#011 - The 5 Habits Of Highly Effective Jobseekers

Part 1: The 5 Habits Of Highly Effective Jobseekers

Part 2: Q&A (disclosing your current salary, cover letters (!), and how to get the attention of recruiters and hiring managers)

Part 3: In Conclusion

The 5 Habits of Highly Effective Jobseekers

Author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, has the following quote:

“Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day. According to researchers at Duke University, habits account for about 40 percent of our behaviors on any given day. Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits.”

In other words, your job search results are and will be the sum of your job search habits.

Before 2023, you might not have needed ‘job search habits.’ If you were looking for a new job in 2021, you might’ve been able to just apply for a few roles you were pretty qualified for, do a little bit of interview prep, and get an offer or two.

While that might work right now, I’m hearing from a lot of candidates that it isn’t. If you’ve been looking for a job at any point this year, you’ve probably had the same experience. That means you’d be wise to adopt a few habits that will make your job search as effective as buying a toddler a toy so they keep quiet. (No guarantees but probably pretty darn effective.)

Without further ado, here are those habits:

1. Apply only to roles that you’re very qualified for

As I mentioned two weeks ago, now isn’t the best time to change role and industry. The wisest thing you can do right now - for your job search and for your mental health - is to apply only to roles you’re very qualified for.

I know this can feel nerve-wracking. You might be thinking, “I need to send out as many applications as possible so I have more of a chance!” I get it, believe me. But think about it from a hiring manager’s perspective. There are so many candidates out there with the required skillsets; why would they spend their precious time on someone ‘shooting their shot’ when they can spend their precious time interviewing only highly-qualified candidates?

And think about it from a recruiter's perspective. If I were to send my hiring managers a bunch of CVs from unqualified candidates - when they know there are plenty of qualified candidates on the market - how are they going to feel? What are they going to think? They’re going to feel frustrated and they’re going to think, “Why are they sending me CVs of unqualified people? Are they any good at their job?”

A caveat I’ll put here is that women and ethnic minorities are more likely to talk themselves out of applying for jobs they’re qualified for. You don’t have to have experience in literally every point of the job description to apply for the role. If you hit almost all of the requirements, please apply.

2. Tailor your applications

If you’re applying to similar roles - which you should be, given the above - this shouldn’t be that hard.

For example, if I were applying to new recruiter roles, they’re going to be pretty similar. One might have more of a focus on tech roles, one might have more of a focus on projects, one might be higher-volume recruitment. It wouldn’t take me long to adapt my applications to those roles.

If you’re finding it time-consuming and energy-sapping to keep tailoring your applications, perhaps you’re casting your net too wide.

A quick example of how to tailor your application:

Let’s say a recruitment role asks for global experience in recruiting. “Experience in recruiting different disciplines globally” the job description might read. If I were applying for a role asking for this, I might break it down into two bullet points:

• “Recruited 75+ candidates in the past 2 years across the UK, Spain, Sweden, Germany, and the US.”

• “Recruited for the following roles and areas: Cybersecurity, Marketing, Data Science, IT, HR, Strategy, DevOps, L&D, Mobile Partnerships, and more.”

Leave no doubt you can do what they’re asking for.

3. Network

Networking. Otherwise known as “talking to people you know.” If you haven’t reached out to everyone you know by now and told them you’re on the job hunt, well, I’d advise you to think about what’s stopping you.

Pride? Fear? Shame? You don’t want to bother people? You don’t think they’ll be able to help?

And yet, if the shoe were on the other foot, I’m sure you’d appreciate that someone reached out to you. You might even be flattered they asked for your help. And if they said they’d been putting this off for a while, you’d probably (lovingly) think, “Well that’s silly.”

When you do this, some people won’t reply. Some will reply but won’t be able to help. Some will reply and will be able to help. Even if only one or two people can actually help that moves you light-years ahead in your job search. A warm lead or intro in this market? That’s even more useful than a pizza slicer (maybe).

4. Use LinkedIn every day

LinkedIn could’ve been included in the above but it’s so important it deserves its own point. It would’ve been akin to including Mozart in a ‘best-piece-of-music-composed-by-a-5-year-old’ list. Insulting.

