Catherine Gracheva
ICF career coach
Things to think about
Calmly analyze the situation by answering a series of questions. Who am I? What are my strengths, values, what are my motivators at work? What inspires me, where do I get my energy? What are my skills (competencies), what marketable knowledge do I have, what professional experience I already have it? This way you will understand the direction in which you want to develop further.
Then determine what you really want. The goal does not have to be a vertical career. Take a broader view and also think about horizontal career opportunities. It is worth understanding in which related areas you can find application for your talents. Are there any areas at the intersection where you can be unique?
Analyze the market. Research what requirements your dream company has, what competencies and knowledge you currently lack. Find resumes of other candidates for positions that interest you. Compare with yours. What can you do to get up to the level you need? At a minimum, you can actively engage in self-education - now the Internet has all the opportunities for online learning: read professional forums, books on your topic, look for thematic groups on social networks (there are also interesting vacancies there), subscribe to experts in your field.
Update your resume to take into account the new information and do it professionally - show it to an expert. When your career goal is based on knowing yourself and your inner desires (rather than conventional standards), then you will be confident and have more energy to seek out new opportunities.
What to fix on your resume
You can only panic in one case - the financial airbag is deflated. When making calculations, take into account possible risks: from exchange rate jumps to an underestimate of your own monthly expenses. If you've been unemployed for a long time, then you probably want too much (and the market can't give it to you right now) or don't know how to sell yourself. If there is a discrepancy between the request and the market supply, you will have to solve the dilemma - agree to less today or wait. If you decide not to wait, start moving. If the problem is selling yourself as a specialist, then analyze your resume and work on your self-presentation skills.
Rewrite your resume to suit the requirements of each specific job and company. The recruiter will “filter” you if he doesn’t see keywords that match the requirements.
Previously, it was extremely important that relevant experience be recorded in work book. Fortunately, this is not the case now. Companies do not look at employment records or even actual experience, but at specific results. Emphasize them in your resume.
Use more active verbs (“made”, “developed”, “implemented”), voice numbers confirming your result. Broadcast active position- it confirms that you are ready to take responsibility for the result.
Do not voice your desired salary before your first face-to-face meeting with the employer. First - the benefits that the business will receive from you, then - how much it will cost the company. It is especially important to consider this point if you are more expensive than the market. For example, when we were selecting a product trainer at Mango Telecom, we only considered those candidates whose salary wishes fell within our range. We didn’t even consider the CVs of candidates with requests higher than we can offer. During the interview, one of the candidates announced a higher amount, but I already liked the specialist. In addition, I realized that he would close another important area, and I went to negotiate the possibility of a higher salary for him. An expert will always bring added value. Now he works in our company and, in addition to training employees, is also involved in mentoring aspiring managers.
What affects the number of invitations
Your profession is “developer” mobile applications", three years of work experience, do you have a portfolio? The search time will be a negative value - most likely, you have offers from employers before changing jobs. You - Chief Editor publications with low ratings and don’t understand what your colleagues from successful media are talking about? Six months of searching is your minimum. It is employee hygiene to periodically monitor objective indicators in your industry that may affect your search time. For example, using such data.
The search period is directly affected individual characteristics candidate: objective (professional level and experience, possession of search and self-presentation skills) and subjective (motivation to search, expectations from future work, ambitions).
What slows down the search:
You are applying for a high position and salary. Top managers are unhappy people. Once they fall out of a certain circle of connections, the search for a job that meets their needs and expectations turns into painful work.
You are old and have low qualifications. An excellent doctor, an excellent engineer, an experienced builder will find work at any age. A resume for the position of a junior copywriter indicating the experience of “courier”, “loader”, “cashier” in combination with an age of 45+ can be compared to a search handbrake.
Personal passivity (you don’t send responses, don’t update your resume, don’t use personal connections).
How to solve a problem
If work is needed yesterday, then it’s too late to do prevention. Personal activity is the most basic tool. Online, these are responses to vacancies and the correct settings for a resume. the main objective problem that an online resource can solve is receiving an invitation to an interview. Every point on your online resume influences an employer's decision to hire you. Every missed or poorly completed section is a lost opportunity. From the experience of searching on Superjob, for example, we see that if a person writes “not ready” in the “business trip” column, then the number of invitations he will have is 1–2% less.
Again, online is a powerful tool, but not the only one. If you are looking for a job, then expand your circle of contacts: former colleagues, friends, relatives, project partners, institute friends, members of professional groups in in social networks. According to Superjob.ru, 85% of personal recommendations lead to successful employment.
