Making Money Moves — Beginners Guide to Finding a Job in Cape Town
The last couple of months have been interesting for me. This time last year I thought my life my plan was laid in front of me. I was going to be an academic who did radio on the side. That may still happen, however, throughout last year I had an overwhelming sense that I had to leave the town that I lived in (Stellenbosch), it’s a small conservative town that I went to High School and University in. A total of 9 years as a reasonably liberal person — not the easiest task. On top of this I didn’t have the money for Masters or the marks for a bursary. So the Masters had to wait. I then could have still stuck it out at campus radio for this year, a job I did love with a team I still have affection for, and then maybe in a year or two got hit up by a commercial station and then told people how hard I worked. I, however, have some concerns about commercial radio in South Africa at the moment. Thus, I left it all.
I thought this year would work out a bit differently than it has so far but I have learnt some incredibly useful lessons from my experience that I want to spread here. I also left Stellenbosch in the hope that I would begin building an online media platform (that I am still in the process of building). It is in no way built at all but we are yet to see what happens. I had a job where I had time to work on my own projects but something that I learnt and cannot iterate enough is the thing of capital. Through this I quickly realised that if you want a business of any sort, online included, you need capital! Rather have less time and more capital. Situations then happened that resulted in me having to look for work of any sort that would provide me with capital as well as money to eat. Here is where I realised, I knew nothing. One of the tips that I was given, by a radio station which will remain unnamed that I will always appreciate, is that they post job openings here: http://www.bizcommunity.com/. My affection for networking websites then went into overdrive. No one had ever taught me where to even look for jobs and without that advice I may have been googling some obscure potential job positions that don’t exist. I googled a ton but that gave me some direction.
My googling as well as looking at BizCommunity resulted in me finding a job opening here: http://www.recruitdigital.co.za/. I remember sitting in the first interview with Recruit Digital ashamed of the way that my CV looked, yet I got to the second round interviews. After that, I didn’t get the job. However, something I did learn is that if you want a job in 2018 you have to be on LinkedIn and you need to be doing it well. Just to make sure that this point is clear, if you’re young working: LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn! I was told this by a recruiting agency, a source that is the definition of reliable on this topic.
A couple of weeks later, I redesigned my CV and job interviews began to roll in. Note this, I had been applying for jobs for around 3 months with only one interview. I think a large reason for this was my atrocious CV.
At this point my interviews with Recruit Digital paid off in a big way. I applied for a job through them, and they phoned me back the same day if memory serves and on the phone one of the recruiters mentioned that they remembered me from my interview and that they would really like to organise me a job. A couple of days later they phoned me again with another job that they thought I may be interested in. Additionally I had gotten an interview the week of these phone calls, where the interviewer said to me “so you’re an interesting case, you don’t have any of the requirements we asked for and yet here we are…” I enjoyed that. Now in the space of 2 weeks I had 3 job interviews after having had essentially 1 in 3 months. The job I ended up taking was organised through Recruit Digital without me having applied for the job. Fortunately, they were equipped with my new fire CV and they sent it off for me. I am hugely appreciative of their efforts, specifically Claire who organised me my current job and JJ for remembering me from our original interview.
Here are some key lessons that I want to impart on you reader, especially if you are still studying:
- Do internships or get a job while you’re studying, unless you’re studying medicine or accounting then you have the time and if you’re studying those two don’t worry about my advice you’ll get a job. I have worked on a variety of things since my first year of studying and through that I was able to get a salary quite a bit higher than most graduates get in Cape Town. If you work while you study it provides you with knowledge of walking into a job where you can negotiate a living wage for yourself. Also if you can take a DJ skip on doing an internship where you’re getting paid 4k a month to live in a house share in Salt River with 20 other students that you’re paying 6k for. Do that internship while you’re studying. I am lazy and I did an honours and worked full-time at MFM. Trust me, you can too, especially during your undergrad.
- Work at your campus radio for a bit. Believe me, it turns job interviews into a breeze. Do it no matter what industry you’re passionate about, even if just for a few months.
- Do side hustles, they have, for me at least, turned into key talking points during interviews and almost landed me a job (Shoutout to Sport Saturated if anyone knows what that was).
- Get on networking websites as in now. BizCommunity, Indeed, Recruit Digital, Gumtree, LinkedIn, LinkedIn and more LinkedIn.
- Networking is obviously key but if your Dad isn’t a rich white guy that plays golf on Saturday it can be incredibly challenging to network as a 21/22 year old with business owners. I don’t care how easy the drunk white girl with a philosophy degree says it is — it’s genuinely not.
- So rather than trying to appease that false ideal, create a fire CV and then network in the job interview. Here’s where I got a CV review from; https://t.co/GQbS0TyHuA. Thorough and helpful analysis, also if you have some spare cash they do offer other CV services.
- Apply for every job that you may be able to get. All of them. If you get 1 interview for every 10 applications you’ve done incredibly well.
- And with that always go to an interview even if it’s for a job you don’t want. You genuinely never know what might happen and what connection you may make.
Here is one of the keys that I have learnt, we’re told there aren’t jobs for graduates. That’s false, there are, graduates are just never taught how to find the jobs. That being said I can’t promise good pay for graduates in Cape Town, if you want that go to Joburg. I hope this essay has been helpful. My heart with it was one to tell my story in part of the last few months but two to try and help graduates avoid having to discover what I had to on my own.
