The Only Strategy For Online Job Portal Applications
This article is part of series of articles for helping fellow candidates crack abroad jobs, specifically European jobs, from their home country. Mostly, it is catered for us Indians wishing to know the right techniques to crack European jobs. However, individual steps can be used for anyone looking to get a new job in European market, so feel free to pick and chose the steps relevant for you!
All the information is completely free of cost, and DO NOT require you to visit consultancy and waste tons of money there. It is my own knowledge that I built while going through the complete process.
Please find the steps below:
a) Step 0: Introduction and how recruitment works.
b) Step 1: Tips on creating a killer profile.
c) Step 2: Building the right resume and cover letter.
d) Step 3: Strategy of applying and sponsorship ready job portal links.
e) Step 4: Insights on actual interview process and conclusion.
Hopefully, the above steps could help anyone land their dream European job, and that, would be the success of this post!
Introduction:
This article explores the tips on using the correct resources for applying to European or pretty much any abroad jobs. This post also shares some useful links for jobseekers. Additionally, also find the two most common strategy for applying to job portals: both LinkedIn and other job portals.
Step 3: Use the right resources.
This step is pretty much the easiest. Once your LinkedIn profile is setup, and your resume and cover letter is ready, it is time to spam! (not really).
There are couple of main points while you are applying for jobs abroad. Firstly, you would need to be sure that the opening is for visa sponsorable jobs. Not all jobs would be sponsored by employer for reasons such as compliance or immigration troubles.
Hence, as a first step, apply in portals that only shows sponsorship ready jobs. The below websites guarantee that all or most of the openings are visa sponsored:
- Relocate.me (best in my opinion): https://relocate.me/
- Angel List (good for startups): https://angel.co/candidates/overview
- Jefferson Frank (good for AWS jobs): https://www.jeffersonfrank.com/aws-jobs
- Vanhack (mostly for Canada): https://vanhack.com/jobs
The strategy in visa sponsored job openings is to have a targeted approach.
Get the specific openings, tailor your cover letter to suit the requirements, tailor your resume according to the job opening keywords (to beat the damn ATS), and if possible, reach out to recruiter directly via LinkedIn. Sponsorship ready jobs are your best bet to get jobs abroad, so make sure to spend some time and effort in each of the openings.
Now that we have exhausted the visa sponsored openings, it is time to dig into LinkedIn. The issue with LinkedIn is that not many openings would explicitly state that they are only looking for people with valid work visa, i.e they won’t sponsor. Hence, you would never know whether the job is visa sponsored or not.
Hence, the strategy for LinkedIn jobs is spray and pray.
This means that, search for the job with the keywords that your recruiters use (AWS + CKA + Python), and just keep on applying for a wide range of jobs.
Most of the openings would take you to the company’s career website, where you have to create a profile with the resume and optional cover letter. Make sure to have a generic resume with the maximum keywords you could think of that your recruiter would use.
Once your resume is uploaded to the company portal, the recruiter could assess it from their ATS database (provided your resume is ATS compliant). Don’t be surprised if you get a call for a completely different opening, months after when you applied!
Other openings would have LinkedIn easy apply, which essentially takes your LinkedIn profile. So it is essential to have an updated LinkedIn profile, with the experience section copy pasted from the resume (with keywords)!
Either way, I would strongly recommend to stay away from job consultancy websites, especially the popular ones available in India. I can’t name them, but almost all job consultancies would only apply to jobs on your behalf and charge close to 50,000+ INR. I also am suspectable to their resume service.
However, if you are inclined to spend some money, spend it on making your resume ATS compliant/friendly.
Getting your resume shortlisted and getting the interview call is the major battle, and something you should focus your most energy on. For the statistics and nothing to brag about, my resume success rate in getting interview calls (once I had fixed my mistakes after 1.5 years :|) was close to 30% (i.e 3 out of 10 openings I applied, I got the first call). Hence, once again, get your LinkedIn active, and get your resume to be ATS’s best friend :).
That’s it for this post folks, check the other parts for more info!
