We’d like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum.
This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are – or become – political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!
Found a Better Job
Willem-de-Blois
Posts: 128 Forumite
After being given my notice in February, I started a new and better job last Monday with a Sunday Times Top 25 company and a Times Top 100 graduate employer.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4904252
I thought that I would share my job search strategy in the hope that I can help others land positions. I played the numbers game using a speculative letter and CV combination. I purchased the letter and a CV from a CV writing company that I saw to be recommended by The Guardian's careers section on its website. This cost about £40 and it is perhaps the best investment that I have made.
To play the numbers game, I began by compiling a list of employers in my profession in the geographical areas that I was interested in working in. From memory, the original master list consisted of about 50 companies.
Therefore there is a financial investment at this stage: money to pay for a well written letter and CV and postage costs.
After the main bulk of letters went out, I began looking for leads to more companies to which I could send my speculative enquiries. I found university careers sites an excellent source of leads. Some job listings were for graduates, others for placement year students and others were for summer work experience students. Regardless, if a job description fits your role, send the letter and CV off. If you are not a student or a recent graduate, ask a friend for password access. Employers target universities and the competition from other applicants will be lower than that from the well-known job seeking websites. I went to an open day which was put on by a major company after finding its job advertisement on a university website so I saw the competition. There were only about 20 job seekers and some of whom had degrees that were not related to the role. Therefore my competition was likely less than 10. I was ultimately offered this position after I was interviewed a week after the open day. After succeeding at this interview, the start date was postponed to September so I continued my search and landed an even better position elsewhere.
Interview Success, But...
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4960451
Let me emphasise that most of my speculative letters went by post, not email. Often people in authority get over 50 emails per day and a letter put into a physical inbox still carries more gravitas.
During my job search, I averaged one interview per week. On one occasion, I had two interviews in one day. Obviously, the leads that I was getting through university careers sites were warmer than those from the cold, speculative approaches and I had a better rate of interviews through the university careers site route.
In summary, I received three job offers and a likely offer by an American company if I moved to Godalming and put up with its excessive rents.
The offer that I accepted is a graduate scheme with a Times Top 100 graduate employer. I certainly was not targeting graduate schemes owing to the competition involved and because I graduated four years ago. In the university site, I saw that this company was advertising a student placement role so I decided to send it a speculative graduate job enquiry.
The interviewer who would become my line manager started the interview praising my letter and CV and commending my sense of timing because he was just about to advertise a vacant graduate role! He said that he could get me a higher salary than what I was asking for and that I'd be better off returning for a second interview with the associate director and attending an assessment day with corporate HR in order to get on the graduate scheme.
After passing the second interview with my line manager's boss, I attended the assessment centre with corporate HR with only two other graduates who were going for other jobs and therefore not competing with me. As I was recently working in a similar role to what I was going for, I found the assessment day relatively easy. The result was that I performed 'very strongly across the board' and I was offered the job.
My hopes during the job search were to land another job as soon as possible with a bigger salary than my last one. I achieved this result but also the bonus of being put on a graduate scheme. This is a bonus that will become bigger than my current role as the years go by because I will receive company-wide training and predetermined career progression. For a start the golden hello compensated for months of unemployment and the company is obliged to keep me on a structured training programme.
So, play the numbers game and then focus on warmer leads where competition will be lower. As it turned out, I got onto a graduate scheme by accident because I had little or no competition because the timing of my letter was perfect.
Some other points:
Major online websites
It does no harm to upload a CV to these sites as a passive element to your overall strategy but all of the responses to your CV will come from recruitment agencies. I attended two interviews through agencies which I performed well in but I felt there and then that I was not a match to the roles. Agencies will push you to interviews if you are a fairly decent match. Still, if your ego can handle the rejection that is associated with the numbers game, then use these interviews for practice. After a while, you do not need to revise the likely questions based on your CV because you've said the same things before. The only revision needed after a while is just that of the particular company and role.
If your main strategy relies on the major job sites and recruitment agencies, then prepare for long-term unemployment!
Job Centre
When I told my job centre advisor my strategy, he had nothing to rebuke me over. I just had to fill something in my job seeking log book to tick a box for the DWP. He knew that this strategy would yield fruit sooner rather than later.
Job Offers
With this approach, you might be attending interviews every week so it is a good idea to keep a mental list of the companies that you would most want to work for. If you receive an offer from one of the lesser companies, you can hold them off for as long as possible or decline them. There is such a gap between the quality of the first job that I was offered at the beginning of April and that of the company that I joined, that it is quite frightening. Our fates in life are based on these types of decisions at crossroads!
