Have you outgrown your job and feel ready to shake things up? Has the pandemic disrupted your stability? Or are you the fresh college graduate, ready to take on the world ?
Whoever you are, searching for a job can feel overwhelming. But there are some things we can do to make it less daunting. To begin with, give yourself time, atleast 3-6 months, while you set the foundation and prepare for an opportunity.
“Careers are one of the most beautiful things you can build in your life. A career is not a job, or even a series of jobs. A career is an accumulation of experiences and skills. You can judge its success by how you feel in it. Its something you get to build, and if you ignore it, it gets built for you.
– Kerri Twigg
Whether you are looking for a job or not, its always best to be aware of where you currently stand in terms of your skill set, the value you bring to your industry, and a resume that tells a compelling story.
This is a long post. Please feel free to jump to any of the following sections you are interested in. I won’t mind 🙂
1. Assess your skillset.
If you are new to the job search melodrama, this is where you begin.
Think about what you do on a day-to-day basis. In your current role, in your previous jobs, in any volunteering roles. You have your core competency – the hard skill that is absolutely required to do you current job, and then you have the peripheral skills that you picked up to do your job. You can read more about the skill categories here.
Pay attention to the different ways you are contributing to your team and organization, in whatever capacity. Make a list of your skills and categorize them.
To give you an example, my core skill was mainframe development, but while I did coding, I was also managing my clients, leading a team, collaborating with vendors and different departmental stakeholders. I also participated in roadmap building and hiring among many other things.
So my acquired skills looked like this – cloud computing, vendor management, project management, stakeholder management, business analysis, customer management, budgeting, ROI analysis etc.
This is an important step because it will directly feed into your resume building. This exercise also allows you to check the lay of the land and imagine all the possible directions you can go from here, especially if you are feeling a wee bit brave 🙂
DO’s
- List out your core skills along with the functional, transferable skills.
- Get feedback from your peers and managers without giving away that you are looking for a job 😉
- Have a most up-to-date Linkedin profile
- Congratulate yourself. You have taken your first step.
DON’Ts
- Do not box yourself based on what you currently do.
- No, don’t rest yet.
2. Explore job options, but leave the title behind
Once you assess your skill set, now is the time to make a list of possible job options.
Its important to not box yourself in a title, based on what you currently do. Many a times, different companies have different titles for the same responsibilities. Other times, with a little bit of training, you could be hired to do a slightly different job. So it’s important to not get attached to titles and keep an open mind when looking for opportunities.
Here are some steps you can take when shortlisting open positions that you may want to apply.
- The easiest way to find openings is to reach out to your friends and network.
- Select 4 – 5 companies that you aspire to work for, based on your goals(industry, location etc) and presence of contacts (referral opportunities). Having contacts who work there can be very beneficial and I will talk more about it in the upcoming sections.
- Most companies have a presence on Linkedin. Filter jobs by the company name and skim through all of open positions to figure out the most suitable openings for your skill set. Keep the search criteria as broad as possible.
- Repeat the above step for every company you shortlisted and come up with a set of suitable roles for yourself.
For example, for my skill set and interests, I narrowed down the positions to Service delivery lead, mainframe modernization architect, Technical project manager, Technical program manager, Technical business developer and the like. I never held any of these titles before. And I had no idea that a job called Technical Business Developer existed and now I live and breathe that role!
DO’s
- Research and short list 5-6 companies that you aspire to work for.
- Find contacts in these companies so that they can refer you.
- Keep your search criteria for roles as broad as possible in these companies
- Narrow down a list of potential roles suitable for your skill set.
- Breathe. Remember, one step at a time.
DON’Ts
- Do not look for specific titles when looking for open job positions.
- Don’t expect to meet 100% of the job requirements. You don’t have to.
- Don’t forget to take a break.
3. Dust the cobwebs from your resume
Having played a role in recruiting in my previous job, I have found this to be the most critical, yet overlooked step. Projecting your experience and value in 3-5 pages that the recruiter finds relatable in 10 seconds is no mean feat.
Whether you are looking for a job right now or not, spending some time to work on your resume goes a long way. Every few months, take out 15 minutes to update it with the new skills and experiences you have gained.
I spent months perfecting my resume. I sought feedback from my friends, ex-managers and others in my network. How much ever help you get, in the end, only you can tell your story.
Hiring managers and recruiters have short attention spans. Here are some quick tips for crafting a compelling resume.
DO’s
- Keep the layout of resume simple.
- Leave no room for typos and grammatical errors
- Keep the reader in mind. If you were the recruiter, would you look at the resume and in 20 seconds think “Hmm…This candidate seems to have the right skill set and experience for this job. Let me look deeper into her resume.” ?