For one, LinkedIn is free. Two, it has 900 million users, so the people you want to be in contact with are probably on there. Three, getting more eyeballs on your (properly filled-out) LinkedIn profile can only be a good thing. Four, you can demonstrate your hard-won experience and knowledge by commenting on posts and/or even creating your own content.

When it comes to using social media, there’s some evidence that 90% are ‘lurkers’, 9% engage, and 1% create content. So if you don’t create content but you do engage in the comments, you’ll be part of the 9%. That already puts you ahead of - wait for it - 91% of people. (Quick maths.)

Leaving comments on recruiters’ and hiring managers’ posts is an opportunity for you to demonstrate to potentially thousands and thousands of people - including those who are the decision-makers when it comes to hiring - that you have experience, knowledge, skills, and a great attitude. For free. An opportunity worth taking, I’m sure you’ll agree.

This is why you need to have a good ‘headline’ and a properly filled-out profile. If you leave a well-thought-out comment and it piques the interest of a potential recruiter or hiring manager, your name and headline are the first things they’ll see. If your headline doesn’t explicitly say what you do, they might not click on you. So instead of saying something like “Gaming Enthusiast” or “Just a guy who loves films”, put your job title (or the job title you’re looking for). Make the person want to click on you.

And then please, please make sure your profile is filled out. I’ve seen so many posts in which people are saying they need a job and then I click on their profile and it’s barely filled out. They might’ve had the right eyeballs on their page but missed out on opportunities because if a recruiter or hiring manager can’t see the information they need right away, they’ll most likely move on.

To summarise: use your job title as your headline. Fill out your profile (your ‘About’ and your ‘Experience’ sections in particular). Find potential hiring managers and recruiters. Click on the little bell at the top right of their profile so you get notified of all their posts. Start engaging every day.

(This will also probably make your ‘cold’ outreach a lot more effective. A recruiter or hiring manager is much more likely to respond to a DM if you’ve been active on their posts.)

5. Prep for your interviews

If you’re doing all of the above and you’re getting interviews but you’re not prepping for them, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. Like, monumental. You wouldn’t show up to a date without showering, would you? (I hope not.)

I wrote a LinkedIn post the other day about how I prepped for my interview for my current job and it went a little something like this:

1. Did some research on the company (checked their ‘About’ page, their social media pages, the news)

2. Did some research on the industry (news, challenges, opportunities, etc)

3. Did some research on the interviewers (how long they'd been at the company, what they'd done beforehand, their star sign, etc)

4. Wrote down some questions I might be asked based on the job description and then wrote down answers for them using STAR (situation, task, action, result)

5. Practiced saying these answers out loud (while pacing the room like a madman)

6. Wrote down different sets of questions to ask the recruiter, the hiring manager, HR, and other team members

7. Asked a friend who’d recently made the transition I was trying to make what kind of questions he was asked in his interviews and how he responded (or wished he would’ve responded)

All in all, this took me a few hours.

Believe it or not, if you prep thoroughly for your interview, you’ll stand out. It seems basic, I know, but I quite often get feedback from hiring managers that a candidate clearly hasn’t prepped for their interview. This, obviously, is disappointing to them. It’s not like they want the candidate to have done no preparation. They’re pretty much always hoping the next candidate they interview is the candidate they want to hire.

Be the one who preps like Michael Jordan prepped to come back to the NBA in ‘96, and you’ll have a great chance of being that candidate - even in a job market that’s as competitive as Taylor Swift is prolific.

Q&A

1. “I’d like to hear about how to handle the tricky topic of disclosing your current salary to a prospective employer. Especially if you (for whatever reason) are being paid below the market rate for your current role.”

An employer shouldn’t be asking about your current salary. It only perpetuates people being underpaid, and this disproportionately impacts women and ethnic minorities.

But if they do ask you, here’s how you can handle it:

“I’m interviewing for roles that pay between [x] and [x], and I’m flexible within that range based on whether there’s a bonus, whether the role is on-site, hybrid, or remote, and what the benefits are. With that said, can you share with me the range for this role?”

