you wish.
Repost it, re-edit it as you see fit, pass it on to anyone who might benefit. I am not precious about and if it helps someone find that perfect role, then I have done my bit of paying it forward for today!
