Where and how to search for job opportunities
Once you know that you're ready to find a new job or career, where do you start to look for opportunities? Here, we discuss how to find job advertisements on different platforms such as an organisation's website or on job boards. We also look at how you can advertise your availability for work using LinkedIn and by liaising with recruiters.
An organisation's website
If you have a clear preference for a particular organisation or company, it is first worth checking their website for job vacancies. This is the most direct way of finding out if there are currently any jobs available at that organisation.
Many of the larger organisations have their own in-house recruitment teams and operate their recruitment process in a very specific way.
Look out for the contact details of talent acquisition managers because you can talk to them about a particular vacancy or ask them to keep you in mind for future roles.
If you do find a job vacancy of interest to you via this route, remember to conduct thorough research into the organisation. This will help you at all stages of the application process.
Job boards
Job boards are websites that employers and recruiters use to advertise open positions. There are some large generalist job boards such as Indeed, Glassdoor and LinkedIn Jobs. These advertise vacancies across all industries and sectors.
Job aggregators are similar to job boards, but they collate job vacancies from different places across the web and redirect you to the relevant site where you can apply.
Niche or specialised job boards advertise fewer vacancies, but they are focussed on specific industries.
Remember, when you are searching job boards, you can search by skills as well as job title, organisation or sector. You can use this strategy if you want to keep your options quite broad.
The following video provides more insight into job boards and gives several examples of job boards that you can use. You can download a list of links to all job boards discussed in the video.
Hello everyone. I’m Eamon Dubaissi, a Research Staff Developer with Prosper. In this video, we will be taking a closer look at job boards, understanding what they are and how to use them in your job search. The information contained in this video is correct at the time of recording, so please bear in mind that some of the details may change with time. By the end of the video, you should have a good understanding of what job boards are and how they have evolved over time. You should know the difference between job boards and job aggregators, and also have an appreciation that there are some large, generalised job boards that dominate the market, but also many smaller, niche job boards that cover specialist areas. Finally, we will touch upon the hidden jobs market, what it is and how it might lead to opportunities that are not advertised on job boards. So let’s start with the basics. What exactly are job boards? As a postdoc, it’s possible that you’ve never even used a job board before, especially if you’ve never worked beyond academia or stayed in the same research group for most of your career. Perhaps you have found previous roles through word of mouth, posts on journal websites or social media. One job board which might be more familiar to some of you is jobs.ac.uk, which advertises vacancies in academic, research science, and related professions. These days, job boards refer to websites that employers use to advertise their vacancies to jobseekers. You might see them also called a job site, job portal, job website, or employment website. They essentially create the first connection between an employer or recruiter acting on behalf of an employer, and those looking for jobs. Job boards as we know them began in the early days of the internet in the 1990s, but it took a while for a sufficient number of people to be regularly using the internet for them to really take off. Even in the mid-90s, most people were hired through classified ads in newspapers. It wasn’t till the turn of the millennium that internet job boards took over. Before newspaper classified ads, jobs tended to be advertised in job centres, often with ads displayed on physical boards, or via face-to-face meetings with recruiters. Many of today’s well-known job boards first launched online in the mid to late ’90s, with monster.com often regarded as the first online public job board. A pure jobs board works directly with employers to advertise their open positions. They don’t advertise jobs posted on other job boards. The job seeker applies to the open position either on the job board site itself or by redirection to the employer’s website. Job aggregators, on the other hand, compile lists of jobs from different boards. They are sometimes called job search engines, and they essentially search multiple job boards, giving a wide spectrum of job ads from everywhere. Aggregators are useful for returning a lot of different jobs, but the user experience can be clunky as there is a lot of redirection to other websites. These days, many of the largest job boards operate a hybrid model, whereby they advertise job boards by working directly with employers, but also aggregate relevant jobs from elsewhere. Generalist job boards describe those that advertise jobs across a whole range of sectors and industries. There are many of these job boards, but the market is dominated by a few very large organisations. At the time of recording, the largest are Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn Jobs. Each of these job boards have several similar features, but they also have key elements that they are best known for. Currently, Indeed is the largest job board. It has the most jobs advertised and is the most popular by site visitors. Glassdoor is also very popular, and it is known for its emphasis on company culture and salary estimates. It has employee reviews of companies that can help you to get a feel for what it might be like to work there. Whilst other job boards now have these features, Glassdoor was the first to use them in this way. LinkedIn Jobs is integrated into the LinkedIn platform, so you can search for jobs on the main search bar. It advertises a lot of jobs, but it has the additional benefit of being able to make connections with employees that work in the organisation advertising the job. Making these connections allows