Turning Job Hunting on its Head

Everyone has those memories of aimlessly trawling through job sites and careers pages hoping for something to jump out at them and literally say, “Hey! This is the perfect job for you!” And on the rare occasions when that does happen, we then have the trauma of putting together a flawless application that will guarantee us an invite to meet someone that might like us and decide to offer us the job.

Job hunting is no walk in the park, and it feels like a full-time job on its own by the time you rack up the hours on the following process:

•         Searching
•         Researching
•        Writing
•        Editing
•         Sending
•        Praying.

Usually it comes in that order.

When you do reach the moment of hitting submit, confident you have crafted an excellent application, you then have the waiting game of finding out if it was good enough to reach the next stage.

But often you’re not just up against other individuals who have applied online in the same way as you. Oh no. You’re up against the contacts of those in the organisation who have been recommended for the role by an insider. And the internal employees who have applied for the role as the next step in their career.

A friend of mine applied for a job as a gym instructor, crafted one of those excellent applications and landed the interview. At the end of the meeting he was asked when he could start. All was going well and looked like it was in the bag. He received an email the following day advising him that he had been unsuccessful. 

One week later he received a call from the same company, explaining that another role had come up for the same job. On my friend’s first day at work he met a lady who had just been promoted into her role last week. It just so happened that someone else in the department was asked to cover another position with immediate effect due to an emergency.

Had this emergency not have popped up, my friend would have missed out on the role because the company had already in fact decided that the internal candidate would get the position.

Naturally, this was a good outcome in the end, but it doesn’t always work like that. Job hunting is tough and even when you are the most suitable person for that position, something or someone else can grab it from under your nose and we go back to relying on the age old quote that is often played on repeat: ‘It wasn’t meant to be’.

But what if it WAS meant to be? What if you turned job hunting on its head and made a role for yourself that an organisation couldn’t say no to? Why do we wait for the perfect role to appear on a job site before we then decide to act and take our chances with an application? Turning job hunting on its head puts you in the driving seat.

I turned job hunting on its head before I completed my undergraduate degree. I wanted to get a foot in the door in a radio station in London and I knew where I wanted to work. I discovered the email address of the person who any work experience applications should be sent to and off I went to draft an excellent email. Over a week later, what read like an auto response was an email stating they were not able to accept my application to work experience due to high demand. 

So, I crafted another email with a tad more oomph (article coming up on oomph moments) explaining that I was in fact the best person to accept for work experience and if we could arrange a face to face meeting, I could explain this further. An hour later a message popped up in my inbox with one line: ‘How’s Friday at 2pm’ with their office address listed. 

A month later I was on my first day of work experience and 3 months after that I had my first paid shift scheduled in.

What did I learn?

•           No doesn’t need to mean no. Be savvy with your approach to job hunting.
•           Research the organisation(s) you’re keen to work for and find curveball ways of getting your foot in – is there a connection on LinkedIn? Are there networking events where connections in your industry will likely be attending?  
•           Write some articles on topics around the industry you’re in or looking to get into – get a blog post started to show you know your stuff in this area. Share your blog link with connections you meet at these networking events or via LinkedIn.
•           Tag the company on social media to a blog you’ve written in response to a recent article they posted.

These are just some ways of turning job hunting on its head so that it becomes much more meaningful for you when exploring your next opportunity. 

It isn’t just when we’re feeling bored or coming to the end of our stint in a role that we should be doing the above actions – it’s an ongoing process throughout our career because we never know who we’ll meet or what opportunity we might create for ourselves by doing this.

So, if you’re in job hunting mode right now try it out. Turn it on its head. And if you’re not? Keep it in mind for future but I’d get started on being proactive with your networking so you’re ahead of the game when you do come to moving forward in your career.

@theiamhub