Not happy in your current job or simply interested in pursuing a new career? Maybe you just want to see what else is out there and you don’t want to get bogged down in the details.
There are plenty of reasons why you might be looking for a new employment, and it doesn’t have to be a tedious process. We’ve rounded up 10 apps that make job seeking a little easier, more interesting and far quicker than ever before.
Typical time from application to hire is just under 28 daysVarious labor market reports forecast that hiring will continue to be strong in 2017. But the competition will be fierce, making it hard for job seekers to land their choice role, according to a new survey report.
San Francisco-based recruiting software company Jobvite analyzed over 14 million job applications and their outcomes in 2016 to measure the chances of getting a job by industry, the typical length of the hiring process and the best method to get recruiters’ attention.
According to Jobvite’s data, the most competitive industries for open positions are technology, media, education and e-commerce, with companies like Grubhub or Zappos considering 66 applicants per hire.
Industries like insurance and energy, on the other hand, are substantially less competitive, with less than 20 applicants considered per hire on average. “For those seeking stability and the prospect of long-term growth at a company, these industries may pose an attractive alternative,” said Amanda Van Nuys, Jobvite’s senior director of marketing communications.
Your social media presence is a crucial part of your post-college job hunt. In fact, 60% of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates, according to CareerBuilder’s annual social media recruitment survey, and 49% of hiring managers say they’ve found information that caused them to not hire a candidate.
If you’re a new graduate, it’s time to give your social media presence a professional makeover, says Lesley Mitler, cofounder of Early Stage Careers, a career guidance firm that works with recent college graduates.
“[In college] you tend to use social media for fun, but you need to use it to brand yourself,” she says.
Companies want to see someone who lives the words on their resume in everyday life, says Ryan Smolko, associate director of student transition and engagement at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “They’re looking for students to have a genuine interest in their desired profession, and to see them engaging with other professionals and organizations related to that industry,” he says.
I want to tell you about a terrific way to find clues that can help you discover what you’d be happiest, and most fulfilled, doing in your career. It’s called The Life Stories Exercise (also known as The Seven Stories Exercise, trademarked by The 5 O’Clock Club).
This powerful (and free!) tool won’t tell you what type of job to do next, but it will show you which factors to look for to have a satisfying career with purpose. I often use this exercise with clients in my semi-retirement coaching practice. And I’d say that some version of it is at the core of most coaching work — and career advice books.
In a moment, I’ll provide step-by-step instructions for the exercise and explain the Personal Profile Summary worksheet that accompanies this post. But first, let me share a real-life example illustrating how useful The Life Stories Exercise can be.
One Woman Finds Her Calling
A few years back, I coached a woman who wanted out of her corporate HR job, but didn’t know what to do instead. After completing this exercise, several key themes about her motivations, skills and interests emerged: Growing up, she adored playing piano and majored in music in college. Throughout her life, she has gravitated towards teaching roles — offering piano instruction to friends for free and helping co-workers master new software (even though that was not her job). After completing The Life Stories Exercise, it became clear that she was happiest working in team-oriented environments, but struggled in competitive corporate cultures.
Today, she teaches music part-time at a school, gives private piano lessons and hosts music-themed birthday parties for preschoolers. It’s work she loves with clients she adores — a far cry from her corporate life.
You’ll find countless studies telling you that quite often, recruiters or interviewers tend to cross candidates off their list of candidates aren’t dressed appropriately, don’t show up on time, don’t know enough about the company they’re interviewing at or don’t seem enthusiastic enough.
Of course, those are a given – and they’re hygiene. If someone is serious about a job, they’ll dress properly, research the company and the work they do, show up on time and be courteous and eager for the role. Beyond that however, there are a couple of things that candidates often forget, something that I’ve experienced in countless interviews.
The importance of asking the right questions to your interviewer during the various stages of the interview process should not be underestimated. The questions you ask in an interview showcase a lot about how you think as a candidate, but more importantly, as an employee. They reveal what your priorities are, what you’re looking for in your next role, and paint a very clear picture to your interviewer and potential future employer.
Your technical chops may not give you the edge when you’re new to the workforce, but your network might.It used to be that the only way to climb a career ladder was to pick up more skills. Learn how to do X, get paid more for it, and earn job-title Y. Up you went. Each new capability you mastered got you to that “next level,” either inside your current company or at a different one. Today, many of those ladders have fallen and shattered, with just a few left standing. Lately there have been efforts to hammer together some new ones, with new skills—usually tech-based—like cybersecurity or coding expertise held up as the new keys to staying competitive in the future job market.
[The common] advice [to develop technical skills] still reflects a “ladder climbing” mind-set in a world that’s looking a lot more like a lattice.
That isn’t exactly wrong. Some skill sets really are in higher demand than others, so it makes sense to counsel undergrads and entry-level workers to brush up in certain subject areas in order to gain an edge. But this kind of advice still reflects a “ladder-climbing” mind-set in a world that’s looking a lot more like a lattice, where talent—and people’s entire careers—are much more fluid.
“It’s more about who you are than what you do,” one LinkedIn insider explains. If you’ve heard a lot about “soft skills” lately, it’s at least partly because employers want you to develop them. According to our Global Recruiting Trends study here at LinkedIn, more employers are rolling out “soft skills assessments” to test job candidates on the cognitive and personality qualities you don’t go to school to learn: critical thinking, adaptability, learning agility, communication, etc. By all indications, these factors are trading at a higher value in 2017 than they have in the past.
“Come to each interview armed with anecdotes about how you reacted to a major change.”
Contact your references ahead of time and go over what you’d like them to discuss.When an interviewer asks you for a list of references, are you confident about the names you hand over? Do you wonder what kind of questions they might be asked, or whether you’ve picked the right people? Are you supposed to list your current manager, or is it OK not to?
Here’s a quick rundown of the basics that you should know about job references.
[See: Famous CEOs and Executives Share Their Best Career Advice.]
What kind of questions will your references be asked?
What catches their eye-or pass you by? You might be surprised. When you’re looking for a job, your LinkedIn profile is a 24/7 information resource for the recruiters who are looking for talent. In fact, in the Jobvite 2016 Recruiter Nation Report, 87% of recruiters find LinkedIn most effective when vetting candidates during the hiring process.
But what really catches a recruiter’s eye when they’re scrolling through your profile? Here, several weighed in about profiles that make them reach out—or recoil.
INCOMPLETE PROFILES ARE A TURN-OFF
When Cassandre Joseph, senior talent acquisition visionary and strategist at recruitment firm Korn Ferry, looks at a profile, she wants to see your work experience, education, and accomplishments. Incomplete profiles make it more difficult to determine whether you’re the best match for the job, because she can’t get the whole picture. It’s a bad first impression, she says.
“I find somebody’s profile and it says they’ve worked at, according to the profile, four different places simultaneously. They’re adding the new places, but not putting end dates. That says they haven’t updated their LinkedIn profile in X amount of years,” she says.
If you are in an active job search, more than likely you will hear about job fairs as a good way to meet employers. That’s true. Job fairs where broad to narrow industries are represented bring employers to you. Most job fair events are designed to give you opportunities to meet employers face to face, a chance to engage in a real, live conversation, even though it might be brief.
Half the challenge in searching for a good job is meeting people in person to talk about their hiring needs and your experience. Yet some people find job fairs helpful while others leave without real leads and that’s true with any type of networking event where potential employers are present.
The key to making a job fair work for you is planning and being selective. A good job fair will advertise the industries represented as well as specific employers, but not every event will match your background. Taking the time to research the companies and requirements before you attend will help make your time more effective.