I hope this can be of help to others.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4904252
I thought that I would share my job search strategy in the hope that I can help others land positions. I played the numbers game using a speculative letter and CV combination. I purchased the letter and a CV from a CV writing company that I saw to be recommended by The Guardian's careers section on its website. This cost about £40 and it is perhaps the best investment that I have made.
To play the numbers game, I began by compiling a list of employers in my profession in the geographical areas that I was interested in working in. From memory, the original master list consisted of about 50 companies.
Therefore there is a financial investment at this stage: money to pay for a well written letter and CV and postage costs.
After the main bulk of letters went out, I began looking for leads to more companies to which I could send my speculative enquiries. I found university careers sites an excellent source of leads. Some job listings were for graduates, others for placement year students and others were for summer work experience students. Regardless, if a job description fits your role, send the letter and CV off. If you are not a student or a recent graduate, ask a friend for password access. Employers target universities and the competition from other applicants will be lower than that from the well-known job seeking websites. I went to an open day which was put on by a major company after finding its job advertisement on a university website so I saw the competition. There were only about 20 job seekers and some of whom had degrees that were not related to the role. Therefore my competition was likely less than 10. I was ultimately offered this position after I was interviewed a week after the open day. After succeeding at this interview, the start date was postponed to September so I continued my search and landed an even better position elsewhere.
Interview Success, But...
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4960451
Let me emphasise that most of my speculative letters went by post, not email. Often people in authority get over 50 emails per day and a letter put into a physical inbox still carries more gravitas.
During my job search, I averaged one interview per week. On one occasion, I had two interviews in one day. Obviously, the leads that I was getting through university careers sites were warmer than those from the cold, speculative approaches and I had a better rate of interviews through the university careers site route.
In summary, I received three job offers and a likely offer by an American company if I moved to Godalming and put up with its excessive rents.
The offer that I accepted is a graduate scheme with a Times Top 100 graduate employer. I certainly was not targeting graduate schemes owing to the competition involved and because I graduated four years ago. In the university site, I saw that this company was advertising a student placement role so I decided to send it a speculative graduate job enquiry.
The interviewer who would become my line manager started the interview praising my letter and CV and commending my sense of timing because he was just about to advertise a vacant graduate role! He said that he could get me a higher salary than what I was asking for and that I'd be better off returning for a second interview with the associate director and attending an assessment day with corporate HR in order to get on the graduate scheme.
After passing the second interview with my line manager's boss, I attended the assessment centre with corporate HR with only two other graduates who were going for other jobs and therefore not competing with me. As I was recently working in a similar role to what I was going for, I found the assessment day relatively easy. The result was that I performed 'very strongly across the board' and I was offered the job.
My hopes during the job search were to land another job as soon as possible with a bigger salary than my last one. I achieved this result but also the bonus of being put on a graduate scheme. This is a bonus that will become bigger than my current role as the years go by because I will receive company-wide training and predetermined career progression. For a start the golden hello compensated for months of unemployment and the company is obliged to keep me on a structured training programme.
So, play the numbers game and then focus on warmer leads where competition will be lower. As it turned out, I got onto a graduate scheme by accident because I had little or no competition because the timing of my letter was perfect.
Some other points:
Major online websites
It does no harm to upload a CV to these sites as a passive element to your overall strategy but all of the responses to your CV will come from recruitment agencies. I attended two interviews through agencies which I performed well in but I felt there and then that I was not a match to the roles. Agencies will push you to interviews if you are a fairly decent match. Still, if your ego can handle the rejection that is associated with the numbers game, then use these interviews for practice. After a while, you do not need to revise the likely questions based on your CV because you've said the same things before. The only revision needed after a while is just that of the particular company and role.
If your main strategy relies on the major job sites and recruitment agencies, then prepare for long-term unemployment!
Job Centre
When I told my job centre advisor my strategy, he had nothing to rebuke me over. I just had to fill something in my job seeking log book to tick a box for the DWP. He knew that this strategy would yield fruit sooner rather than later.
Job Offers
With this approach, you might be attending interviews every week so it is a good idea to keep a mental list of the companies that you would most want to work for. If you receive an offer from one of the lesser companies, you can hold them off for as long as possible or decline them. There is such a gap between the quality of the first job that I was offered at the beginning of April and that of the company that I joined, that it is quite frightening. Our fates in life are based on these types of decisions at crossroads!
I hope this can be of help to others.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply
Categories
- All Categories
- 352.1K Banking & Borrowing
- 253.6K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
- 454.2K Spending & Discounts
- 245.2K Work, Benefits & Business
- 600.8K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
- 177.5K Life & Family
- 259K Travel & Transport
- 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
- 16K Discuss & Feedback
- 37.7K Read-Only Boards