If they press you for it after this, well, I’d be wary of that. I’m not saying it’s definitely a red flag, but it might be.

Also, I know it might be tempting to lie here and make up a salary. I get it, believe me. But I’m not going to advocate for lying. You never know how it might come back to bite you. I’ve heard all sorts of horror stories when it comes to people lying in the recruitment process. It’s not worth it.

2. “Is there any point in writing a cover letter? And if so, what should I write?”

To write a cover letter, or to not write a cover letter? (A line from my poorly-received version of Hamlet.)

I didn’t write one for my current role. But if I had written one, it probably would’ve gone a little something like this:

“Hi there,

I have a confession to make: I’m one of your 249 million active monthly users. (Candy Crush is my go-to.)

Anyway, perhaps it would be more useful for you to know that I have 5 years of recruitment experience, most of that coming through recruiting for performance marketing roles. In the past few years, I’ve placed over 50 candidates into PPC, SEO, programmatic, ASO, paid social, and display roles. I’ve recruited mostly for mid-level and senior roles - not for gaming but for e-commerce, app-based, and entertainment businesses. (So, similar.)

I can see you have 6 data roles open and you mention this role might also cover data recruitment. I’m relatively new to the field of data but in my 6 months of experience I’ve placed 4 permanent candidates and 9 freelance candidates into new roles.

I’m currently in a perm role and I’m aware this is a 9-month FTC. Is that a less secure role than a perm role? Perhaps, but this is how I see it: at worst, I’ll get 9 months of experience doing in-house recruitment at the gaming company responsible for a great deal of my (happily spent) screen time. Not a bad deal.

Thanks for reading and I hope we get to talk soon.

Cheers,

Matt

PS Kingfomarket looks amazing.

If you’re not at all qualified for the role, it’s unlikely a cover letter will make a difference. If you’re mostly qualified for a role but don’t hit all the requirements, a cover letter might help convince the hiring manager to interview you. I’d say it’s worth a shot.

If you are going to write one, feel free to do some of the things I’ve done in mine:

• Highlight relevant achievements

• Make it clear you’ve read the job description

• Make it clear you’ve written the cover letter for this role and this company

• Kept it relatively short (the above is just over 200 words)

3. “My main question right now would be how do I increase the chance of a recruiter / hiring manager or other contact responding to a networking or info request (usually about a role)? My messages are always polite, brief, and relevant to a company or role I'm interested in but so few respond. I know people are super busy but I feel like I'm just up against a wall of silence most of the time.”

The sad truth here is that most people won’t reply. People are busy, they forget, they read the message and think it’s really good and want to reply and then get caught up in something else and it leaves their mind. I know it feels personal, but it’s not.

Saying that, even if your messages are always polite, brief, and relevant, it depends what your ‘networking’ or ‘info’ requests are. If your networking request is to ‘jump on a call’ so you can talk about the company or what roles are available, a recruiter or hiring manager probably won’t respond to that. As we know, people are busy. And if your info request is to ‘jump on a call’ to find out more about the role, that also probably won’t get a response. If you haven’t applied to the role and thus aren’t in a recruiter’s recruitment process, they probably won’t spend their time on a call with you.

Now, if you’ve applied to the role and you’re qualified to do the role, it can be helpful to let the recruiter or hiring manager know that you’ve applied and that you’d love to talk. There are no guarantees but this might prevent you from getting lost in the shuffle.

(For more on reaching out to recruiters and hiring managers, have a read of this and this.)

In Conclusion

They said it couldn’t be done. They said I couldn’t use Michael Jordan and Taylor Swift in the same sentence. But here we are.

I’d like to thank my girlfriend, my parents, and you, the reader for making this possible.

Here’s to a great week of job searching.

Cheers!

PS If you missed last week’s newsletter, here you go: Be Careful What (Job) You Wish For

PPS Just finished watching The Pharmacist on Netflix. Highly recommend.

PPPS Yes, I watch a fair amount of TV (apparently).