Where to look for alternatives
A long job search is, first of all, an opportunity to review your experience and skills. Let's say you correctly reflected your experience in your resume, wrote correctly covering letter, regularly monitor vacancies and are ready for interviews. But in the current conditions, when massive layoffs create enormous competition for jobs, and the employer selects a new employee from ten similar candidates, this may not be enough. If you haven't been able to find a job for a long time, it's useful to think about what other industries your skills might be useful in.
For example, if you worked as an economist, financial knowledge and experience in Excel are applicable to planning - for example, in Digital positions where many new employees are hired. If you have worked in procurement, experience in searching and working with suppliers, drawing up contracts can be applied in an event agency or in a design organization. It's certainly smart to continue to regularly monitor job openings in your current profession, but you should also take the time to develop your skills and explore other industries.
Sometimes look new job I have to do it in particularly difficult conditions - I haven’t yet quit my old job. What to do if there is no way to attend interviews and track vacancies? Read how to act in such a situation!
It doesn’t always make sense to hide from your colleagues and boss the fact that you are looking for another job. However, if you are not yet firmly convinced of your own plans or simply want to undertake “reconnaissance in force” (in case something really worth coming across), you should conduct your search with caution. If you decide to keep everything a secret, here are a few things you should know: simple rules.
Keep your resume "closed"
Your resume should be published on the site in a private manner: then only those employers for whose vacancies you apply will see it, and not recruiters from your current place of work. But there is a more daring option: place your resume in partial access, blocking it only from your current employer.
Download or update your mobile app
Do not browse job search sites from your office computer - do it at home, or better yet, use .
Be careful on social networks: do not show interest in any vacancies in the comments, do not join open groups like “Jobs for accountants” (your colleagues may notice this). And, of course, do not publish posts like “Looking for a job, thanks for reposting.”
"Encrypt" at last
Are you sure that personnel service Does your company not monitor job search sites and enter the company name into the search? If you 100% need to keep everything secret, replace the name of your company with its description. For example, instead of MTS LLC you can write “leading telecom operator”.
All telephone conversations Only communicate with recruiters when your colleagues can’t hear you.
Indicate only yours in your resume mobile phone and personal (not corporate) email address for communication.
Cancel unnecessary interviews
The most difficult thing in the current situation, of course, is going to interviews. How and when to meet with future employers if you must be in the office at least from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.?
Try to minimize the number of wasted interviews. Before making an appointment, ask the recruiter a few questions over the phone or via chat to make sure the position is of interest to you. This way you will save yourself from unnecessary trips to interviews.
If you decide to meet with a potential employer in person, arrange an interview outside of working hours, for example, at 8:30 am or 7 pm. If this is not possible, ask your current job the day before to give you a day of vacation or agree on a 2-3 hour absence. Don’t come up with systematic “good reasons”, just say that you need a couple of hours to sort out urgent personal matters.
Good luck in your job search!
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Find Good work- it’s still a quest, and sometimes you don’t immediately realize that you’ve found yourself in so-so company. But there are also certain signs that allow you to understand that it would be better to run away straight from the interview. Liz Elfman, Founder and CEO recruitment agency E-Squared believes that it is not always easy to notice them, and therefore it is important to listen to your intuition.
website I have collected several bright “red flags” that would do well to pay attention to for everyone who is looking for a job and does not want to waste their time and energy.
1. Your potential boss is delayed. Very delayed
You arrived for the interview exactly on time and now you sit and wait. Have you examined every line on the ficus leaves, standing nearby with your chair, but the director or HR manager is still not there. 40 minutes have passed and you are still waiting. After another half hour the situation has not changed.
The best thing for you to do now is to get up and leave. Your time is no longer valued in this company. It's unlikely that anything will change when they hire you.
2. You still haven’t found information about the company on the Internet.
She does not have her own website, and she is not mentioned on others. This should already alert you. And then suddenly you find information that the company was created and registered as entity 2 days ago.
Of course, standing at the origins of some very profitable business and then saying “I've been working here since it opened” can be a tempting idea. But are you sure that this company will be successful? And don’t you feel at all sorry for your time spent creating everything from scratch?
3. During the interview you are offered a completely different vacancy.
Your resume was written for the specific desired position. You only want to work in this position and no other. And the interview goes well, but suddenly HR, out of the blue, asks you to try yourself in a completely different position. Usually, we're talking about about a position lower than the one you originally applied for.
Sometimes recruiters check employee motivation in this way. Or we may be talking about a completely different situation: your skills indicated in your resume are suitable for the employer, but someone has already taken your position. For example, the son of my mother's friend. And who knows when he will free her now.
4. Work schedule or salary are topics that the recruiter tries to avoid
Perhaps this information was not even indicated in the job description, or perhaps it was, but when you decided to clarify this question before signing the contract, you were not given anything definite.
This is a huge red flag that you should pay attention to right away. If you are not told about something directly, then everything is not so smooth with it. No one wants to work hard for a small salary and at the same time see their family for a couple of hours before bed every day. Just run.