you to ask more detailed questions and arrange informational interviews. Of course, using each of these three job boards interchangeably is a powerful approach. This is discussed in more detail in the section on career exploration strategies. Searching for jobs by skills in ‘explore’. Next, I’ll give a brief overview of each of these three main, major job boards. Indeed started life as a job aggregator, but now also posts jobs directly from employers. Indeed has a huge database of jobs, and its site currently gets over 250 million visits per month. It houses 200 million CVs and ten jobs are added per second. When searching for jobs, Indeed has very sophisticated filter options, including education level, remote working, industry and salary estimate. As a job seeker, you can set up your own profile and upload a CV. Indeed’s ‘apply now’ is a feature associated with many jobs that are advertised directly from the employer, that allows you to apply for jobs quickly, using your uploaded CV or a CV created from scratch with Indeed. You’ll see phrases such as ‘easily apply’ or ‘apply instantly’ in the job ad, to inform you that this option is available, but do remember that tailoring your application and CV to the specific job is the best way to get an interview. Indeed also has company reviews, including those from employees, a salary comparison tool, and an app for convenience. There are also many articles about job hunting, CVs, applications and more. Glassdoor is also very large and puts the most emphasis on company culture, employee reviews, and provides a lot of insights into salaries. They’re also in lots of detailed information about benefits provided by companies, the interview process, and company insights such as work-life balance. As well as applying for jobs, it’s a great place for doing research, enabling you to approach your applications with more knowledge. Like Indeed, it has a great number of filter options, and an option called ‘easy apply’ to apply with your CV. LinkedIn is by far the best platform for connecting with employers when you have seen a job advert of interest. To search for jobs, use the main search bar and filter for jobs. Like the other two sites, there are a great array of other filter options, including options for remote working, job type, and experience needed. A key feature is that your LinkedIn profile can act as your CV. The standard option in the job ad says ‘apply’, and this often redirects you to the organisation’s job site. With this option, you can select if you want to share your LinkedIn profile with the employer. However, there is an easy apply option for many jobs and this is also one of the filter choices. If the easy apply option is available, you can apply without leaving LinkedIn, saving you the time of creating new accounts and manually inputting all of the same information each time. It allows you to pull up information that you already have stored in your LinkedIn profile, saving valuable time if you are short of it. You can also upload your CV to your LinkedIn account, and use that in the easy apply function. Again, be aware that a tailored application stands the most chance of success. On LinkedIn, when applying for jobs, you can also see if you have any contacts currently at the organisation and how many people have applied for the job via LinkedIn. If you have LinkedIn Premium or Career, you can gain extra information into listings, salary data, and who has applied. You also have more extensive messaging options such as InMail to message anyone, regardless of whether they are a contact. You also have the option of selecting ‘open to work’, allowing recruiters to find you rather than you doing all the work. There are many generalist job boards out there. Here are a few examples in the UK market. Reed was actually the UK’s first ever job board. It is UK-focussed, and has a good offering of education training courses, in addition to job ads. It has good filters and careers advice. Totaljobs is also an established player with over 250,000 jobs advertised at any one time. CV-Library has similar numbers of jobs and is popular in the UK. As mentioned earlier, jobs.ac.uk is popular for university roles, research organisations, and charities. It has over 4000 roles advertised and many career articles to read. Guardian Jobs offers a range of high-calibre roles with well-established employers. Guardian Jobs is particularly suitable for roles in education, the NHS, media, government, marketing, social care and the arts. Now, we’ll turn our attention to job aggregators, which collate job ads from several sources and usually have advanced filter options too. Popular job aggregators include Jooble, which offers more than 500,000 jobs and SimplyHired, which has 190,000 UK visitors each month. Jobted also has a large number of visitors per month. Adzuna is an interesting aggregator, because it uses bespoke algorithms to help find the right role for you, but it is limited to certain industries. Over 1 million jobs are advertised, and it also has a ‘value my CV’ tool which attempts to calculate how much your skills and experience are worth based on a submitted CV. It also suggests improvements to your CV and matches you to relevant jobs. If no salary is given in the job ad, it can also estimate the salary and is correct to within ten per cent on average. Other job aggregators include ZipRecruiter, Talent and Careerjet, which have large databases, but are less frequently used by a UK audience. I’ve left Google to the end because it, at the time of recording, has relatively recently got into the job aggregator market. When you go to the Google search bar, if you put in search terms and jobs, for example, if you input ‘chemistry jobs’, a box is returned with the title ‘jobs’. This box can be opened fully, and jobs can be filtered. You can click on the job to be taken to the board, where you can apply directly or you can be directed to the organisation’s website. Another genre of job boards and job aggregators are the niche or specialised sites. These are usually industry- or sector-specific, and are valued by employers and job seekers, because they tend to select the candidates that are well matched to the roles. Other niche job boards have a broad spectrum of roles in different industries, but target other areas such as gender, diversity and work style, for example, remote