Thanks Fatbikeandcoffee/James - I'm going to action all of that in Linkedin - particularly your points about reaching-out to second-level connections via first level connections, and getting some more recommendations from ex-colleagues.
Can I ask you a specific question: If I'm applying for an advertised job - is it better to apply direct via the website, or via linkedin..... or does it not matter?
Also: are recruiters still actively looking for suitable on linkedin? Or are those days gone? If so - how does that work, how do the search algorithms identify suitable candidates? How does one get "found"?
I'm in the same line of work as you and I'm not convinced consulting is really much of a thing in our industry. I occasionally see academics using consultants to help them initially with spin-out companies, but that's about it. Of course, you see self-employed 'consultants' on people's LinkedIn profiles a lot - but I honestly think that's people filling holes on the CV, I'm not convinced that most of these one man consulting companies ever had a client.
Well - I'm now a consultant 🙂 signed a contract yesterday, and have my first billable hour on Tuesday (don't know if it will be my first and last - we will see!). I'll let you know what my ex-colleagues says - she was previously in the same position, and now works for a biotech consulting firm. What I do is quite specific though - I literally advise biotechs on their drug development strategy - and oh my god, they certainly do need help.
If I'm applying for an advertised job - is it better to apply direct via the website, or via linkedin..... or does it not matter?
In my firm it makes no difference as you’ll end up on the same ATS. What I would say is that going direct to the companies caters page ensures that the job is still live and they’re still looking for applications It may also give the recruiters name and details so you can message them directly.
Also: are recruiters still actively looking for suitable on linkedin? Or are those days gone? If so - how does that work, how do the search algorithms identify suitable candidates? How does one get "found"?
Yes they are. Well, I am anyway, but mainly for hard to find skill sets as, as mentioned previously, less niche skills are getting loads of applications in.
How do you get found? Get your wording right. Think about what someone would search for who was hiring for your dream job and make damn sure it’s in your profile. Ensure your skills, industry and everything else is up to date. Connect with people in your field too so you’re top of any searches.
Really minimum wage is roughly £22k per year.
£12.21, on a 40hour week is 25k. Apparently my employer had to up some of the graduate recruits because they were being under paid.
There is a really good book, updated often, "what colour is my parachute" IIRC which says something like 78% of the time you find your next job through someone you know - so if you're looking catch up with real life network for call, coffee, beer whatever.
My wife and I used the exercises in this book to successfully enact career changes.
One of the things I found intriguing was the suggestion that you can find a job by not asking for one but showing interest in the work. I researched some firms in a city thousands of km away that I wanted to live in. Contacted them and asked if I could meet up with them because I was interested in what they did.
Ended up visiting four places and being introduced to another as a result. I got a really good vibe from one of them, where I met with three people at the same time. Asked them heaps of questions, they asked me loads, eventually, "are you looking for a job?"
They didn't need anyone with my skills at the time, but a few months later they came back to me and offered me a job.
I'm not sure why this approach worked so well, maybe because you're not immediately asking for things from people, seeming needy and desperate?
"£competitive"?
Dear recruiters,
This has the same energy as a middle aged bloke in the pub telling you he used to pay (insert sport here) and would have been professional if it wasn't for a (insert body part here) injury whilst playing for (insert school/county/local team). Yep, you're so competitive you don't want to enter the race and spoil everyone else's fun. And if you're using "salary expectations" as a filter, then clearly you're not competitive unless the filter is removing people mistakenly applying above their paygrade.
Maybe we should just start putting "Competitive" under skills and experience. Wouldn't want to attract the kind of recruiters who only focus on such narrow aspects of candidates 😉
Does your cv have your age on it or date of birth? And are you over 50?
Maybe try taking your age/dob off the cv?
And then remove the date of your Degree, or take off every job from +20 years ago?
I've never worried about and in my audit/assurance roles knowing that I qualified with one of the Big Six (as was) or was a mainframe SysProg in the 80's is still relevant (and does reveal my age).
£12.21, on a 40hour week is 25k. Apparently my employer had to up some of the graduate recruits because they were being under paid.
That assumes hourly rates paid on the only the hours you actually work. If you get paid holidays its actually equivalent £28571.40 for a 40hr week.
I'm not sure how you get to there.
£12.21x40x52 is £25,396 by my maths.
We do need to consider that many minimum wage jobs are also zero hour contracts, ie you won't be getting paid holidays or bank holidays. So you're closer to around £23k, for 40 hours worked per week.
We do need to consider that many minimum wage jobs are also zero hour contracts, ie you won't be getting paid holidays or bank holidays
Not true, you are still entitled to holiday pay. It's calculated as 12% of your hours worked in the payroll period, then rounded up and can be taken in the next pay period or accrued. Or it can be just paid. Same with temporary contracts or seasonal work, you get that 12% when you finish the job.
Either way the maths is the same:
(12.21 * 40 * 46.4) * 1.12 = 12.21 * 40 * 52 = £25.4k ( +/- a slight rounding error)
huh, times have changed from when I was minimum wage pub staff!