5. You are the only candidate, and they are ready to hire you right away
There is no one else in the waiting room except you, and this is a little surprising. And then you go into the HR manager’s office, and after a short discussion of your future responsibilities, they are ready to offer you to sign a contract.
Everything seems to be working out just perfectly. And what's the catch? Think about why you are the only candidate and why you are not offered additional stages of the interview (for example, with your supervisor). Maybe they are already desperate to find someone for this position? Read the contract carefully. Maybe the worst thing is written in small print?
6. You are not asked to sign an agreement.
After discussing your future responsibilities and working conditions, you are ready to enter into a contract with the employer. But you are not asked to do this. The HR manager simply verbally assures you that you are a perfect fit, and the contract should supposedly be drawn up by your immediate superior, but he is not in place right now.
Then the situation may develop like this: you go to work regularly for almost a month, but your manager is still not there. And then he appears, and it turns out that he needs a different specialist or a specialist for a different position. But since you have already been hired and you seem to be okay, then they are ready to offer you a job in a lower position. Well, the salary is a little less, of course.
Yes, the salary announced at the interview seems attractive. But when they began to read out to you the endless list of your responsibilities, your head began to spin. And all this should be done by one person? Probably yes, and your predecessor failed to cope with this.
By the way, it would be appropriate to ask what happened to the employee who held this position before you. If he is being treated for stress because there was too much work, or is taking an anger management course because he is tired of being held accountable for his own and others' mistakes in front of his boss, then it is definitely time for you to leave.
8. Relationships between co-workers are familiar or you are openly asked how you feel about romance in the workplace.
The situation is even worse if you are openly asked how you feel about romance in the workplace or with male bosses if you are a girl. And everything is simply terrible if such questions are asked by this same male boss. Perhaps he was not initially interested in your professional skills and simply did not look further than the photo in your resume.
9. You have interviews with two managers, and they are very contradictory interviews.
You were warned in advance that recruiting would be carried out in several stages, and you were fine with that. But who could know that your immediate supervisor and head of the company are so different people and their requirements for the applicant are radically different?
Think about it right away: are you ready to obey two bosses who will want completely different things from you? And they probably won’t be able to come to a common opinion on many issues. Can you guess who will be responsible for this?
We are in website We believe that during an interview it is important not only to notice all sorts of oddities, but also to listen to your inner voice if it convinces you that you need to escape from this place right now. What do you think? Maybe you, too, have already realized during an interview that you don’t want to work in this company? Tell us about it in the comments.
Autumn - best time to change jobs, at least that’s what business coaches and other representatives of the motivational community say. The holidays are over and there is a noticeable recovery in the market. An increase in employer activity is an expected September trend, which often plays into the hands of job seekers. The recruitment opens in almost all categories, as a result of which candidates can find and choose the most optimal offer. If they have certain qualifications, of course. But there is also an influx of candidates who decide to change jobs just after the summer vacation.
Personnel officers are cautiously preparing for the autumn surge: resumes, applications, and therefore the volume of their work increases significantly. Not only qualified specialists are applying for jobs, but also those who have graduated from universities, who have returned from seasonal work or, for example, a summer rural garden. Increased activity is observed not only among entrepreneurs and companies, but also in the job seeker sector. So why then is autumn considered so favorable, and is it even worth pursuing employment in the fall? The answer is obvious: depending on who and where!
To whom and where?
It is believed that in the fall it is most difficult to get a job with low qualifications- in a low salary range. This is, in particular, trade, a number of blue-collar professions, housing and communal services, work in large supermarket chains, etc. Often such positions are vacated in the spring - workers prefer to spend the summer period, for example, in the country, in higher-paying seasonal agricultural work or in a resort area. In the summer, many vacancies are filled by schoolchildren and students, who begin studying in the fall and again vacate their positions. But seasonal workers return in the fall, and the behavior of employers in this case is very logical and expected: preference is given to proven ones, although former employees– to those who have already proven themselves. Naturally, “newcomers” in this case will only be able to apply for new positions opened in new organizations.
Those vying for higher positions will also have to compete. In the fall, many specialists who have reached the peak of their careers in companies where they have worked for many years decide to change jobs. Plus, they are complemented by those who decide to radically change their occupation. There are several simple explanations for this. Firstly, they are preparing for spring, after all, it is after a fruitful autumn-winter period that managers are paid annual bonuses. And this is a very pleasant increase, sometimes exceeding a couple of monthly earnings. Secondly, before employment in new company It's good to have a good rest. Everything is logical, because at the new place of work it is unlikely that vacation will be given earlier than next summer. And besides, there will be a new surge in personnel activity no earlier than after the New Year holidays, and that is still too far away.