working. With niche job boards, from a recruiter perspective, there is more potential to target and tailor job ads to the most qualified or suitable candidates. From the perspective of the job seeker, it reduces the sheer number of job ads to wade through and the niche job boards often have very relevant industry-specific information. Although these specialist sites don’t have the same traffic as the generalist job boards, they often do attract higher-quality applications from suitable candidates. These niche job boards are often able to monopolise a particular area or sector. Passive candidates that are not looking for jobs immediately or wanting more information often come to specialised job boards. Employers can be keen to maintain a presence on these sites so as to secure their future talent pipeline. I’ll now take you through some examples of niche job boards so that you can get an idea of what’s out there. You can find links to these job boards on the portal page. Let’s start with the industry- or sector-specific job boards. Note that many of the ones that we have chosen map to the career clusters, and we’ve tried to highlight where this is the case. Not all of the clusters are mapped, but if you don’t find an area that is of interest to you, try searching for niche or specialised job boards in the sectors that particularly appeal to you. Starting with government and non-profit, there are several sites covering charities and the third sector. These include Charity Job and 80,000 Hours, which is the average time people spend working in their careers. Idealist advertises mission-driven jobs and also voluntary opportunities. Third Sector is a leading publication on the charity and voluntary sector. It has a specialised jobs page for job seekers looking in this area. The Social Research Association is a membership organisation for social researchers, and has a dedicated careers page discussing careers in this area and housing a jobs board. Finally, the Civil Service, highlighted here with the image of the crown, has its own dedicated page for searching for job opportunities within the Civil Service. The UK has quite a large life sciences and pharmaceuticals sector, and here are some of the niche job boards in this area. They include Taylorollinson, CK Group, PharmiWeb, EuroPharmaJobs, Seltek and EmedCareers. Check these out if you’re looking for jobs in this area, or even if you just want more information about what kind of opportunities are available. Moving onto financial businesses and professional services. If you are interested in looking for job opportunities in these areas, there are some specialised job boards. They include accountancy and finance jobs, like GAAPweb; finance, banking and tech jobs like eFinancialCareers; and jobs for lawyers, accountants, and other professional service roles at STEP careers. CareersinAudit focusses on the jobs for auditors and those in risk, compliance, cybersecurity and data analytics. Finally, IP Careers is a jobs board focussing on careers in intellectual property in the UK. One primary example of a job board in the health and care sector is NHS Jobs, which advertises a huge array of jobs in the NHS. Some of the life sciences and pharmaceuticals niche job boards are also relevant to candidates seeking job opportunities in health and care. In the creative and cultural industries, examples of niche job boards include Campaign Jobs for creative, media and marketing roles, and ScreenSkills, for careers in film, TV, visual effects, animation and gaming. In education and publishing, as well as jobs.ac.uk and journal-specific job boards for higher education, bookcareers.com advertises roles in the book industry, which includes eBooks, digital media and publications. The government education website gives information about teaching, whilst Tes, which stands for the education society, is a community supporting teachers, but has a dedicated jobs board for roles in education, including international postings. Niche job boards in the environment and energy sector include Conservation Jobs, which has insight into careers, courses and events as well as a dedicated jobs page. GreenJobs advertises roles in the environmental and renewable energy sectors. If you’re interested in working for a startup organisation, there are also job boards dedicated to these. Two examples are UK Startup Jobs and WorkinStartups. If you’re keen on taking on a diverse range of responsibilities, opportunities to grow within an organisation, and work in a small close-knit team, then searching for jobs in UK Startup Jobs might be for you. There are a range of job postings from different sectors and a blog which discusses what it’s like to work in a startup, and the kind of skills and experiences needed. The platform is easy to use and only displays those jobs in startup organisations. There is an easy-to-apply function enabling you to apply by uploading a CV and cover letter, but note that the numbers of jobs that are advertised on this site are limited. WorkinStartups is dedicated to job postings from UK technology startup companies. It is very specific, so if you are looking for roles in tech startups, check it out. In ICT and digital technology, there are many niche job boards, reflecting the size and growth of these sectors. Itjobboard.net focusses in on roles in IT, ICT and tech. CW Jobs are specialised in the IT and technology sector, and is often seen as the first port of call for roles in these areas. CW Jobs have a fairly large database for a niche job board, and leading tech employers use their CV database to sort new recruits. The jobs board Hired aims to make searching for tech jobs simple, and they take a data science approach to matching candidates with jobs, using bespoke algorithms. They match candidates to companies based on their profile, taking skills and preferences into consideration. Companies then apply to candidates that match. Candidates can then compare interview requests side by side. Dice is a huge technology jobs board with many jobs advertised, but it is mainly focussed on the US market. Interestingly, Dice was one of the very early job boards in the 1990s, and actually started out as a bulletin board service before the first websites appeared. Finally, Bubble Jobs aims to promote the digital and technology sectors. Unusually, Bubble don’t ask for you to sign