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Jobsearching

Moving into employment
Jobsearching
Networking
Applying for work 1.0
Applying for work 2.0
Writing your CV
In essence jobsearching is very straightforward: In reality there is a lot you can do to make your jobsearch more successful. Also, bear in mind that lots of jobs are not found through applying through vacancies, but through the unofficial job market. The first and best known way to look for work directly is to look for job vacancies. There are a number of places you can look for these. Some of these are better than others. I have included a list of jobsearching sites below to help you with this. Often, vacancies contain a lot of information you can use to strengthen your application. Especially the job description, criteria etc... are what you actively need to use when applying, in your covering letter, your CV or application form, your interview... everything.
  • Job vacancies are increasingly found on the internet and there are a long list of jobsites which may help you with that.
  • The traditional place for finding vacancies is in the paper, however, and it's still an important place to look. Depending on what you are looking for, both the national papers and local papers (free or otherwise) may be useful.
  • As far as the printed press goes, professional journals and publications by professional bodies could be much more fruitful in generating interesting vacancies.
  • For the sake of including everything: another traditional place, much less appropriate for graduate, for finding vacancies is shop windows.

Other ways of finding a job: contacting employers direct

Alongside looking for vacancies and applying for jobs through them you could try the more direct approach by applying speculatively. The method for doing this could be exactly the same, or very similar, to responding to vacancies. You can explore companies you would like to work for and the positions they may have to offer and send your CV with a speculative covering letter to the person in charge (of hiring staff). The challenge with this approach is to find companies and organisations you would like to work for. This may be as simple as looking in the yellow pages. More efficient would be to look at the professional press or online. A good website for researching companies in particular could be www.yell.com for the UK. There is a specific way in which this would be useful. If you enter your field of interest, for instance IT, then you can enter a location and tick the box for 'show on map'. This will generate a dynamic list of opportunities. If you change the map to your wishes then the list on the left hand side will change to reflect the new map. You can then make a selection of companies which you can research online or on LinkedIn to find who is important enough to send your CV to. The professional press, advertising etc... could generate more contacts and companies to apply with in the same way. Also read the section on networking on this website to provide you with more indirect effective ways for finding work.

Jobsearching