4 Hacks To Make Your Job Hunt More Efficient

With more and more job listings going up every month, it can be difficult to track new listings as well as old ones. Not arranging your job hunt in an organised fashion is the best way to get overwhelmed, waste time and even lose opportunities.

Does your environment benefit you?

How productive can you be in your work environment? Surroundings affect your work and efficiency. If you’ve already built your desk into the perfect job hunting tool, and organised job-related files and folder in your computer, that’s a great start.

Organisation is going to be one of the strongest skills required for job hunting. It’s not enough to create a general ‘JOBS’ folder on your laptop and dump everything in there. Instead, create a general folder, with many sub-folders that correspond to your different job applications.

Put the tailored CV you used to apply and the motivational essays/personal statements you wrote all together in one place. This makes it significantly easier to find things but also pushes you to tailor your personal documents. It’s also a great way to find your documents when you get a sudden phone call from an interviewer.

Finally, look for a deadline, make a new Word/Notepad document and save the document with the file name as the job deadline. By putting that into the specific job folder, you will be able to see at a quick glance when the deadline is.

In order words, have your documents ready and organised in a logical way. The above method has the benefit of allowing you to track jobs you’ve applied for before easily, as well as reference previous personal statements and motivational essays to write new ones.

Moreover, having an organised job folder has the added benefit of putting you in control of the job hunt and not the other way around. Having one folder and dumping everything inside it is a recipe for disaster.

Perseverance

Looking for jobs is hardest at the beginning. Once you get used to it, you establish a certain rhythm and quickly fill in 10-page-long online applications without breaking a sweat. The hard part is getting used to and actively combating the feelings of doubt and insecurity that plague the jobseeker.

It’s tough to deal with because students are often led to believe that a university degree is all it takes. I probably don’t need to tell you that this is a fallacy. Instead of accepting and thinking that you are not the right fit for a company, remember that a fit goes both ways; perhaps they were not the right for you.

It’s really about understanding and accepting that failure and rejection in a job hunt isn’t entirely focused on you. It’s not a way to judge your character nor your worth as a person.

Be ambitious and realistic

Opportunities come and go on the job market. Make the most of them.

Be ambitious while remaining aware of your abilities and experiences. Don’t apply to extremely high ranking jobs where you know you’ll simply be out of your depth. Do apply to jobs where the required skills are not out of your reach.

It’s up to you to find that balance between jobs that are out of your reach and those that are within but would be ambitious to apply for. If you get an interview, be realistic and accept that you may not get the job. You can still use this opportunity to establish contacts and expand your network.

Acceptance

Although being ambitious and realistic is a definite plus, some applicants take the ambition too far and apply to jobs where even getting an interview might be a challenge. In this scenario, accept that your application might not be all that. Be humble.

You’ll get there in the end.

Inspiring Interns is a graduate recruitment agency. To browse graduate jobs, visit their site.