up or submit CVs, they just provide the links for you to apply for roles in this area. There are several other niche job boards that focus in on identifying diverse candidates for jobs. So these jobs are across several sectors, but the emphasis is on diversity. For employers who want to recruit a diverse array of employees, these niche job boards can be useful to find them, whereas individuals tend to get lost on the large generalist job boards. From a candidate’s perspective, employers that advertise roles on these diversity job boards are usually demonstrating their genuine commitment to being inclusive, supportive, and championing diversity. Examples include lgbtjobs.co.uk, which has several thousand jobs currently live, collating ads from many employers that wish to advertise that inclusivity is very important to them. Pink Jobs is another example of a jobs board that is LGBT+ friendly, and advertises roles with an emphasis on equal opportunities. BME Jobs focusses on black and minority ethnic recruitment and was created by the same group responsible for LGBT Jobs. Evenbreak is a specialist jobs board for disabled candidates. It was set up to help disabled people who were struggling to find employers that genuinely and actively champion recruitment of disabled candidates in the workplace. On the other side, many employers were struggling to know how to attract and where to find disabled candidates. Investing in Women is a jobs board for women looking at flexible and part-time roles. Women, particularly mothers struggling to balance parenting demands with work, often leave jobs that they really enjoy because of difficulties getting a balance. Investing in Women aims to bring these candidates to employers who champion part-time and flexible work arrangements that are family-friendly. Finally, DiverseJobsMatter supports all underrepresented groups and communities in the UK and advertise jobs on behalf of employers that are committed to diversity and inclusion in the hiring process. At the time of recording, they have a large and growing database of over 160,000 jobs. As working styles have changed over the last decade and more, new and niche job boards have sprung up with a main emphasis on advertising flexible and remote work. So being able to work when you want and/or where you want. Whilst many larger, generalist job boards have these as filters, these niche sites are solely dedicated to jobs that offer these working arrangements. Again, this shows the real commitment of employers to promote this type of working. Two examples are We Work Remotely and FlexJobs. We Work Remotely advertises jobs where people can work from anywhere. It is the largest remote-specific job board, but due to the nature of remote work, it attracts worldwide candidates, so it can be very competitive. It has a database of international remote employers and a Slack community to share tips with likeminded individuals. FlexJobs include remote working, working from home, and hybrid roles. On their simple platform, they evaluate each job ad and display the best of these roles. However, there is a subscription fee associated. Having described the wide variety of job boards that can help you gain employment, before the end of the video, I just wanted to emphasise that using job boards is not the only way to secure a new role. It is conservatively estimated that 60 per cent of roles are never advertised or posted online. This is a hidden jobs market, and involves networking, referrals, and job seekers actively looking for opportunities to talk to people in industries and organisations which appeal to them. Many employers often have a preference for referrals, because they trust that current employees understand the role and can identify suitable candidates. In addition, it gives an indication that the candidate is serious about applying and they can also save on recruitment costs. As discussed in detail elsewhere on the portal, making a deliberate effort to network, conduct informational interviews, and letting people know that you are looking for a new role, can lead to opportunities that are yet to be advertised, or sometimes even roles that are specifically created for you. We hope that you’ve found the content in this video useful, and you can use some of the insight provided in your career development and job hunt going forwards. Thank you for your time.
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You can also find opportunities by publicising that you are looking for work. LinkedIn is a powerful platform to do this.
As well as a jobs board in its own right, LinkedIn is a professional networking platform. So you can use it to alert your connections that you are looking for work. Post an open message to your connections saying you're looking for work and would appreciate any help. Say what type or work you are looking for and in which location.
You can also use the ‘Open to work’ feature on LinkedIn. This allows your network to easily see that you are looking, but also alerts recruiters to your availability.
For recruiters that subscribe to LinkedIn Recruiter, you become prioritized when you select ‘Open to work’. You can find out more about ‘Open to work’ in the video on overcoming barriers to LinkedIn.
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Recruiters
Recruiters find candidates who are suitable for a job vacancy. The difference between a recruiter and a hiring manager is that the recruiter works to find appropriate candidates for a role, whilst a hiring manager evaluates and selects the candidates for the role.
Recruiters can be:
- Internal - they work within an organisation that is hiring for a role
- External - they work solo or for a recruitment agency. They are also known as head-hunters.
Recruiters work with the employer and the prospective employee throughout the hiring process.
They might be involved in writing the job advert and screening candidates before the application stage.
Recruiters often have specialist knowledge, either of the sector, the organisation that is hiring or of particular job levels. For example, some recruiters might specialise in recruiting senior staff such as directors and top executives.
External recruiters are paid by the employer. The amount is traditionally 15-20% of a candidates first annual salary. This is paid by the employer, not taken from the candidate’s salary.