- Is it easy for the eyes?
- Is it easy to determine that you are a potential fit for the job ?
- Are your clearly projecting the skills and competency relevant to the position ?
- Have a different resume for every different role you are applying. Each needs to be tailored to project the right experiences and skills required for that role.
- If you have a lot of projects and experience under your belt, distill and choose the ones that are relevant to the role you are applying for.
- Use key words from the job description.
- Translate your achievements into data and business impact – how much revenue your project generated, or how much costs it saved, how many hours of labor your innovation helped save. You can find all this information in the project’s documentation.
- Note : It took me some time to view my job in that angle. I was just one member out of a 50 member project team. How could I possibly claim the project’s success as my own accomplishment and say that I helped my clients generate $2M revenue ? It took me a while to see that every endeavor is a team effort and we have to own our contribution.
- Hire a resume writer if you can.
- Have your resume reviewed by friends and mentors.
- Remind yourself why you need a new job!
DON’Ts
- Do not use subjective words in your skill list, like problem solving or good communication in your resume. They add no value.
- Do not include every project you did. Nobody wants to reads pages and pages of your experience that is not relevant to the job.
- Don’t forget to be kind to yourself.
Some examples:
- Successfully planned and executed the migration of critical on-prem applications to AWS cloud helping company X save $350,000 per year in infrastructural costs.
- I knew that AWS was a data driven company and values deep dive analysis. So I included a small 2-month project I was involved in.
Performed extensive data analysis and created dynamic reports using PowerBI, depicting the customer’s mainframe landscape like integration penetration, number of data sources and complexity of various domains to help Client get strategic insights into modernization opportunities.
Here is the format I used for my resume. Needless to say, this is not the only way to structure it.
4. Give it a shot!
One of the biggest lessons I learnt during my job search process was that you don’t have to check all the boxes in the job requirements in order to apply!
Some skills are easy to learn or acquired on the job. Although they are mentioned in the job description, they may not be “must-haves”. The trick is in knowing what those are. Many a time, the job qualification requirements are all encompassing, designed to attract candidates from various backgrounds. Remember that they are not set in stone.
When I applied for the Technical Business Developer position at AWS, there were gaps in my skill set. I had no experience in sales capture and responding to RFPs, although the job posting “required” those. I applied anyway. And I got the job, without faking anything.
So, go ahead and apply for that job, as long as you have the core skill for the role, even if you don’t meet all the requirements.
Congratulations for getting until here.
Now comes the hardest part. You may meet deafening silence and feel like you are applying in vacuum. Nobody gets back to you, or ghosts you after an initial conversation. This is when you activate your hidden superpowers – patience and perseverance.
DO’s
- Apply for that job even when you don’t meet all the requirements.
- Apply for multiple jobs at once, using your tailored resumes.
- Activate your superpowers – patience and perseverance.
- Remind yourself that these things take time.
DON’Ts
- Don’t just stick to online job applications. Try out the traditional methods of job search too, with the help of friends and network.
5. Have a referral.
I cannot stress how important and useful it is to have a referral. Having someone to refer you means you have bypassed the robots and made your way to human eyeballs!
So if you know someone working there – a friend, or a friend’s friend’s friend, or even an enemy, find a way to connect with them and request them to refer you.
It doesn’t mean you will get the job, it only means you might get a chance to interview. The recruiter and hiring manager will still review your resume and determine if you are a good fit. If they think you are, they proceed with the interview process. There is no bias because you are a referral. You will get an offer only when you satisfy the interviewers.
6. Prepare for that recruiter call.
If you were able to pique the recruiter’s curiosity, then great job!
The recruiter might want to connect with you to know more about you and your work experience. This is to ensure you are a good fit for the role before he asks time from the interviewers. Also, it helps to know that in some companies, recruiter’s performance may be measured by the quality of candidates they bring in and the recruiter himself would do the initial screening of the candidates. So make sure you project confidence and expertise for the role you are applying.
DO’s
- Do your ground work and prepare for commonly asked questions like why you are looking for a job.
- Know your resume in and out.
- Be confident about why you think you are a good fit for that role. Bring up relevant experience and skills.
- Ask clarifying questions about the role, interview process and company work culture.
DON’Ts
- Don’t be distracted or unprofessional.
- Do not ask about salary on your first meet, unless they bring it up.
- Don’t badmouth your current workplace.
- Do not disclose your current salary. Have a message handy in case it comes up.
Conclusion
Finding a job takes time. Spend time to carefully build your foundation ( steps 1 – 3 ) and leverage your network to find what you are looking for.