Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2012; its job-search advice, such as answering newspaper ads, handing in CVs in person and including a photo on the CV, reflects practices that are less common or discouraged in some countries today.
Planning your working future starts with taking stock of yourself. Depending on the conclusions you reach, you will get a better future, and get there faster. It is time to stop and think about two big fundamentals:
- What can you do?
- Where do you want to work?
You may have started thinking about this in your teens, as a young adult or when you began looking for work. What is certain is that the clearer your ideas and the better defined the goals you want to reach, the easier it will be to get good results.
The answers to these two questions need to be built on clear ideas and achievable goals. The result will be a job that motivates, shapes and excites your future in your professional life. Bad decisions will lead to difficulty finding work, or to jobs that demoralise and disappoint you instead of motivating you.
What can you do?
What training do you have?
Training is an essential requirement for every job. If it is well thought out and planned from your teenage years, it will lead you to exciting goals in the job you have in mind and want.
Poor training will automatically rule you out of many job offers. A job ad that does not ask for some level of education is unthinkable; your studies are the foundation of any start.
This will be the factor that determines which offers you can apply for.
What training do you need?
Sometimes the academic training you have received does not cover everything a job requires. While you wait for offers, add to your training so that your abilities come closer to the job you are looking for.
Draw up a study plan to fill the gaps and reach your goals. Stick to it, so that your training does not fall behind your job search. Make one last effort in your training to reach the result you have fought for.
What are your skills?
You like working in a team, you are thorough and pay attention to detail, you are a good communicator. Look at your personal traits, the details of your day-to-day life, the qualities for which the people around you appreciate and love you. Those virtues are what can help you land a job that looks for similar qualities in the people who join it.
Strengthen your good points so that they carry more weight as deciding factors in a selection process.
Which jobs can you get most easily?
Not every job is within reach: some companies are very large and have very demanding selection processes. Others pose problems of commuting, others of pay. Work out what you are available for and what your real options are when looking for a job.
Bear in mind that you can apply for jobs that require the same or higher qualifications than yours, but you can also apply, with an advantage, for jobs whose academic requirements are lower than your own.
Where do you want to work?
In Spain, there are three large groups of employers: the public sector (through oposiciones, competitive civil-service exams), the private sector (through various selection tests) and self-employment, where people pursue their dream according to their abilities.
Do you know how to look for work?
Use your networks of contacts. Word of mouth will point you to places where you can find work. But new technologies also offer job portals and company websites where vacancies are posted, not forgetting ads in the printed press.
Then there are the physical offices of temporary employment agencies, and direct personal contact with companies and their human resources departments: ask for an appointment with the people in charge and find out about the company.
Schools and universities have job banks that make things easier for their students, and they regularly hold job fairs as an opportunity to bring candidates and companies together.
Do you know how to write a CV?
Be different, original and eye-catching compared with everyone else. Include a photo, your personal details and your education, and your work and personal experience.
Avoid photocopies and try to tailor the documents you hand in to each company.
Be careful with mass mailings and try to hand your CV in in person so that they get to know you. Put the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words to the test: talent is shown by doing things.
Do you know how to write a cover letter?
A cover letter is the candidate’s first contact with the company: the first image, the first impression left on the people in human resources. Show your interest in their company, in their position and in your own professional quality.
Don’t leave them indifferent with the same letter for every company. Be strategic and make them notice you, or at least read your CV; there is surely something that will catch their attention and earn you a chance. If you send photocopies, you will leave them as indifferent as the people who send their CV left, right and centre to rack up the number of applications sent. The prize is not for the number of CVs sent, but for choosing the best options.
Could you answer without hesitating in a job interview?
You will have to go through it, there’s no way around it. It may be tough or friendly. It may be enjoyable or an ordeal, but it is the step you must take to get the job. Do your research, rehearse, prepare for your interviews, in every possible respect.
Look for small companies so that their interviews serve as practice for the big ones, and don’t take on the big names in human resources with no preparation at all.
Featured image: Sludge G, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
