Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep36: What you need to know as a job seeker.

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. In today's podcast, I want to talk about what you need to know as a job seeker. So we've all been there, a job seeker. I have been there myself. Many people are exactly in this situation that you

Starting point is 00:00:47 have, that you're finding yourself in right now. So the thing to know is that it's completely normal and it is a temporary phase. However, there are some key points that I want to share today. And the first thing is this. This is also a pattern or a habit I'm seeing online where I see a lot of job seekers getting very distracted with learning and in creating a lot of online content. So I'm not saying that that's not good, right? And that's good if you are in the process of upskilling yourself and doing a lot of learning. And these are the things that you do in your free time. And if you're in the job seeking phase, you don't exactly have the real kind of free time that I'm thinking of. Because let's talk about it.

Starting point is 00:01:48 What is the real job, right, of a job seeker, like a real job? Or the real activity that you should be focused on? And that's 24-7 enhancing your resume so that it fits the role that you are looking for. Communicating that, reaching out to different people in your network, right? Reaching out to recruiters and HR, right? So are you reaching out to people? That's the second point.

Starting point is 00:02:20 And thirdly, are you actively applying and looking for roles and applying for the ones that you are really interested in because i have i also have people you know telling me that oh you know the job market is so tough blah blah blah but when i ask them okay like what kind of jobs are you looking for and they say well anything i'm like what is anything because if you're looking for anything then you you get nothing because if you're not clear on what you're looking for, at least a more defined scope or a more defined industry, defined, I guess, business title, then you are basically searching aimlessly.

Starting point is 00:02:57 And how would you know if you have come across the role that you really want? And that's how the other bits come in, right? Because if you're just applying for a random job, then how is your resume going to be relevant to a variety of jobs that you didn't actually focus on? So then there is going to be a mismatch between your skills and your experiences and how that is articulated in your resume for the company to say okay you know what you are the best candidate that we have found right looking at your resume there are a lot of similarities in terms of like you have the skills and experience but if you're just like random blanket application then how would you know if that's the right one?

Starting point is 00:03:47 Some people also ask me, okay, I receive a lot of advice on creating a lot of content just to get some visibility as a job seeker. So creating content is good, right? But is your content tailored towards the skills that you can offer, the value that you can offer should you be hired? Or are you creating content just to, you know, to apply what you have learned from a random webinar course that you have attended? You know, is it just a, you know, um, uh, something to, you know, feed your creative mind? So is it clear enough that you are looking for a role and what role it is,

Starting point is 00:04:31 regardless of whatever your outreach channel is, right? Whether you want to do it online, you want to do a resume. And in fact, I won't say that, you know, you should keep your options closed, right? In fact, you know, online is a really, really good way to reach out to, you know, recruiters and HR and look for jobs. And what you need to do is, of course, you know, have a LinkedIn profile,

Starting point is 00:04:55 make sure that you are on LinkedIn for the right reasons. And of course, you know, different people are on LinkedIn for different reasons. However, if you're a job seeker, your activity on LinkedIn for different reasons. However, if you're a job seeker, your activity on LinkedIn 24-7 is pretty much to scout through the job section. And even before doing that, make sure that your LinkedIn profile clearly mirrors your resume and that all your strengths, your skills, and how your headline that needs to be enhanced and make sure it's specific. And I use this term specific because I see a lot of profile optimization out there to hit the SEO

Starting point is 00:05:35 and all that other stuff. Yeah, it doesn't really matter because you should know what you're looking for. You don't have to wait for the SEO to, you know, give you some sort of recommendations. If you update your profile correctly, right, then when you go to the job section, the relevant jobs in line with your experiences and skills will pop up. And that is the truth because that was how I found my role and that was how, you know, the right rules were recommended to me. And this is all the same for all the clients that I have helped. A lot of people get confused that the content will help them somewhat where they get a lot of engagement.

Starting point is 00:06:15 But the question is, are you getting engagement from the right people, right? Are these people are the ones that can help you get your immediate next job or you know it's good for professional networking down the road. So it depends on like how, I don't want to use the word desperate, but how urgent is your job search. If it's not urgent then probably it doesn't really matter but if it's really urgent, meaning like you are a fresh graduate, you don't actually have a job, right? And your biggest priority is to get a job, right? To make sure you have an income and then you can support yourself and so forth. So what is really your priority, right? That should determine your actions and your activity and not what is fun, what is cool, and what other people are doing.

Starting point is 00:07:12 So for myself, I actually graduated in 2009 where it was exactly the financial crisis. And the economy was doing really badly, just like right now. And I was really clear that, you know what, I have all these other activities that I want to do. I was in events management internships and all these other things but none of the none of these roles are actually paying me so i thought okay the only roles available at that time to be honest was just with the smaller companies all the hirings of the big companies have closed up right there was no hope there so i said okay fine okay, fine. Like, you know, I'll just take that as a stepping stone and I've just joined the smaller company. And from there

Starting point is 00:07:52 on, right, I put in the effort, I gained skills, I built relationships. And gradually it was from this little small role I had with this small company that led me to bigger, bigger roles with bigger companies. So it is that stepping stone. It's really up to you to make full use of that role. Because that's what I always tell people that 99% of your attention should be focused on your real job. It's good to have an online professional presence. I'm not saying it's bad. And in fact, maybe in the next episode, I will share a little bit more how you can establish your online presence. But, you know, that's later.

Starting point is 00:08:30 But 99% should be focused on your real job, right? How you're going to add value and how you're going to build relationships. Because those relationships go a really, really long way. The people who have worked with you before, they have a a very very clear view on what you can do rather than just a couple of people online seeing a couple of posts that you do and then okay suddenly they're gonna hire you yeah it might happen but the probability of that happening is really low unless you are a content writer you are a digital marketer you are a web developer basically something that you can see online where you know that's that's their output. But if you are not, so if you're a corporate professional,

Starting point is 00:09:10 you're an accountant, a lawyer, engineer, you know marketing, you're in sales, then that's quite a different game. That's quite a different game. Yeah, so just to do a quick recap on what you can do as a job seeker. Number one, make sure that you have the most precise resume or LinkedIn profile that clearly reflects your skills, experiences and the value that you can bring to your next employer. And number two, don't get distracted with other random things out there. Really focus your networking effort to connect with people who may be in the industry that you are interested in, recruiters in your local areas. You can also connect with people from the HR department in the company that you might be interested in working with. And you should have a list of companies that you want to work with just for a start. And thirdly, is to scout through the roles available and really start applying. And if

Starting point is 00:10:16 you have to, tailor your resume so that it actually fits the job description. Don't send one random resume out for every role because the market is very challenging right now so if you could have done that in the past now it's probably not something that you can do so just focus on those three things and like i said the overarching message in this podcast is if you are a job seeker your focus and activity should be nailing a job as soon as possible, right? And not get distracted with other things. So I wish you all good luck.

Starting point is 00:10:52 And if you need help tailoring your resume or you want your resume review or a discussion on your career growth strategy, you can feel free to reach out to me. And yeah, let's have a chat and I look forward to helping you and good luck. Bye.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep36: What you need to know as a job seeker.

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