by: Alina Sidbrant
ESTIEM is fun and absolutely the best time of our lives. However, we all have to graduate at some point, and then we are dropped into a sea of uncertainty — the job search. Just over 3 months ago, I moved to a new country and got my first real job at Arekibo — Ireland’s largest digital agency as a Marketing Innovation Analyst. I finally landed a perfect job and I consider myself very happy now. Although, the path to finding it was not easy. It took me 3 months of applying for different positions (200+ in total) while doing several personality and skills-based assessments and 7+ steps interviews. No one, trust me, not anyone, told me it would be this hard. University officials have never missed an opportunity to show us the flashy statistics of graduates’ employment rates, looking as high as Burj Khalifa. I had two degrees from top-rated universities in my pocket, multilingual abilities and a little bit of real-world experience. I was sure finding a job would be a piece of cake. My parents never had a problem finding a job — why would I? I was wrong.
Later I discovered that I was not the only one among ESTIEM Alumni who had a similar experience. ESTIEM is about learning, sharing and growing together. We have gathered our 5 best tips in this article to help every ESTIEMer prepare for their job search and to make that journey into the unknown easier and hopefully more fulfilling. I engaged the COO at my company, Luke Tritschler, to share his insight too, being on the other side of the hiring process.
- Job search is a job of its own
Job search and job applications take a lot of time and preparation. Ultimately, it isa numbers game — the more applications you send out, the more likely you are to get invited for an interview. Based on our experience, we suggest allocating 35% of your time for preparing your application documents and searching for opportunities, and 65% for applying for jobs. It is also important to have a daily or weekly goal for the number of applications sent and keep track of it all somewhere, even in Excel.
Sebastian Hummel, Local Group Eindhoven Alumni, said:
“I do not personally enjoy the process of interviews, so the hardest for me was to find the energy to actually be proactive during a time when it was easy to be lazy. You must realise that while being unemployed, your day job is searching, applying and preparing for interviews. When this message got through to me, I finally started making progress in setting up interviews.
2. Keep an open mind
It is important to target positions and jobs that you are passionate about but try to keep an open mind.
“While waiting for more industry-specific vacancies to show up, I also applied for other fields that I have an interest in, even if I did not think I would take the job if offered. I did this for two main reasons; firstly to get experience and confidence in an interview situation. Secondly, who knows maybe you can find a dream job that you did not expect. Besides, I had nothing to lose because I had loads of free time,” according to Sebastian.
3. Improve your CV through the use of active words, free CV feedback services
The hardest thing about the job search is the pressure and emotional burden.
“When you are applying for jobs you will most likely deal with rejections. This requires a lot of dedication, especially in the times when you need to write your thesis. Sometimes you need to rewrite a part of your thesis or deal with rejection for a job that you would have loved to learn more of. This needs a good deal of motivation to go through,” Stephanie Riffo Rodriguez, Local Group Eindhoven Alumni.
the second hardest thing though, is to get the CV past the screening stage and get the long-awaited invitation for an interview.
“The hardest part was actually getting an interview invitation. I got rejected for most of the jobs I applied for without even getting a chance to speak to a real person. Once I got past this, the process afterwards was way simpler, as it is always easier to show your skills and talents in a conversation than in an application letter,” according to Mark Smoliar, Local Group Aachen Alumni
Therefore, it is extremely important to get your CV right. One of the things that helped me improve mine was sending it to a free CV feedback service such as www.topcv.com. No doubt they want to sell their CV writing services, but the free feedback I received was nonetheless useful. The second thing that increased my CV search on LinkedIn by 200% was rephrasing my experiences using active verbs. Having never heard this term before, I Googled “active words for cv” and found a list of synonyms that made the experiences in my CV more appealing to the recruiters. Once your CV is updated — update your LinkedIn profile accordingly.
4. Search outside of LinkedIn too
LinkedIn is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a job search. However, even LinkedIn states in their annual hiring report that channels people you the most are: online job boards (60%), social professional networks (56%), and word of mouth (50%)
Research what are the best recruitment platforms in your country of interest and make sure to set up a professional profile that reflects your most up-to-date CV. Once registered, don’t forget to regularly check them in and answer all the messages recruiters might have sent you. This sounds like a lot of work, that is because it is! In addition, you should think about how else you can diversify your job search strategies. An idea I came up with was to check the meetup community and Eventbrite for upcoming local recruitment events, which I then attended.
5. Be creative in tailoring your messaging depending on the job specification
Luke Tritschler, the COO of Arekibo, has been recruiting and interviewing candidates for more than 9 years. Luke said one of the worst things a job applicant can do is to not read the job specification. Ignoring the requirements mentioned in the job description will be easily spotted in both the CV and cover letter. This does not mean you have to have 100 versions of the CV and cover letter if you apply to 100 jobs. Instead, you need to make sure, all the experiences listed are relevant to the job you are applying for. In addition, it is not only about the experiences, because maybe you are a new graduate and do not have work experience yet.
It is even more important to find that connection that describes how you can apply the things that you have learned before to the role that you are applying for. Therefore, pick the most relevant experience for your CV and then use a cover letter to connect the dots for the recruiter and help them understand how this experience is relevant to the role. Another thing Luke highlighted was the hobbies and interests section of your CV. Recruiters want to know that the person they are about to hire has interests and activities outside of work, so give them a flavour of who you are.
Credit: 58th issue of ESTIEM Magazine (2020)
You can now find the whole 58th issue on the ISSUE platform!