But all this creates an increased supply in the labor market. According to the laws of economics - the higher the offer, the cheaper it is, which does not play into the hands of applicants. While this may not affect the level of salaries, the demands of recruiters definitely increase. Everything is logical: having 20-30, or even 50 resumes on the table for one vacancy, HR officers justifiably increase the requirements for candidates, finding for themselves the most optimal offer according to the “price-quality” criterion. In the summer, for example, if there is an urgent need to fill personnel holes, HR can be much more lenient towards applicants, since there is not much to choose from. But this doesn’t happen in the fall; in the fall they always demand more, but try to offer less.
Not the best odds
Personnel officers do not deny that autumn is probably the hottest recruiting season for them. And this is caused not only by the influx of candidates for employment, but also by the activity of the companies themselves. They perceive autumn as a real “fishing season” - finding a decent specialist in September-October is much easier than ever. Plus, it helps you make plans for the future. Hiring a new employee allows management to “break in” him before the end of the year, and based on the results of this 3-month “test drive”, draw certain conclusions and build financial plans for next year. Including taking into account the requirements for the selection of employees for the post-New Year period. None of them hides the fact that the autumn selection will be really tough and not everyone will be able to pass it. Therefore, you should not quit your old job before finding a replacement - the risk of fiasco is high.
The upcoming New Year's demand forces retail chains to increase their activity; for the same reasons, sales representative offices of manufacturing companies are recruiting agents and salespeople. To implement new digital projects personnel are selected by IT companies, and construction organizations open a set for future interior work. In general, experts talk about a certain cyclical nature Russian market labor, which is associated with many public holidays, New Year holidays, seasonality of recruiting, etc. For these reasons, it is the autumn period that becomes the most favorable and fruitful in the HR field, which gives rise to real paradoxes for the labor market: the number of open positions is increasing noticeably, but finding a job, on the contrary, is becoming more difficult.
And then, if you understand the situation, considering the structure of the movement work force according to the market, it turns out that not everything is changing that much. So, it is quite logical that vacancies appear not only because of new projects, but as a result of the dismissal of those who decided to change jobs. They, in turn, in most cases occupy open positions in competing firms or firms from a similar industry. It turns out to be a circle of market specialists. Well, the main indicators of the surge in activity are formed due to seasonal work and offers at a low salary scale and appropriate qualifications.
The main thing is not to rush!
It turns out that September-October is not the best period for searching and changing a job?! But what about those who have already decided to make changes in life and career, but have not yet received worthy offers? The main thing is don’t rush! You shouldn’t rush to quit, you shouldn’t rush to break business ties, and you shouldn’t rush to find a job either. Of course, looking for a new job while remaining at your current job is not the easiest task, especially for a full-time specialist. However, his chances of taking a more competitive place are much higher. The logic here is very clear: an unemployed job seeker sits at home and is unlikely to wait for a good offer, so he will agree to not the best offers, because he has nowhere to go. Anyone who searches while working, on the contrary, can count on a more loyal attitude and a pleasant offer. If an employer is interested in a working candidate, they will have to “outbid” him with good conditions.
An equally important principle of September recruiting is to try to reach all employers who have generated interest. It is not recommended to focus your job search exclusively on a narrow area of your activity - pay attention to other sectors. If you work as a journalist in a newspaper, try yourself in television; as a legal consultant at an enterprise, try to get into a bank or, for example, a bar. Regardless of specialization, the larger the resume, the greater the chances of finding a new and interesting job.
If you are asked about your desired income level, don’t be afraid to ask for more.. It doesn’t matter where you are trying to get a job, even in a field about which you have a very mediocre understanding. Why? Otherwise, what is the point of changing jobs if your income level does not increase?!
It's time to change jobs
But the point is that sometimes there is, and it’s very serious. Sometimes we don't notice that the world around us is changing irreversibly. How do you understand that the time has come when it’s time to change jobs? We have identified 4 obvious signs, if at least one of them is present, something will have to be changed. So, you need to change jobs when:
- No time for personal life. Career, experience, financial status - this is certainly impressive. But what is the point in all this when there is nothing else besides work? Hardly any careerist dreams of belonging to himself only at breakfast or, for example, in the evening shower. Good salary, a respected position, the presence of subordinates - all this makes sense if it also leaves time for life.
- Absence career growth . The situation is very common when experienced employees are not promoted in order to save a place for those who come “through patronage.” There are two options here - either ask for a promotion or leave. Everything is logical - promising specialists need promotion every 3-4 years.
- Work is no longer interesting. Best work, this is the one where it’s interesting.
- Low salary. Probably the most common reason for changing jobs. And if an interesting option comes up, feel free to move on, New Year’s holidays, corporate events and pleasant bonuses are ahead.
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