Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep101: Before starting your job search, avoid these 7 mistakes.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Before you start your job search, you want to be aware of these seven things. And these are the seven mistakes that I find a lot of job seekers make that they do not even know that they are making, unfortunately.

Starting point is 00:00:41 So in this episode, I'm going to go through the top seven mistakes that you should avoid even before you start any job search process at all. Number one, realizing the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect job. Now, if you're going out there in your job search looking for this perfect dream job, ideal job, I'm sorry, but you will likely be very disappointed because normally what's on your mind in terms of like the quote-unquote perfect job does not necessarily exist in the job descriptions that you're looking out there. And therefore, if you're kind of having this sort of mindset, you may find yourself spending a lot of time looking for this perfect job and not end up

Starting point is 00:01:26 finding anything or maybe even worse feeling extremely disappointed as well. Let's get to point number two. The mistake number two that a lot of job seekers make is assuming that their resume is a lot better than what it actually is. Now, the thing is, if you're writing your resume on your own, you're not getting feedback, you're not getting advice, you're not talking to a hiring manager, in most instances, it's going to be very easy to think that your current resume version is the best version. And understandably so, because if you're writing it about your own achievements, your own career story, sure, you might think that it looks perfect, it looks awesome but in somebody else's eyes, it may not necessarily be the case. So the point I'm trying to make here is just recognize that feedback may be necessary if you want to have a very effective resume, a much higher

Starting point is 00:02:23 quality resume that can really help you get the job. Okay, now moving on to the third mistake or rather the third mindset that a lot of people are not having the right mindset, I should say, is complaining without taking action. Complaining without taking action. So now the thing that I've been seeing is when job seekers are looking for a job, they tend to be complaining about the challenges, they complain about the struggles, they complain about this, and they complain about that. Now, to share your experiences and struggles is fine, but if you find yourself spending more time complaining versus, you know, time spent strategizing or thinking about what you can

Starting point is 00:03:03 improve and what you can enhance, getting the right feedback, if you find yourself having that wrong ratio of complaining more than taking action, this is where you know that, okay, this is probably going to be a problem because if you're not pivoting, then how is it going to get better? How can you get better in your job search or be more successful if you don't know which strategy is working or not working and really testing it out and getting the right feedback from the right people okay so make sure that you do that now moving on to the fourth mistake that i find a lot of job seekers make as well is not improving their communication skills before the

Starting point is 00:03:42 interview the reality check is this, right? An interview is basically a test of your communication skills, for lack of a better word, because you are talking to the hiring manager or HR, whoever, and if you know in advance that you always feel anxiety, you always feel nervous, or you're not really good in your communication skills, you really want to practice that way before getting the interview. Because let me be honest with you, when you get that job interview, you're already feeling pretty nervous. Then layer in the fact that you're not that great at articulating or expressing yourself. So this could be a really big problem, you know, the moment you go for the job interview and at the same time like it could be your dream job or it could be one of those roles that you really want so there's really a lot of added

Starting point is 00:04:29 pressure that is not necessary for you to go through if you prepare if you had prepared in advance you probably wouldn't feel that much anxiety and it could also set you up for success a lot better the fifth mistake that a lot of job seekers make is to spend too much time with that one job search strategy or rather lack of job search strategy without pivoting and without making adjustments if you are not seeing any results. So one of the really good tricks to identify is if you are spending more than three months searching for a job but you're not getting any interviews, you're not getting any job offers, but you feel like you're doing everything right. Anything that's more than three months, my best advice is that you really need to reflect on what you are doing wrong that you may not realize, right? Because like I said

Starting point is 00:05:14 earlier, you may think that you have done everything perfectly, but it may not necessarily be the case. And anything more than three months is really a good time to just pause and get a second opinion, get a different perspective, because maybe the way that you're approaching your job search strategy is just a little bit off. Right. But without getting feedback, you may not even know what you're doing wrong. And that could be a big problem. All right. Moving on to mistake number six that job seekers make during their job search is to not talk to a hiring manager and by hiring manager i mean hr corporate leaders or business leaders who actually knows what happens behind the scenes now if you're a job seeker who's been talking to other job seekers or talking to your friends or your peers or just

Starting point is 00:05:57 doing random googles or youtube videos um i'm sorry to say but a lot of advice that you might be getting may not be the right one because these people that you're talking to may be giving you theory or just their personal experiences. For example, for me, I used to be a former corporate leader. I have hired people. I've interviewed people. I also work very closely with HR, really understanding the end-to-end process. And this is a really important point and you need to learn how the end-to-end process works so that you can get ahead of yourself. But unfortunately, most people are not hiring managers and therefore, you just want to be cautious that the advice that you're getting may not always be correct. So just make sure that you're getting advice from the

Starting point is 00:06:38 right people, okay? Now, on to the last mistake, mistake number seven, which I think is really the most critical one. Now, you can go about job searching as seven, which I think is really the most critical one. Now, you can go about job searching as much as you want. You can be changing jobs every year, whatever it is. But it's really important before you again jump into another job search to really recognize and ask yourself, why are you leaving that previous job? Why are you not happy in this current company? Because I noticed that a lot of job seekers, what happens is probably the situation at their current company is not so good. They're not very good with people, they're getting into arguments, maybe they're having problems delivering their work, right? They are having problems with their bosses, basically problems here and there. Now, this is a good indicator that you may be lacking some skills to actually

Starting point is 00:07:26 survive in the corporate world or to even do well at any corporate job. So it's just a good reflection for you to ask yourself, are you either having the wrong mindset when starting your corporate job or even the wrong mindset about the corporate world in general? Or are you having some sort of skills gap that you didn't enhance or maybe you need more learning, you need more development because it is usually the incorrect mindset or the lack of corporate skills that really creates a lot of drama at the workplace, right? Drama with people, drama with like solving problems, drama with workload in general. So just be cautious and really understanding why you're looking for the next

Starting point is 00:08:05 job rather than just going for like the job, job, job, job, job, which may not be very fulfilling because if you are not fixing the underlying problems, what will happen is that when you go on to your next job, these problems will happen again. So what you want to just make sure is that we kind of eliminate all these problems to the extent possible. Okay, so for these corporate mindset issues, skills gap issues, it's something that I go into a lot more detail in my free training. So if that's something that you find helpful, you can always register for free at www.growyourcorporatecareer.com. But anyway, the purpose of this episode is to really share with you the things that you need to do before even going all out on your job search

Starting point is 00:08:45 if you really want to be successful. Now, the main point of the entire episode is to tell you that please do not go in without a plan and please do not go into any job search without the right mindset, okay? So just make sure that you do not repeat any of these mistakes that I've just shared in the list of seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Now, if you learn something new in today's episode, drop me a message on LinkedIn at Mayping Lim and let me know. And if you find that these mistakes that I shared today can help somebody else, maybe it's a friend or a peer, definitely share this episode so that they can also learn what not to do to increase their job search success so with that i wish you all the best in your job search journey and always go

Starting point is 00:09:32 in with intention and then you will get the best results till next time bye

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep101: Before starting your job search, avoid these 7 mistakes.

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