About a week ago I agreed a job offer having been unemployed since the end of December. I thought it worth jotting down a few thoughts based on my experience of job hunting:
1) Even in the digital age with virtual interviews etc, recruitment processes can be slow. This means it’s necessary to juggle quite a few applications in parallel even if you are being quite ‘picky’. It can take over a week between interviews getting scheduled, I actually had a couple of 'in flight' applications on the where I'd done 1-2 stages of the process when the offer from elsewhere came in
2) LinkedIn is a good place for ‘passively’ picking up leads. The role I ended taking was one that came to me by a recruiter proactively reaching out. Yes, you get a lot of opportunistic spam for irrelevant roles, but it doesn’t take that long to read them. In general for the first time I found LI more useful than Indeed which is the aggregator I've typically used for job searching in the past.
3) Recruitment agencies get a bad rep for ‘ghosting’, but in my recent experience in-house recruiters can be just as elusive. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t expect a response to an initial application unless they want to speak with me, the volumes will be too high. But if you’ve held multiple interviews with a firm, I don’t think a simple one-line email to tell you they want to go another way is too much to ask for. In the long run radio silence will cost them more because ultimately someone has to pick up the status enquiries it generates. It also tarnishes my view of the organisation concerned somewhat.
4) Filling out employment history on bespoke application portals gets old pretty quickly. I think it makes more sense to focus on targeted questions specific to the firm/role, rather than just mandating a glorified copy-and-paste from the CV.
5) Flexible working is very much on the agenda with various firms I spoke to having a range of approaches. Most seem reticent to outwardly back away completely from office working but certainly I think you can push for a good 50%+ WFH these days (for roles where this is feasible obviously)
6) I was a bit surprised how much hands-on activity is now expected from management positions in my sector. Quite a few roles I discussed seemed to be looking for technologists first and foremost with an expectation that a significant proportion of time will be spent on low-level activities rather than orchestrating that from others. Depending on your background this may be a good or bad thing.
1) Even in the digital age with virtual interviews etc, recruitment processes can be slow. This means it’s necessary to juggle quite a few applications in parallel even if you are being quite ‘picky’. It can take over a week between interviews getting scheduled, I actually had a couple of 'in flight' applications on the where I'd done 1-2 stages of the process when the offer from elsewhere came in
2) LinkedIn is a good place for ‘passively’ picking up leads. The role I ended taking was one that came to me by a recruiter proactively reaching out. Yes, you get a lot of opportunistic spam for irrelevant roles, but it doesn’t take that long to read them. In general for the first time I found LI more useful than Indeed which is the aggregator I've typically used for job searching in the past.
3) Recruitment agencies get a bad rep for ‘ghosting’, but in my recent experience in-house recruiters can be just as elusive. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t expect a response to an initial application unless they want to speak with me, the volumes will be too high. But if you’ve held multiple interviews with a firm, I don’t think a simple one-line email to tell you they want to go another way is too much to ask for. In the long run radio silence will cost them more because ultimately someone has to pick up the status enquiries it generates. It also tarnishes my view of the organisation concerned somewhat.
4) Filling out employment history on bespoke application portals gets old pretty quickly. I think it makes more sense to focus on targeted questions specific to the firm/role, rather than just mandating a glorified copy-and-paste from the CV.
5) Flexible working is very much on the agenda with various firms I spoke to having a range of approaches. Most seem reticent to outwardly back away completely from office working but certainly I think you can push for a good 50%+ WFH these days (for roles where this is feasible obviously)
6) I was a bit surprised how much hands-on activity is now expected from management positions in my sector. Quite a few roles I discussed seemed to be looking for technologists first and foremost with an expectation that a significant proportion of time will be spent on low-level activities rather than orchestrating that from others. Depending on your background this may be a good or bad thing.
