Searching for a new job can be a challenging time. Whether you’re looking to climb the career ladder or move to a new industry, there are many ways to make your job search successful.
Tailor your CV
Tailoring your CV to each role you apply for is essential for a successful job search. When reading a job advert, pick out key words that match your personal skills and experiences and add these to your CV. This will help to highlight how your skills match the desired criteria of the job description and increase the chances of your CV catching the eye of the hiring manager and the specifications of an applicant tracking systems.
Audit your online presence
Whether it’s a professional platform or personal social media, your online presence is often considered during the hiring process and should be a consideration during your job search. Professional profiles such as LinkedIn should be updated, accurate and informative, including your most recent professional experience and skills. Though they are not part of your professional portfolio, personal social media accounts are increasingly reviewed as part of the hiring process. Personal social media profiles should be free of any imagery or posts that could harm your chances of being hired by a new company and privacy settings for each account should be considered. If you’re unsure of your digital footprint, conducting a search of your name on a search engine may highlight which of your profiles can be found.
Utilise your network
Often job opportunities can be found through word of mouth with the idea of ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’ being coined for many industries. Utilising your network to see if there any upcoming roles at their companies, or any vacancies they are aware of in the industry can be a fulfilling exercise for a successful job search. Reaching out to connections on LinkedIn may also be a successful route to finding your ideal role.
Don’t limit yourself
Whilst we all reach for the internet to find our new roles, it’s important to remember not to limit yourself as there are several avenues that can be utilised. As well as company websites, online job boards are also incredibly popular and successful when searching for a new job as they give the option to filter by industry, location, salary and many other categories to help you find potential roles quickly and efficiently. Other online resources may include reaching out to companies who do not have visible job ads to see if they will have any openings, training opportunities or careers advice in the future.
A more traditional route, but often less accepted due to the rise of the online world, is handing CV’s out to local businesses. Introducing yourself in person could be a successful way to find a new role and set you above the rest.
Prepare for all types of interview
In a post-pandemic world, interviews can come in all shapes and sizes. Be sure to prepare for face-to-face, video and phone call interviews when searching for new role. In order to prepare, research the companies of which you are applying and ensure you understand who they are and how they work. Often interviews will include scenario based questions such as ‘tell us about a time you successfully communicated’ or ‘tell us about a time you worked well as a team’. To prepare for these types of questions, conduct some research into your own CV and experiences in order to define potential professional experiences that may fulfill these types of questions.
Follow up
If you are successful in your search and secure an interview, it is often recommended to follow up with a thank you email. This email can be as simple as thanking the company for their time and reiterating your interest in the role.
If you’re looking for looking for a new job in the life science sector, get in touch with our team to see how they can help match you to your ideal role. If you would like to find out more about how to perfect your job search and professional documents, please visit the links below.
