Survey: Job Hunting Success Strategies - Share Your Tips!

joykev on 31/07/2024 - 15:10
Last edited 31/07/2024 - 15:40

Hi OzBargainers,

After a major restructuring at my company and being laid off, I've been job hunting for 3-4 months with no luck. Many colleagues, despite specialist skills and years of experience, are also struggling.

I’m conducting a survey to learn which job hunting strategies have worked for you in the professional white-collar office environment. Please share how you successfully landed your job:

  1. Cold applications through job boards (LinkedIn, Seek)
  2. Warm referrals through your network
  3. Working with recruiters/headhunters
  4. Applying directly on company websites
  5. Other (please specify)

Your insights will be incredibly helpful for many of us in the same situation.

Thanks for your support!

Poll Options

  • 6
    Cold applications through job boards (LinkedIn, Seek)
  • 16
    Warm referrals through your network
  • 4
    Working with recruiters/headhunters
  • 21
    Applying directly on company websites
  • 5
    Other (please specify)
Education & Work

Comments

  • JIMB0 on 31/07/2024 - 15:18
    +2

    It depends on your industry. If you're a tradie, labour hire company's will give you work with an immediate start. If you're any good the company they hire you out to will likely offer you full time.

  • pyramid on 31/07/2024 - 15:24
    +2

    What Industry are we talking about?

    • Caped Baldy on 31/07/2024 - 15:51
      +1

      mining of the digital variety

      • Jimothy Wongingtons on 31/07/2024 - 16:43
        +2

        Welll I do have hundreds of hours in Minecraft when it was still in beta

  • CheapandUsed on 31/07/2024 - 15:33
    +6

    Other- all of the above

    Don't limit yourself to one approach, especially as the market seems to be down at the moment.

    When I was in a similar situation I used a free online crm to keep track of all the applications, the key dates, the salary I selected / was advertised and all follow up calls or interviews.

    As all the jobs I was applying for were similar, I created a 'library' of paragraphs focusing on certain experiences so I could quickly customise my application to the job ad.

    Also consider some temp work or shorter contracts (if that's offered in your industry), often if the market picks up companies will cover their temps to permanent.

    Best of luck, it was an absolute hellscape when I was in a similar situation.

    • joykev on 31/07/2024 - 15:41

      thanks for that! How long did it take for you?

      • CheapandUsed on 31/07/2024 - 16:24

        It was within 3 weeks from starting that process to having an offer.

        I've been trying to maintain my library of experiences ever since, just in case I need them again quickly.

  • Ghost47 on 31/07/2024 - 15:39
    -6

    Leverage your network, get an NDIS job (i.e. get taxpayers to pay your salary) or start your own business. The government is shovelling 10,000 people into the country each week, these people will need jobs to survive. Guess who loses out.

    • jugsy on 31/07/2024 - 16:21
      +1

      The foreigner wants your cookie

      • Ghost47 on 31/07/2024 - 16:23
        -4

        One day you'll wake up.

        • jugsy on 31/07/2024 - 18:49

          Are you telling me to GET WOKE? Unaustralian.

          • Ghost47 on 31/07/2024 - 18:51
            -1

            @jugsy: Right, the guy calling out real issues happening in this country like rampant immigration to the point where there are more immigrants coming in than there are jobs being created (see my comment below) is "Unaustralian" lol. I reckon I care more about this country than most politicians who would rather appease their rich business donor mates by importing heaps of people to suppress wages. But no that must be complete nonsense, rich business owners definitely do not donate to political parties and they certainly do not like being able to pick and choose whoever they want to employ. They much prefer a tight labour market where employees can negotiate wages better, that makes a lot more sense, what was I thinking.

            • jugsy on 31/07/2024 - 19:04
              -1

              @Ghost47: Nah what's unaustralian is being dumb and a massive sook

              • Ghost47 on 31/07/2024 - 19:09

                @jugsy: I'm calling out the issues that rich politicians have created in this country. Don't worry, once they start to affect you you'll realise how right I am, it's only a matter of time.

                • jugsy on 31/07/2024 - 19:09
                  -1

                  @Ghost47: It was immigrants at the start, try and concentrate lad

                  • Ghost47 on 31/07/2024 - 19:10
                    -2

                    @jugsy: I mentioned the government in my OP, you're the one who needs to concentrate "lad".

    • freefall101 on 31/07/2024 - 16:39
      +1

      Most of the post-covid ramp up in immigration was student arrivals, not permanent worker arrivals. Excluding covid times, permanent migrants have been 70-80k a year and that has barely changed.

      Worst time ever to start your own business IMO. High interest rates and high costs make a startup really difficult.

