By Charlotte Attwood, Head of Women in Tech at www.womenintech.co.uk
Going digital has many benefits when looking for a new career move
Finding a job, especially one that you love, can be both stressful and time-consuming. Unfortunately, today many women are still battling against rigid stereotyping and unconscious bias in the hunt for their perfect job. The digitalisation of the recruitment process has started to bring around changes for candidates, with some companies encouraging anonymous applications and blind CVs to overcome these challenges.
There are lots of other ways, though, that you can effectively harness digital medias to get a foot in the door. Our top ten tips for going digital are bound to help you get closer to the job you’ve always dreamed of.
Recruitment hashtags are a really quick and easy way of connecting with people who are looking to hire. Aside from the usual ones, like #wearehiring and #jobsearch, try looking at hashtags like #careeradvice and #jobhuntchat to connect with people offering advice and tips for people on the job hunt.
Connecting with brands on social media allows you to understand their ethos and really get a feel for what they’re all about. This is valuable information to have both when writing an application and in an interview. If a company can see that you truly appreciate their ethos, it looks great on you. Similarly, you can use social media to determine how compatible your ideas are with those of the place you’re considering applying.
In the age of digital job applications, jobsites are the easiest way to distribute your CV and find the right job for you. You can comprehensively search for jobs according to your experience and skills, or the requirements set by employees. These sites often give useful advice on what to include on your CV, how to write your cover letter and so on.
Use Social Media to find job vacancies that you’d love to work for. Lots of big companies have specific twitter accounts just for their recruitment teams where they regularly post vacancies and internships. Actively engaging with these accounts by favouriting or replying to tweets, will familiarise the people who run those accounts with your name. It’s not unlikely that the people controlling these accounts are the people responsible for recruitment, so getting your name out there in front of them will be really useful.
Use websites like Glassdoor to find out as much about a company before your interview as possible. Employees and interviewees of many different companies leave feedback and comments ranging from company ethos, interview techniques and their overall experience of the brand. This can help you get a great understanding of what sort of things to say in your interview, and how you can best appeal to the employer.
Create a digital portfolio of your work. For journalists and writers, this is most commonly a website that curates all your published work and so is easily shareable with potential employers. For artists and designers, this could be a dedicated Instagram page filled with your work that accurately reflects the style of work that best represents you.
Create an intelligent profile, using platforms like APPII who use blockchain technology to enable former employers, universities and schools to verify your qualifications and skills. Having all your achievements endorsed and verified as being 100% true makes your CV really stand out, as employers can be confident in all of your abilities.
Video CVs are a great way to showcase your personality. One of the setbacks of digital recruitment is that it can be difficult to show an employer you have strong communication skills or are very personable. A 2-minute video discussing your experience and skills is a great way for an employer to get a real sense of what you’re like, not just on paper.
Using networking sites like Bumble Bizz for professional networking is a great way to meet likeminded people and chat about career advice. Using apps and forums as a way to communicate with peers and people in a similar position to you can provide valuable insight into what employers do and don’t like to see. Sites like womenintech.co.uk were specifically created to help women in the workplace with career advice.
Blogging about your life and your progress in a professional capacity can be a great way of keeping a log of your development throughout your career. Lots of people blog about things they learn and the ways they grow at work. A digital log of your thoughts and progress at work demonstrates your capacities for evolution as well as your professional enthusiasm.
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