There are a number of reasons organisations use recruiters:
- Saves organisation time and resources
- Helps find candidates that fit the culture and working environment of the organisation
- Finding the 'right candidates' means that they are less likely to leave, reducing future turnover costs and saving additional recruitment costs
- They are aware of salary benchmarking and can act as an intermediary in salary negotiations
- They can advertise roles through their own websites and networks
- They can carry out pre-application screening, saving the organisation time and resource
- They can provide interim professionals or 'contract-to-hire' staffing
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In the videos below, Ass. Professor Tina Persson shares strategies for optimising your CV and online presence to attract recruiters.
The title of the workshop is ‘How to Get Your Resume and LinkedIn Profile Noticed by Recruiters; Networking, Communication and Strategies to get an Interview.’ Shortly about me. I will not talk long about that. You can read it yourself, but I think it’s relevant for this workshop here is, I have an academic background and I have been working as a recruiter for different companies, both Manpower, Kelly Services. I have also worked for Randstad. In those days it was Proffice, as you can see here. I have fairly good insight into how the recruitment business is working.
Number one that I like to share with you is that recruitment today compared to for ten years is that recruitment is a global business today. Many of the companies that recruit, they maybe are placed in London but they recruit people and placements to Barcelona, even to Stockholm, Sweden. You can also notice that more and more of the American companies are looking for prospects and talents on the European platform. I think this is something to have on mind, that with the digital development and with the globalisation, candidates are looking for jobs all over the world.
It’s also so that companies can consider, because one fact has become extremely clear lately if you read the job ads, and that is companies say it’s okay to work remote. That means that the recruitment platform from which companies can recruit talent has increased enormously. To you as a candidate this is an opportunity, but it’s also so that you need to be prepared for, that these recruiters, whether they are recruitment companies or they are internal recruiters in companies, they can contact you from all over the world. They maybe don’t have the local knowledge. If you, for example, are living in London, the recruiters may be sitting in Stockholm or sitting in Berlin. They might not know how local it works where you are living, and therefore help the recruiter to understand your business.
I just want to highlight this, because this is something that’s going to grow dramatically in the next years to come.
When it talks about recruiters today, we’re going to look a little bit on how you can tailor your resume, what’s important for the LinkedIn. Of course, networking is something that comes into it. It’s no way that we can’t talk about networking and communication, how you can reach out, and how you can reach out on LinkedIn and take the first step to the recruiters, and connect with key people and try to get referrals. Recruiters love referrals. If they get a tip they love to call you up, and I’m going to tell you why a bit later on here.
What recruiters are really looking for. They are looking for passion, that you show passion in the company, in the product and in the position. They look for motivation. Self-motivated people they love. If you take the action, they’re going to love that. Teamwork. Of course, today a single person is not stronger than a team. It’s always going to be the team that’s going to beat the individual, and companies today, they work very, very team based and that can be both on-site and remote.
They of course check your competence, communication skills, how flexible you are, whether you are a problem-solver. They love problem-solvers. This is a wonderful PhD skill. Integrity, likeability, which means your personality, and your ability to understand other people, the ability of you to show empathy, your ability to show interpersonal skills written here. That means that you can work with people both being like you, but also people not being like you. It’s also feedback. There’s nothing harder for a manager to have people in a team that have a hard time to take feedback.
That also goes into interpersonal skills. Of course, can they trust you? Are you reliable? Recruiters’ day-to-day work involves a lot. I would say, try to understand the business of the recruiter. I made a word cloud out of what I remember I was doing, and also called around and chatted with some of my recruiter friends. Their day is a lot. They are calling, they are prospecting, they are sitting in meetings with clients. They’re sitting in meetings with internal key account management departments. They are managing the lists. They are searching. They are searching on LinkedIn, looking for candidates, prospecting, tagging top talent, and they interview a lot. It’s a lot of emailing and calling, I tell you. A day for a recruiter moves very, very fast.
When we are looking for a job, we can be very, very impatient if we don’t hear from them. Don’t worry. If you are a great candidate, they will come back. Also, they are grateful if you contact and get back to them. You know? I remember one of my clients sending a Christmas card, and the recruiter was so happy and called in for an interview. Help the recruiters to help you. That’s a very strong tip.
Try to understand their business. It’s also to understand the role of the of the recruiter here. They are a mediator between you and the company, and they are paid by the company. That means that it is in the end the company, they’re going to pay the recruiter for a successful candidate. Don’t be angry on the recruiter. Instead, try to help the recruiter to understand, ‘Send me to the company for an interview because of…’ It’s again, help the recruiter to understand the skills you have.
Also keep in mind that not all recruiters understand your proficiency in life sciences, or in social sciences, or humanities. They have maybe not the same background that you have. Here, your communication skills, your social skills, and your relationship skills come as a top, top skill when it comes to building a relationship with the recruiters. Remember, they have a lot to do. When you call and you say, ‘Do you remember me from two weeks ago?’ they might not remember you, but I promise you, if you continue to stay in contact with them, the question is rather, ‘What can you do?’ They remember you, so you stand out.