Does your cv have your age on it or date of birth? And are you over 50?
Maybe try taking your age/dob off the cv?
And then remove the date of your Degree, or take off every job from +20 years ago?
Yes. Prospective employers only need to know that you have a degree, not when you got it.
If listing jobs from 20 plus years ago means that your CV runs to 3 pages, then, yes, the recommendation I've seen and implemented is to amalgamate these into an 'other experience' section or similar.
I handle recruitment for our company - probably only taking on through traditional open recruitment maybe six or seven people a year. I love recruiting, I love making a great candidate happy at finding their perfect job, I love the Line Manager's joy at finding the perfect candidate. I love watching people thrive.
LinkedIn - I have stopped using the promoted adverts. I cannot keep throwing away £300+ to wash through all the quick apply candidates before anyone applies that has actually read the job description, wants to work with us, has one out of three of the essentials.
I miss the days when you could place an advert in the physical paper Manchester Evening News, and consider which specialist press you thought would be read by people looking for jobs in that area. Specialist websites with vacancy areas seem to be getting slim pickings too.
For what it's worth, I read every single one of the LinkedIn applications diligently. And unlike a lot of people recruiting, I keep the advert open until the closing date instead of pulling up the drawbridge sooner to avoid being overwhelmed completely.
What's the answer? Who knows. For me, recruiting quite often in a niche field, agencies don't feel like they are going to meet my needs, and I can't justify the cost.
I find it really hard (dislike the feeling we're only going to reach privately educated middle aged white men) but actually the most success we've had recently is word of mouth, influential members of our senior management team putting adverts on their linkedin rather than the company linkedin. And actually a decent system of filing speculative applications through the year. People who really want to work with us. When a Line Manager has a role, the first place I go to is the last six months of people actually really really wanting that job.
So, in my industry I'd say send in a speculative application and you could make me very happy and save a lot of time. Agencies too, as they will weed through the applications that AI presents them with. If it was me, I'd register with an agency as well as target companies who might have roles I'd love in a field I'd love. Definitely hit the websites and vacancy listings of the places you'd like to work.
I wish you luck,
So, my job vacancy closed last night and I now have 17 applications to work through today. It's a job in a digital marketing department. Here's the first application I look at. It might be a long morning...
Do you meet the essential requirements? - Yes, I have strong experience in digital marketing.
CV: I am a polymer engineer with many years experience...
Employment history: Ten years of polymer engineering
Reference: "This person has done excellent work on the project “Investigating the feasibility of non-invasive, site-based inspection of tensile structure membranes to characterise degradation and inform residual life Expectancy”,
Education: Masters in Polymer engineering. Bachelors degree in polymer engineering.
ehrmergerd.... I've got a job.
Just thought I'd come back to this thread, and let you know my findings after full-time job hunting for 4 months (with a couple of holidays mixed-in).
Slightly long/rambling post, but TLDR is: applied for loads, got ghosted/ignored my the majority, eventually had 2 offers.
I've applied for 40 jobs, had interviews for about 10 jobs - although only 6 of these were genuine opportunities
All of those jobs I applied for, I was a "good" candidate for: they were either equivalent to my most recent role, a grade above or a grade below - Typically these were ranging from senior manager to senior/exec director, but most were "director of..." type roles (as was my last role). My point is - I'm not just applying for everything, and the sorts of job I'm applying for cannot conceivably have a large number of genuine candidates.
For 24 of those jobs, I either got completely ghosted, or rejected after a few weeks without any kind of interaction - an automated rejection. The worst culprits for this were large global companies (particularly pharmaceutical companies) and smaller companies using external recruiters - specifically external recruiters who (if I'm going to be charitable) are less well established in the industry, and were perhaps estate agents previously.
My suspicion is that for many of these jobs at larger companies, there was a preferred internal candidate - and the job was only advertised externally for the minimum time to comply with a global policy.
Others, I obviously didn't even get past the gatekeeper. This is where I am less clear about what's happening - I suspect that they are so spammed with applications (and aren't sufficiently filtering them!!) that they are ignoring any applications after the 100th one they receive. I don't think it's to do with keyword matching etc - as I'm very carefully tailoring both my CV and covering letter to ensure that I'm a good keyword match.
My overwhelming conclusion is that hiring has been completely commoditised: even in specialist industries like mine, they are using generic "talent acquisition specialists" with very little (or absolutely no) experience in the field. They are merely acting as technicians to post the jobs, and the (poorly) filter the applicants.
I did a lot of networking on Linkedin but I didn't want to have the green badge of shame (#open to work), or put out a long post on my profile about how I'd been made redundant and was looking for a job. Instead I really polished my profile, then messaged everyone I'd worked reasonably closely with in the last decade letting them know I was job-hunting, and would they mind endorsing my skills, and/or writing me a recommendation. The result was really good - about 25 people wrote me really good recommendations, which subsequent interviewers told me they had read, and referenced during the interview positively. It also triggered quite a few discussions/referrals.
I was also aware that my last qualification was from 1999! I did a couple of micro-credentials from Cranfield, and some of IBMs courses on AI - as well as going on my CV, these get a little badge on your linkedin.
