Welcome! If you are an aspiring job seeker looking for your dream job, this guide is for you. It is presented in the form of a series of blogs that contain all you need to know about searching for a job in 2022. In these blogs, we’ll cover what it means to write an ATS-compliant resume, understanding the challenges of the interview process, what you can do before an interview, tips for clearing job interviews, how you can perform well in your technical interviews, and whether mock interviews help.
The job application process isn’t the same as it was a few years ago. In the present decade, the recruitment process largely starts online, and thanks to the emergence of numerous popular job portals and job boards, you can be pretty self-sufficient in your job hunt process if you know how to find and apply to the job(s) you want.
Here’s all you need to know about how to find your dream job and apply for it.
1. Through recommendations:
Getting recommended by a present employee of an organization improves your chances of getting called for the interview round simply because of the ‘trust factor’ involved in it. If you happen to have an acquaintance in a company you aspire to work for, don’t shy away from requesting them to write you a recommendation letter.
2. Through Placement Agencies/Staffing Agencies:
Placement agencies can be a significant help while finding a suitable job, especially when you are a fresher or you have an employment gap. A good placement agency helps you in the following ways:
- They provide you with career counseling, advice on how to acquire the missing skills and qualifications for your target job, and also provide professional help to improve your supporting documents like resume and cover letter.
- They train and prepare you for your impending job interviews. As a part of their jobs, an interview coach from a job consultancy knows exactly what to expect in a job interview from different companies and different job roles. This inside knowledge can give you an edge over others in the interview round.
- Placement companies skillfully place the right candidate in the right position. As a result, you thrive and grow in the right environment.
But the big question is- how to select a good placement agency/staffing agency?
As discussed in the previous point, before registering with a placement agency, you should find out whether they are providing such benefits like interview training, resume optimization, and career counseling. Also, do your research about the company’s background. Has it ever been in the news for the wrong reasons? What are the previous clients saying? How was the experience of the past jobseekers? What kind of additional benefits do they provide?
Apart from these, two other major things to look for are:
- Whether you’ll be under the direct payroll of the company you’re working for, or will it be under the placement agency.
- Are there any hidden charges involved? To avoid any undesirable situation, read the contract papers thoroughly before signing.
When you are satisfied with all the answers to these questions, you can proceed with the registration.
While applying for jobs through job portals, these are the things that you should keep in mind:
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Complete your profile:
Fill out all the details that the portal asks for, including your education history, work experience, internship experience, workshops and training you attended, certificates you earned, publications, awards and recognition, and all other details.
Be especially careful while filling out your contact details. If the recruiter can’t reach you because of a faulty digit in your contact number, it’s all for naught.
A completed profile attracts more attention to the recruiter and also improves your credibility.
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Upload supporting documents:
Upload your most updated resume on the portal. If the portal asks for other supporting documents like copies of your degrees/diplomas, experience certificates, or published copies of your work (where applicable), you should upload them. These documents support your claims and that in turn makes the recruiters more interested in your profile.
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Refrain from posting false claims:
This goes without saying, filling up your resume and online job profile with imaginary details may seem tempting unless you end up getting caught, which might even attract legal prosecution.
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Be consistent and regular:
Creating an account and only logging in once a month to shoot out some applications is not the way to successfully use these platforms. Logging in frequently (at least 3 times a week), updating your profile often, and keep applying to suitable jobs will help your account stay ‘Active’. Active accounts get more views and are recommended to the recruiters more by AI algorithms of these portals.
Here’s a list of the most popular online job portals in the USA right now:
LinkedIn is the number one and most popular job portal in the world. We will talk about it in detail later. There are several alternative job portals like:
- Indeed
- CareerBuilder
- Glassdoor
- Google for jobs
- ZipRecruiter
- Monster
And the most popular online job portals in India are as follows:
- Naukri
- Monster India
- TimesJobs
- Indeed
- Glassdoor
Job-Searching the smart way: New and Emerging Trends for 2022
20-year old Ankita Chawla (Instagram: @hireankitachawla) from Mumbai, India turned her Instagram profile into a digital portfolio by posting a series of snaps. She turned her Instagram gallery into a collage of visual content, thus showing the recruiters what she can do and not merely claiming it! She got hired within weeks by Deloitte India and is now working with them as a visual content creator.