I can tell you, when I worked as a recruiter, some candidates, they were brilliant on standing out. They could show themselves on LinkedIn, or they didn’t hesitate to actually write me an email or to call me, or reaching out in some way and say, ‘Hello,’ always in a very nice way, ‘I’m still available. I’m still interested. What’s going on at the moment?’ Not pushy at all. Just showing interest.
Understand, rule number one, understand that the recruiter is a mediator paid by the company to find the perfect fit. Also important is that recruitment is a people business, which means there is not a right and a wrong. It’s a huge grey sign, because in the end, what is a perfect candidate? In the end, when they have candidates, going to fall back on some sort of fitting into the team, having skills that complements the team. Some of these skills are measurable, and some of them are not that easy to measure.
In the end, I’d just like to say that recruitment is a people business, and it’s never about right and wrong. It’s more about building relationships with people, learning about the company, learning about what they like to have and how you can add value. That’s the key. Also respectfully, if you are declined, say, ‘Thank you for the interview. Thank you for showing interest here.’ You’re still open minded, and that you are looking forward to the next interview.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
Hello, Tina is back here and now it’s ready, I hope you’re ready for film number 2: how to be headhunted on LinkedIn. That is your LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn strategy. I will not go into depth about the algorithms; it’s too short of time to do that, but I will give you really $10 million tips here, and then also why you should be active on LinkedIn.
I have some good tips to pop up and be recognised on LinkedIn. I can give you already now a little secret here. Several of my coachees, if I put it that way, placed in London started – even though she is very introverted – to be more active. She’s started to comment on things. She didn’t share anything on her own on LinkedIn but she started to comment. Only that led to an informal interview where she somehow showed herself.
We start with the first slide here; that is about keywording, job titles and technical skills. I have talked about this here for Prosper both when I talked about deep learning CV and CV design. I just give it here now from a different perspective. LinkedIn is a super powerful platform if you want to be recruited. But you are not recruited automatically just having a LinkedIn profile.
If you have a LinkedIn profile and you don’t use the skills, you don’t use the terminology the industry or the organisation is using, people will not really find you. We have to understand there are hugely many profiles on LinkedIn; I think there are up to 750 million profiles on LinkedIn. I would say that you can use LinkedIn – and you should use it – as an opportunity to be found. For that you need to keep LinkedIn as an agile approach. It’s never perfect and it doesn’t need to be perfect.
You can constantly change by changing job titles and words until LinkedIn is kicking back both job ads and people to your profile. LinkedIn has many possibilities and I am summarising some of them here. Show your future career, show your passion, show your skills, show your personality. Interact with professionals, call for discovery calls, contacting and connecting.
You can follow people. People want to be followed; that’s why they are there. Learn about new career paths; I think it’s super important. Super important in the way you should goose people, you should follow them and goose them and check them and open their profiles, and imitating is really good. Find role models, people that you admire in companies and you check what they’ve done. Those people you can also reach out to, so LinkedIn is a lot.
Recruiters, they are all over here because they also have big networks. Usually they have big networks. That is their job to have networks, so connect with recruiters. Click on the connect button, say, ‘Hello, I’d like to broaden my network in London, Liverpool or Manchester or UK’ – whatever. Or if you want to leave UK, you have of course to build a network where you are going. It doesn’t help that you have a huge network in UK when you’re going to Berlin, Germany.
Then you need to connect with people on the German side. Calling up for discovery calls, yes, I’m going to give you some tips a little bit later here in the workshop, how you can do that. Starting with the easy thing here, it is: this is what I see. I see a picture of your profile, a background profile and under or below your photo you have a tagline that is the headliner. This headliner is super important. When I’m scrolling and I maybe have 120 candidates with skills that I am interested in, the only thing I see is your picture and the headline. The headline here is: bioinformation, data science, digital health, researcher at Science for Life Laboratory. That is what I see. You have to make an impression there so that needs to reflect both what you have and what you want. You can use these brackets to make it easier. What you use there could be your field, it could be skills, it can be job title.
When you write that and I make a search as a recruiter and I tag that specific skill, that will end up very high up in the search. So, the impactful headline is strategy and very, very important. In order to write a very good and impactful headline you must really know what you want.
You need to understand at least the job field where you are going into. Create a powerful headline, make it easy to click on your profile – and now I have clicked so now you see here this is what I see. If I am not interested here, if you don’t make an impression here I will not open up your profile. Having a profile doesn’t mean I find you. If you have an academic profile most likely you will not be found unless I have got a tip or a referral that you are a great candidate, or I know that your university and that specific department generates impactful candidates or top talent for the field I am looking to headhunt people or recruit people. Maybe to AstraZeneca or any other kind of company.