      • Ghost47 on 31/07/2024 - 17:18
        +5

        The number of job applicants going up per job ad says otherwise IMO. Even if the amount of permanent migrants/skilled migrants is only a small proportion of the — what, 500k, 600k, maybe? — total net immigrants we bring in each year, like ~70-80k you mentioned that's still 70-80k jobs we need to create each year. 1 in 3 jobs last year was created for the NDIS, i.e. spending taxpayer money to pay the salaries of NDIS service providers to take care of the disabled and elderly. The number of migrants coming in is outpacing the number of jobs being created at 1.4 migrants per new job created, note that article also states employment growth among non-migrant workers had dropped to "essentially zero", and guess who "non-migrants" are? We're heading towards very dangerous territory and the government is doing it all on purpose to suppress wages and keep the property ponzi going. Immigration is at absolutely silly levels, these levels would make sense if the economy was booming but it isn't and hasn't been since rates have gone up.

        Fair point on starting your own business though, one would have to have a lot of money saved to do so or figure out a very cheap way to do it.

        • freefall101 on 31/07/2024 - 23:01
          +2

          As someone working in the recruitment field, the applicants going up isn't the worst thing. What we're finding is people just want to move, covid burnt them out and they want something new. Movement and liquidity in the market isn't the worst thing because things were seriously fooked.

          The NDIS growth is insane though. I also worked with healthcare recruitment, basically it's a shitshow because salaries can't grow - they can't afford it. But they need more and more people. It's a hard game to play, we're completely understaffed in healthcare and construction and yet we can't afford to bring more people in. It's less a problem of too many people and more a problem of a complete skills misalignment, if you're a diesel mechanic you get your pick of insane wages in remote locations or just really great wages in cities, but if you're an admin assistant everyone assumes AI will eat your job.

          I worked with a mining company that was competing heavily for those migrant worker spots, there is a problem that they don't want to train local workers but also because it takes years to train them. We're not bringing in people to flip burgers and provided basic IT support.

          • Ghost47 on 01/08/2024 - 15:42

            @freefall101:

            As someone working in the recruitment field, the applicants going up isn't the worst thing.

            Maybe not for employers because they have a much larger pool of candidates to choose from, but it artificially increases the amount of competition for locals (if immigration wasn't so high in the first place).

            What we're finding is people just want to move, covid burnt them out and they want something new.

            That's the feeling I get too. People get sick of where they're living so feel the need to move to the other side of the world to be happier. The sad thing is that that might last for a while, maybe a year or something but it's not a guarantee to becoming happier in the long term.

            The NDIS growth is insane though. I also worked with healthcare recruitment, basically it's a shitshow because salaries can't grow - they can't afford it. But they need more and more people. It's a hard game to play, we're completely understaffed in healthcare and construction and yet we can't afford to bring more people in.

            Hmm interesting. It's obvious an increase in population will increase demand for health services, the government doesn't seem to realise that though (or worse, they realise it and they don't care because politicians are wealthy so can afford private hospitals etc). They're just happy to keep bringing in 10,000 new people each week as if those people won't put a strain on healthcare, housing, roads etc.

            It's less a problem of too many people and more a problem of a complete skills misalignment, if you're a diesel mechanic you get your pick of insane wages in remote locations or just really great wages in cities, but if you're an admin assistant everyone assumes AI will eat your job.

            I'm not sure if this happened but the government should have always kept an eye on this kind of thing and incentivised people to go into certain fields of work based on real skills shortages (e.g. nuclear technicians) or future needs. Only recently did they bump the price for arts degrees hoping people would be turned away by the cost.

            I worked with a mining company that was competing heavily for those migrant worker spots, there is a problem that they don't want to train local workers but also because it takes years to train them. We're not bringing in people to flip burgers and provided basic IT support.

            Hiring people who may have more training from overseas doesn't seem like a silver bullet solution especially if their training is to completely different standards than what we should accept in Australia. For example would a tradie from a poor third world country understand they shouldn't simply be siliconing everything at a job site? Reminds me of stories like this, where people who are qualified are struggling to get jobs so what gives? We're bringing in qualified people who can't get jobs or struggle to get them which means the "shortage" still exists, we import people who have likely lied about their qualifications (the last paragraph in this article is worth a read) and the more people we bring in the more demand we need for basically all jobs which means we import more people and the cycle continues. Oh, and I have actually met engineers who have migrated from NZ post-COVID. I'm not saying that people don't find the roles they're qualified for, but the fact there are people who don't get roles they're qualified for and which is why we imported them in the first place is a huge issue.

