1. Write down a List of your Requirements
- Are you looking for a Job in a specific industry? Are you looking for a specific type of Job? Or are you just looking for any Job?
- Are you switching Jobs or are you in need of a Job?
- Do you have experiences from past Jobs that made you quit and that you don’t want to experience again?
- Do you have certain points that are very important to you? Money? Flexibility? Benefits like home-office? Long-term Employment? Career Growth?
2. Get Your Expectations Straight
There is no perfect Job. Seriously, there is none.
If you currently have a Job – Are you really that unhappy that you want to move on? Learn to value what you have.
New Jobs can always look better but turn out worse.
If you are ready to move on or are in need of a Job to begin with, focus on the most important things. Finished your Requirement List? If it has more than 5 points on it, cut down the nice-to-have ones.
3. Where to search for good Job Offers?
That depends a lot on what kind of Job you are searching for.
There are usually two categories:
Companies that use the internet
Even if the Job itself is not digital, as long as a majority of companies use the internet, you will find Job Offers on Job Posting Platforms like Indeed, sometimes also on Facebook and in case of IT-related Jobs often also on LinkedIn.
Searching on Google can come up with good results as well.
Companies that do not use the internet
Even nowadays many (especially small) companies have not fully arrived online. If you look for a Job among this kind of Jobs, you better contact them directly, either offline in-person or through phone or mail.
4. Limit your Applications
It might seem tempting to just apply to everything at once. The idea behind this often is that for sure some company will give you a Job offer.
I can see this quite often among fresh grads who are looking for their first Job.
But, you are just wasting your own time and the ones of the companies.
Limit your Application to those Job Postings where you actually have a chance. Put the quality of your applications above the quantity.
Or do you really believe any company wants to hire someone who spent less than a minute on their application? And yes, we can see that. We are not stupid.
So, take the list of requirements you made before and apply it to all Job Offers you can find. The ones who pass your list are interesting.
To find out if you are interesting for them as well, continue reading How to read and understand job offers.