That is the only reason that I maybe find it, so I want you to take another look here. This is what I see. If I don’t understand your headliner I will scroll further. Most likely that is what I will do.
Use the keywords and the job titles. I get common questions around, ‘Yes, but I can’t lie. If I have never worked as a data scientist I can’t say I am.’ There is a big difference of saying, ‘I am’ and using the title. You can do that in a very nice way so recruiters and hiring managers in companies understand this is what you want. I think what he has done here, if you look on Michel’s profile – because that’s a former client of mine – you have researcher/data scientist. Then he declared that he is from academia, he has been using data scientist tools, and he expressed in what way. He is not lying here. He is not lying, but he needs to put data science somewhere in the job title so he increases the possibility to be found.
My tip – and my strongest tip here – is: job titles need to be according to the job field you are interested in. You can use double job titles, you can use brackets; that is okay. Explain your experience in the summary or in bullet points in your achievements or in the work section. Help the recruiter to understand what you are looking for and the value you can offer – even though you are not a 100 per cent fit, because very few candidates are a 100 per cent fit.
Write a short and concise summary. I have read many summaries and they are too long and too academic. It doesn’t help. We really don’t have the time to read your whole life story, so make it short and concise. Here is an example of where I say: experienced researcher, project manager and coordinator with a demonstrated history of working in environmental change on a global level. Passionate about stakeholder engagement and collaborative working. Skilled in sustainability, climate change, data analysing, biodiversity and project management. Professional with Master of Science degree from the University of Liverpool. You could add a PhD there, of course. Contact data very, very clearly and then you can list some of the skills selected for the future of your jobs.
Select the important skills you want to use for the future, so you have to deselect. Make it easy to contact you. It’s unbelievable how many candidates I, in the past, have scrolled and there were no contact data. I send an email and they never checked the email so they actually missed an opportunity. Then they could be angry that I didn’t call them. I said, ‘I don’t know your phone number’, so please don’t do that small little mistake by hiding so we can’t reach out to you.
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Hi, again. Are you ready for film number three? Your CV is your marketing material.
I talked earlier on Prosper about CV design and specific details. I also talked about deep learning and writing CVs. This film here will be very, very short, but this is from recruiter perspective. Though I want to be clear that all recruiters think differently, they are different and they might have different opinions but one thing recruiters have in common is that they don’t have much time.
They commonly don’t have the time to spend on average from 7 to 30 seconds per resumé. If it’s too unclear, unstructured and they have no clear what you want, they most likely will put you in the reaction pile. So, whatever you do, spend time on your resumé, showing what you want in the future, not what you have done, so that you help the recruiters to understand where you are going.
For that, you need to figure out at least the job field. The more you can help the recruiter, the better. Whatever you do, your resumé should be clear, concise and easy to catch the different headlines and sub-headings.
I will show you one resumé or CV that is very, very clear. First of all, there is a very, very clear headline. This guy shows he has a PhD in life science and he wants to combine his life-science background with his business background. Then, below that he has, in the work experience, bullet points. In the bullet points, he writes in a way so he also clearly shows that – not probably go to the lab… He shows his transferrable skills, how he can apply his drive and motivation.
This young man, he was interested in a sales job and, particularly, he wanted to be an application specialist or application specialist support or application scientist. In fact, that was also the job that he nailed.
This was his first resumé, so it’s far from perfection but he shows very clearly some of the skills and his drives and motivation. Another way of showcasing is, of course, to have very clear bullet points with your skills so it’s easy to see if I’m looking for something very, very specific.
It could be a programming language. It could be a CRM system. It could be – yes, well, whatever. Extremely important that I very easily can find it. By writing it in this way, you make it easy for me. It’s under a subheading and I know it’s very calm and you start to write all these words in the text.
Remember, then it’s much, much harder for me to catch the eye. In both these resumés, it’s easy to find the skills/technical skills/interest area and what you want. That, recruiters like. If you, then, can show passion by writing a short summary about your passion in the product, you don’t have to write a whole pitch about that. It’s good enough to write an impactful summary in less than five sentences.
You don’t need… If you want to know more about that you go for the deep learning film where I talk about CV and I’m digging into on how to write a summary in a nice way.
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How to connect with recruiters, and you can include here key people or key professionals in companies. If they find a candidate, they usually contact the internal recruitment department in companies. It’s connecting strategies and how to write an InMail on LinkedIn. Connecting and asking questions. This is what we’re going to learn here.
Effective questions to ask recruiters. An opportunity always is if you ask clever questions, it’s always an opportunity for a spontaneous interview. Questions you can ask is do you have time for five to ten minutes? I have three questions. That shows very clearly that you’re polite and you understand that they are busy. Thanks, they say. What competences are you looking for at the moment? What are companies looking after in this region where I’m looking for a job? Could be Liverpool, Manchester, or London.