            The entire system is broken, it clearly doesn't work yet if you call out immigration you're branded a racist when in fact many people come to Australia from other Commonwealth nations. If you keep an eye on the media they will never write anything bad about immigration, they'll never say that the housing shortage is due to immigration (it's always the supply of housing which is the cause of the housing crisis, not the demand for housing which is driven by the number of people in the country) which brainwashes people who don't think for themselves into thinking immigration is objectively good.

            We're not bringing in people to flip burgers and provided basic IT support.

            This doesn't really line up with my observations and experience in various workplaces. For one thing I've noticed people with foreign accents working at my nearest fast food joints more and more recently. In the org I worked in when I was interstate the IT team consisted mainly of people from India and they had thick accents. Other people have commented about how their workplace has hired IT staff from overseas.

            The thing about immigration too is that they are normally part of the most skilled and abled people in their country. They have more skills and wealth than their other countrymen, which is exactly why they can afford to migrate to other countries in the first place. This means when they leave their country suffers because they've lost a productive citizen and Western countries gain because employers get a larger candidate pool to pick from.

    • Jimothy Wongingtons on 31/07/2024 - 16:45
      +4

      start your own business.

      As someone with a few small businesses on the side and works for a small business - times be tough rn

      • Ghost47 on 31/07/2024 - 17:19
        +1

        Yeah that's fair, if anything you'd need a lot of capital to start or figure out a cheap way of getting it going. But then I guess you'd run into the problem of demand for your product/services etc. if people are spending less.

  • original15 on 31/07/2024 - 16:44

    Current role through cold application with a job an agency had advertised on LinkedIn. Didn’t even know what company the role was with. The skillset is pretty niche and was in line with my prev roles so a good fit, but on reflection it is surprising it panned out. If I had have known the company prior to cold application I would have been able to leverage a contact.
    Took me 9 months of searching and applying for 3-4 roles in that time. 50% application via network which I think is the most likely method for me to switch roles

  • freefall101 on 31/07/2024 - 17:00

    professional white-collar office environment

    This varies massively on type of role. I'm guessing you're in IT? Because IT sucks right now as a field unless you're in security. The way in the door though is to get a contractor gig and be made permanent.

    For most companies, particularly large ones, 1 and 4 are the same thing. They all filter through into the same applicant tracking system and no one cares on the source. I work with recruitment systems and I still have issues with people forgetting it's an internal hire vs not (despite the big "Internal" flag).

    Agency recruitment is used to fill senior or roles that internal recruitment doesn't have skills for, so it depends where you fall into. I was on the job hunt earlier this year, sometimes I'd talk to agencies about filling senior and more niche roles, I'd go through seek/websites for more generalist roles. Small companies that do contract work elsewhere, it's entirely who you know and word of mouth.

    I was also approached by a few recruiters because I have a decent linkedin profile. Every recruiter lives out of linkedin for white collar roles (and a lot for blue collar these days too), it's the best search engine, the best summary profile and the most integrated platform. It's really worth sprucing up your linkedin page.

    Referrals generally depend on who is referring you, if it's someone from within the team it will generally do better. End of the day, your new boss will be the person who hires you. No matter what company it is, people referred by the hiring manager themselves usually get the job unless someone else incredible comes along. I've worked with quite a few large, listed companies the past few years and it's always the same. Contractors, referrals and internals are your main source of hire outside of entry level roles.

  • nerdycat on 31/07/2024 - 17:07

    Right time and right place for me.

    Spent awhile looking for a job after taking career break from IT. For the last 20 years I’ve had a hobby job that I do occasionally every so often. Met someone at one of these hobby jobs and just had to have no shame and ask them if they knew of any full time roles in their company. Their manager was actually looking to fill a full time position at their workplace that had only been advertised internally. They published this job externally and I had to apply for it and go through the formal job application. Ended up getting the job. Been happily there for over two years.

    My IT skills still come in handy but don’t miss the stress and constant long hours of IT. When I was looking for an IT job I tried Linked in but just always super disappointing. Maybe try a slight pivot where your skills could still be useful.

  • 87percent on 31/07/2024 - 18:23
    +1

    Lot of companies have pulled fundings for projects..

  • Drakesy on 31/07/2024 - 22:43

    For Me.
    1. Word of mouth/referrals/jobs for the boiz
    2. Seek.
    3. Government job boards.

    Everything else is trash. The only time i had a recruiter was where the company had to hire a contractor off their system as it was faster to get me in (2 weeks lead time vs 2 months). Was called up because i modified my Seek Resume a couple of days before, said i'll put your name forward for xx role. 1 day later had an interview with the company, 7 days later started working. It wasn't until i left that i heard she pocketed some $20k over my 1 year tenure - all for 1 phone call…

  • Wiadro on 31/07/2024 - 22:47

    seek
    govt website
    big contracting firms
    ya mate doing cashies

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