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For all the job seekers out there, this is an exceptionally good time to apply out-of-the-box thinking and leverage your creative potential to achieve professional success.
Grabbing the recruiters’ attention through social media is becoming an increasingly popular trend since the last couple of years. Top recruiters all over the world are also embracing these trends with an open heart. Facebook currently allows recruiters to post job openings. Instagram is primarily popular for small businesses, startups, and freelancers to gain clients, but approaching recruiters for traditional jobs is also gaining momentum in this platform.
LinkedIn for Jobseekers
While talking about using social media, nothing can and will beat LinkedIn, the no.1 social media platform for professionals. Let’s look at some numbers before proceeding:
- Total LinkedIn users across the world (2022): 740 million
- Total active users: 310 million
- Total users from the US: 180 million
- Total users from India: 82 million
Why should you have a LinkedIn profile?
LinkedIn is one of the largest and best job boards in the world. You can be assured that almost every position that opens up in an organization gets posted on LinkedIn first. This is true across the world. You get access to a pool of jobs that’s impossible to find anywhere else.
Business leaders, influencers, recruiters, everybody uses LinkedIn to connect and communicate with their network. By following the right people, you get to be among the first ones to know about an opening in your favorite company, or about some changed criteria for a job you are targeting.
LinkedIn is the favorite place for industry leaders to convey their thoughts and ideas- ideas that often determine the current trends and patterns of the industry. By being on LinkedIn, you stay up-to-date with your areas of interest which pays off really well in the interviews.
LinkedIn not only helps leaders and influencers to express their views, but also does the same for you. You can also put out relevant content on LinkedIn and showcase your knowledge and expertise to the world, and build your own brand.
Before hiring someone, recruiters often check the candidate’s LinkedIn profile to know more about him. This gives you a chance to impress them even before you enter the interview room. In fact, you can also do the same and find out about the person interviewing you. Knowing about your interviewer’s professional background helps you in the interview process as you can then have more meaningful interactions with him, and connect to him in a better and more effective way.
How should you use LinkedIn for job search?
To get the most out of LinkedIn, you should do the following things:
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Let recruiters know you’re open:
Make sure you keep your ‘Career Interest’ status as “Open” so recruiters know that you are available for hire. You can also use your LinkedIn profile headline to write about the same.
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Let recruiters know you’re open:
Like your profile on job portals, your LinkedIn profile also needs to be up-to-date and completely filled up all the time. Include all your professional history, add a professional photograph and a suitable header image, and most importantly, write your profile summary wisely.
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Be active:
Use ‘LinkedIn insights’ to connect with recruiters and people from your own industry. But don’t just stop there. Post your thoughts, experiences, ideas, and creations regularly. Don’t just put a Like on other people’s posts, rather, put out your thoughts and comment something meaningful. Being consistently active on LinkedIn increases your visibility. Again, increased visibility means better exposure, and a better chance to get noticed by recruiters.
So, no matter what platform you are primarily using for your job search, having a well-built LinkedIn profile is desirable.
In recent years, renowned companies have become increasingly accommodating to new and innovative ideas to recruit employees. Calling upon video portfolios, using virtual reality and AI assistance in the recruitment process, contacting candidates via Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, picking up candidates based on Quora answers, the recruitment world has seen some real out-of-the-box approaches recently, and surely, these trends will continue well into the future years. So, make the best use of your internet connection and build up your brand in the best innovative way that you can think of. Soon, you’ll be the one to be approached by companies and recruiters, instead of the other way round!
Team Vibrant Publishers wishes you all the best!
Next up in this series: The Ultimate Guide to Writing an Impressive, ATS-Compliant Resume
Books you might find useful:
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