When you’re looking for a job, it’s a good idea to keep organised and get into good habits around your research and job applications to avoid unnecessary stress.
Mind and Body
Try and do some sort of exercise each day, even if it’s just a short walk or some exercise in your home. You can build this up over time. Also try visiting BBC – Welcome to Headroom for a toolkit of ideas around keeping positive and lifting your mood which is so important. There’s even a video on how to tidy your room – ‘a tidy room to a tidy mind’.
Try booking out time in your week
Improving yourself, your situation and career is a job in itself…so why not treat it like one! Book out time in your week to do these things. Write them in your diary, set phone reminders and try and stick to these times! Here’s a video I found that offers some great tips on how to make better use of your time 15 Tips To Manage Your Time Better – Bing video.
Organising your research
It’s really important to keep a record of everything you do – perhaps create a word document and record all jobs you have seen with: Job title, company, link to job page online, closing date, salary, a person to contact and a 1-5 star rating on how much you feel the job is applicable to you and your skills. Maybe add a short sentence about the role. You can do the same for searching courses.
Always note down useful contacts
When searching jobs, you quite often find a contact email address for the person recruiting for the role. Why not note down the person’s contact details and send them an email to ask for more information if you are really interested in the role. They might even offer you a phone call before the application which will give you a great advantage.
Check your Emails and try to always answer your phone
Make sure your inbox doesn’t get overwhelmed and that you don’t miss any important emails. Try quickly checking your emails each day and marking the important ones, or putting them into a separate folder, so they don’t get lost. It may also be worth updating your email account to a new more professional sounding email address, it can also mean that you have a more focussed email account that you only use for work and career related information.
When you are actively looking for work the chance of getting calls from numbers you don’t know increases and it’s important to always answer so you don’t miss an opportunity.
If you need help finding a job you can find organisations who can support you on the One Front Door directory or contact the One Front Door team and they can help you.
