Starting a Job Search

With high unemployment these days, finding a job, especially after redundancy, for many can be a very daunting prospect. For a lot of people it has been the first time they have been job hunting for several years and will find that a lot has changed. Gone are the days when you could just walk into the job centre and view the advertisements or knowing which day your local paper will have their jobs section. Although these can still be options for searching for jobs, there are now so many more different methods used by employers and recruitment consultants to advertise their jobs, often with many of job opportunities not appearing in traditional and commonly viewed forms of advertising. With high unemployment and with so many people changing jobs on a regular basis competition can be fierce so if you want to have a strong chance of securing the right job then you will need to look in the right places and to plan how to conduct your job search.

The internet has virtually replaced newspaper, magazine and journal advertising, this is nothing new, it has been this way for the past decade. Most people are now aware of the larger and better known job boards and will usually start here or focus their entire search on these sites. These popular web sites will have a large and often varied number of vacancies from both direct employers and recruitment agencies updated daily, by registering and up loading a CV and profile employers and recruiters can also view and contact job seekers directly with their vacancies. Depending on the location and profession, it can be possible to find several suitable vacancies per day, however as expected, these sites will have very high numbers of active job seekers applying for the same vacancies so unless you stand out you can miss out.

Job advertising is a competitive industry, so as expected there are also many smaller internet job boards who will not attract the same number of companies advertising job vacancies, therefore they will not have the same number of job seekers. By trawling through pages of search engine results for job boards or by searching by job titles or industries you can find these sites. Some will not be worth registering with due to the low number of vacancies or they may contain unsuitable or out dated opportunities but often these sites can be a good source of unique vacancies.

The past few years have seen an explosion in social media with many businesses using these sites to promote their products and services and also for recruitment. Employers and agencies will often advertise their vacancies using social media sites and you can often learn more about the company than by simply viewing an advert and a corporate website. By following, liking or becoming a friend of the company you are showing an interest in the company, not just in getting a job.

Finally, recruitment agencies may have been seen as a necessary evil in the past by some people but these days they are an essential part of a lot of peoples' job searches, often job seekers will want to save a lot of time and effort by exclusively using one or more agencies and benefit from the free advice and support of the consultants' and their experience and knowledge of the job market and a particular industry. Recruitment agencies will often pro actively search for exclusive job vacancies, often approaching their clients with a particular candidate or by looking at their existing pool of candidates before advertising the vacancies.