Recruitment Series, Part One: The Search Experience 

Recruitment Series, Part One: The Search Experience 

Searching for a new job is not always the most seamless experience. Sifting through job postings, navigating different platforms, and networking and career fairs being just a few of the barriers to finding a potential role fit. It’s important to utilize all the tools that are available to you in order to secure and thrive in the “perfect” role. The first step is understanding and utilizing tools for the initial search experience.   

Job Sites – know which one will work best for you.  

• One of the first decisions you need to make is which search engine you can best utilize to find the roles you are looking for. Today, there are dozens of different job search websites at the hands of jobseekers. Each one has pros, cons, and generally serves a specific demographic of people. It is important to weigh all of these when deciding which search engine will bring you the most benefits.  

• For technical professionals with years of experience, such as engineering jobs, leads often come from your network of people. A great way to utilize this community is through LinkedIn. While navigating LinkedIn, it’s important to treat it like a search engine. You want to focus on finding recruiters and other people in the industry. Messaging recruiters directly, seeking open job postings, and connecting with other industry professionals are all ways to use LinkedIn as a job searching platform. Additionally, you want to view LinkedIn as a digital resume. You want to design and develop your resume that is searchable. Headhunters will search for keywords, such as engineering careers, in order to find candidates that fit certain roles. If your profile is keyword heavy, you will become a hot commodity among recruiters and companies looking to fill roles. Also ensuring that you highlight your skills on your profile that line up with the roles you are searching for can attract recruiters. 

• Platforms such as Indeed, Zip Recruiter, and Handshake can also be extremely beneficial. Handshake is generally devoted to those entering the workforce; here you will find mostly entry level/graduate level roles and internship opportunities. As for Indeed and ZipRecruiter, these platforms yield results for labor type roles, such as technicians, snow laborers, factory workers, retail professionals, and administrative roles, for the most part. When utilizing these platforms, make sure to fully fill out your profile page, ensuring recruiters have all beneficial information from the get-go.  

Networking through career fairs, events, and conferences.  

• Another way to expand your network, which in turn further expands your career opportunities, is to market yourself through networking functions. Industry tradeshows, conferences, and local events will all give you the opportunity to meet face-to-face (or virtually) with other professionals in your industry. Going to these events will assist in cultivating relationships and creating opportunities you may not have otherwise. They often will allow you to learn about different companies and how you could leverage yourself as an asset for them. In these circumstances, it’s important that you recognize which attributes are appealing to you in a company. You will want to analyze the culture and the type of work they do to ensure it matches your own personal goals and values.  

Branding yourself!  

• Personal branding is a way that you can set yourself apart from other applicants. With many job postings, the applicants have similar experience levels and skill sets. It is imperative that you brand yourself in a way that highlights the values that may stand out from your competitors. You want to ensure that your resume clearly shows your experience, yes, but also who you are. You also want to ensure that you are pitching yourself to the correct target audience. Do market research and ensure that the companies and positions you are applying for are a good culture fit and match your skill set. For example, if you are a civil engineer, you have a very specific market to focus on. It is much more efficient to spend time applying for civil engineering positions at companies that appear to match your goals and values than applying to jobs across the board that may not be a good fit. Finally, utilizing step number two, networking, when working on your personal brand is very important. As you network, you want to be pushing your personal brand and connecting with those with similar values. For example, networking with individuals in the top engineering firms in Chicago. This is a great way to expand your network and meet connections that are like-minded.   

Job posting – hold on to this throughout the entire process! 

• One of the most key components of the job-seeking process, from the search experience to thriving in the role, is to hold on to the job posting throughout the entire journey. When weighing potential roles against each other you will need to compare each job description, the qualifications and skills needed, and any information on the culture of the respective companies. This job posting lays out exactly what the hiring manager is expecting in a candidate and from you. If you use it as a road map through the interview process, it will give insight into how to successfully serve the role and what to expect in the coming months.