My freelancing work also delivered a job offer - but only after I'd accepted another one. They actually offered me more money than the job I accepted, but after working with them a little bit - the job came with so many red flags, it just wasn't worth it.
The job I was offered and took was no different really than any of the others I'd applied for - they are a small company, and so I suspect the hiring manager is reviewing the CVs herself - I'll confirm next Monday after I start!
I had (what I think will be) my last interview today - I thought I'd let it run its course. I don't think I'll get it - but it felt like the right thing to do, rather than cancel.
Anyway - this has certainly changed the way that I'm viewing the 15-20 years of my career that I've got ahead of me - mostly that I need to be on the front-foot a bit more, and more proactively moving between jobs in order to stay relevant - I'm now in my mid/late 40s, and I don't want this to happen when I'm much past 50.
Anyway - not convinced that anyones going to read all that - but it felt cathartic to "close the chapter"
My overwhelming conclusion is that hiring has been completely commoditised: even in specialist industries like mine, they are using generic "talent acquisition specialists" with very little (or absolutely no) experience in the field. They are merely acting as technicians to post the jobs, and the (poorly) filter the applicants.
I agree. We have taken all our hiring back in house after using some agencies. They were, to a company, really really poor. The quality of candidates was worse than using Indeed 'apply now'...
I've had some exposure to this recently from the other side of the process, in a team trying to recruit Engineers.
Our own HR in combination with some external agencies initially managed to send just about any old Toss CV through, Honestly persuading recruiters to understand the role/job spec and then apply the first filter was the hard part. They eventually took the constructive criticism and started sending more appropriate candidates forward to us but the initial part was difficult.
My Guess OP, is that there's some overzealous filtering at play and if you're applying for Director level life Pharma roles the cut is possibly quite harsh(?), are you finding better luck with more "senior management" type roles?
And/or there might also be an expectation that a prospective director has moved about more (does depend on the industry and size of business I know)? staying with the same company for over a decade might actually be working against you perhaps when going for such positions?...
Plenty of good advice already presented above, but this rings a bell for me most.
My tip? If you want to get noticed try reaching out to the hiring manager directly. I have not had a single person do that to me.
This ^^^. If you are applying for a senior level role, you need to do even more of this.
Just arrange a time to meet the person-in charge (if possible). Let them see you as a person in your "natural" state. (my view is that if you are applying for a senior level role and cannot even take some initiative in person (speak to someone at the company), you are not strong enough as a candidate even if your technical skills are way above others).
If you can speak face to face or simply arrange for an appointment to have a chat the better. Your chance of success will increase many folds. Just don't stalk them.
When I applied for a job, I would try my best to speak to some of the recruiters before even applying. (I used to do sales and they / I can spot whether the job is compatible miles away).
Many organisation is increasingly automating their recruitment process, and you really need to find ways to avoid getting filter out by the "robot" in the process.
Give it a try, OP. Nothing to loose.
ehrmergerd.... I've got a job.
Opps just saw that. Well done!
(now I am going to re-read your update ... LOL)
ehrmergerd.... I've got a job.
Anyway - not convinced that anyones going to read all that - but it felt cathartic to "close the chapter"
Well, I did read all that and it's interesting, thanks. I hadn't considered, for example, that the "open to work " badge on LinkedIn could look negative to some. Cheers
Thanks all for the kind words!
re: reaching out to the hiring manager. I have done this where possible. The issue is that very few job posts list either the recruiter or the hiring manager. At some, I was able to guess and message the person through LinkedIn, but these were completely ignored 100% of the time. I think it’s probably the sort of advice that’s so universal in today’s market, it’s broken under the weight of people doing it.
re: the #opentowork badge on LinkedIn - I don’t think it is viewed negatively. I just decided that I didn’t want to do it (or a “please give me a job” post) more for my self esteem than anything else! I was aware that I was going to have a lot of rejections as part of the process - and so I think I wanted to hold back on these things until a bit later in the process.
generally, I think I e managed my mental health pretty well through this period - I’ve had a couple of wobbles, but held it together on the most part!
re: seniority, I actually had a lot more luck with significantly more senior positions: including multiple interviews for a COO and a CEO jobs - which was very informative, and now makes me feel like these are (nearly) in reach.
the interview I had yesterday went really well (it was with the CEO of a biotech for their head of research) - and they are progressing me to the 4th round. Again, as a small company, I think somebody who actually knows what they are doing is reviewing the applicants.
I guess they didnt ask if you were a bender in your interviews? The joys of looking at NMW jobs . . .
I guess they didnt ask if you were a bender in your interviews? The joys of looking at NMW jobs . . .
it’s Australia - so you never know! my wife was on any interview panel for the Uni, and somebody referred to the candidate as a “wog” (“a bit woggy” I think was the precise quote). She was outraged, but apparently that’s fairly acceptable? We’d only been here a couple of months - it was a bit of a culture shock.
...but wog is used quite differently in Australia - referring to Mediterranean heritage and not particularly as negative.
