Looking for a job? Three easy ways you can get an edge over your competition
Looking for a job? Here are three easy ways you can get an edge over your competition, and ensure that you stand out as an ideal candidate for the role.
Job hunting can be a long and nail biting process. From scouring recruitment sites and reaching out to your network for opportunities, to waiting to hear whether you’ve been invited to interview. And there’s so much that can go wrong, and so many other ideal candidates to compete with.
And while there are clever ways to make the process easier, with services like Job Nexus in which you submit your CV and the types of jobs you are looking for, and let them forward your information, you still need to make sure you’ve got your basics right.
To help you find (and land) your perfect role, here are three easy ways you can get an edge over your competition, and ensure that you stand out as an ideal candidate.
1) Invest in a CV that will impress
If you want to increase your chances of being invited to interview, you have to make sure your CV outshines your competition. It not only needs to demonstrate that you’re the right candidate for the job, but it also needs to look and sound professional.
However, the chances are you’re not a professional CV writer. So what do you do? Scour articles and blogs hoping to glean enough free tips to get yours right? Or invest in professional help and be confident that you’re conveying the right impression?
If you’re serious about finding the right role, it’s wise to invest in giving yourself an advantage – especially if the completion is fierce.
There are plenty of CV writers who will craft your CV for you. Or you can buy our CV and Cover Letter Kit and learn how to write your own (and tweak it to fit every role you apply for). We’ll explain the seven elements to every CV, show you how to use the STAR model, and even explain how to handle your career gap.
2) Make every cover letter unique
If you’re firing your CV out with the same impersonal cover letter for every job application, don’t be surprised if you don’t receive too many positive replies.
With so much competition for roles, you need to ensure that your cover letter or email doesn’t just impress – it gets your CV seen by the right people. And this means spending time on each cover letter to ensure that it includes all the information that particular recruiter or employer needs (and no more).
You can learn the six steps of writing the perfect cover letter (and how to write a pain letter) here.
3) Update your LinkedIn profile
Too many jobseekers underestimate the importance of their LinkedIn profile. They either assume that recruiters won’t check it, or hope that their cover letter and CV will do all the work for them.
So they don’t worry that their LinkedIn profile was last updated a couple of years ago. That it’s only half completed. Or that they’ve just had a stab at it without really knowing what they were doing.
But that’s a dangerous risk to take. According to research, as many as 87% of recruiters said they use LinkedIn to find and vet prospective employees. And 36% admitted they had declined to interview a candidate, or rejected an applicant after looking at their social media profile and posts.
The simple fact is that if you are serious about finding a job today, you need to have a LinkedIn profile that is up to date, completed properly and to best practice. So if you want to give yourself an edge over less-savvy applicants competing for the same roles as you, make sure your LinkedIn profile stands out for the right reasons.
Find out how we can help you write a LinkedIn profile recruiters and employers will love here.
It all comes down to marketing
Landing your dream role really comes down to marketing. Get your marketing tools (in this case your CV, cover letter and LinkedIn profile) right, and you’ll sell yourself as an ideal candidate for interview.
Get your marketing wrong, and you’ll either slip under the radar completely – your CV and LinkedIn profile going unseen or unnoticed – or you’ll actually turn off a recruiter or potential employer.
So make sure you know the value of your personal brand, and invest in help to ensure that your career marketing tools outshine the competition and ensure that you’re the one who gets hired.
Photo by Artem Bali