What advice would you give me if I’m interested in a particular company or organisation or governmental position? Considering my background, what could be my next step? Considering my background, what would your advice be? I’ve done that and that. You could be very curious, ask if you have a PhD like me, what usually is a step-in job? Any advice would help me. If I want to leave academia, what could be a good fit for me? The first step, entry job. These questions will, for sure, help you to get information from the recruiters because they have a lot of information. This is what they do. This is their job, this is their expertise.
Taking advice from them about the labour market, what companies are looking for. Their advice about what you maybe should have in your resumé, what skills you should highlight, could be essential. Now remember that recruiters, there are many recruiters on the market, and they will all have opinions and ideas. The more you talk the more you learn, and finally you figure out a red thread in all of it. Ask questions and learn.
Then, of course, if you start to ask questions to the recruiter, the recruiter will most likely start to ask you questions. It could be good to prepare the following. What do you want? What are you looking for? Why did you start the PhD and a postdoc? What are you interested in? What do you know about the market? What companies are you interested in? What jobs do you find interesting? How can I help you? By contacting recruiters, you will also learn what questions they ask to you.
It’s okay in the beginning to say, ‘Do you know what? That is a very good question. I really don’t know. When I know, maybe I can come back to you’, or, ‘Do you have any ideas how I can figure out what I want?’ ‘Maybe you could explain for me what that job is about. That would help me a lot.’ This is the moment you should start to contact people in companies and say, ‘Do you know what? It seems you have a fantastic, interesting job. Could you help me to understand what the daily day looks like when you’re working? Why do you like your job?’ That will also help you to figure out things. Remember, there is only person that can help you in the end, and that is yourself. Asking questions is a wonderful way of learning.
Finally, we’re going to talk about how to write LinkedIn InMail templates. The trick is to use templates. I’m looking to broaden my network in the life science industry in the UK. I hope to connect with you. All the best. A wonderful way just to send a short message when you contact them. You don’t need to know the people. This is an opening phrase, it’s very, very polite. Then if you want to follow up, and you want to get in contact with them, you can start, ‘I’m a researcher at Liverpool University, looking for new opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry. I can see that you successfully transitioned to a position.’ This number B here is for a person maybe working in a company, so you are interested in learning about a job.
Before you start to figure out whether this is a job or not, you talk with that person. When you have a contact, then you can continue and ask questions, what positions they would advise you to take as an entry job. That you can use as a motivation later on when you talk and speak with recruiters. Fairly smart, isn’t it. This is how you get information, information and interviews.
Then I have some more lines here that you can go through. Pleased that you’d like to chat further, thank you very much, and you can contact me on my email or we can plan a short chat in my calendar. If they are busy, be nice back. They say, ‘I don’t have the time’, ‘It’s really not up to me to answer these questions’, or whatever they come back with, always stay super-polite and write, ‘I completely understand and I hope to connect with you in the future maybe. In case you have the time, you can write something, I attach my resumé’, because it could be that when they realise what person you are, they still get interested and forward your resumé to someone else. Stay polite. Don’t be sad, don’t be irritated if they don’t have the time, just stay super-polite.
Then if you are reaching out to someone there it could be noticed, your LinkedIn profile, that you are a recruiter at the best recruitment, and are looking for competences in data science. ‘You might find my background interesting, could we arrange a discovery call?’ If you have something relevant for data science, you can write that too. Don’t attach your resumé this time because you want to have a discovery call. If you attach your resumé there’s no need maybe for the recruiter to get back to you. Here, now try to get a call before you attach your resumé. The Must Go Plan is less is more on LinkedIn. If you don’t know where you are going, write less.
Then after a while, when you learn where you are going, then you add information. Marketing your skills for the future, not the past. Select skills matching your future field. Figure out skills and job titles companies are looking for. You need to start to learn and understand the market you are going to.
This is an investigator job. Add even the trendy ones, that means that they realise that you have been studying the field for a while. If you find this very difficult and you need help, ask professionals for help. I know that you at Prosper have fantastic help. Take the help, take the advice because you’re going to save a lot of time.
Then finally I would say stay active on LinkedIn, please. You don’t have to share your own stuff, but you can like other posts and you can comment on things. You can start to like because in that way, you start to change the algorithm. LinkedIn is pushing back both blogs and articles and job ads that LinkedIn realise that you are interested in. That won’t happen if you don’t start to train down on it. It’s like Facebook nowadays.
That was it. Thank you very much, and don’t hesitate to check and listen to the podcast PhD Career Stories or read my book. You’ll find a lot of valuable tips and tricks in that one. Thank you very much, this was it, and this was Tina Persson from Passage2pro, working with fantastic Prosper, which I’m very proud of. Good luck in your career in the future. Take care, bye-bye.
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Other resources you may wish to check out
Research Culture Uncovered podcast from University of Leeds;