After having prepared a good CV, navigating the sea of job offers is the second key moment in any active search for a new job. Basically, it’s all about finding an offer that, for whatever reason, interests you, and applying for it. However, it’s usually not that easy. In this post, we will discuss everything there is to know about job offers, including tips and common mistakes you should avoid in your job search.
What are job offers?
Job offers are basically a way for companies to notify the public that they have an opening for a position and that they are looking for the best candidate to fill it.
It is true that many jobs are obtained in different ways. Sometimes companies implement an internal promotion process, so that job offers are made available only to the company’s current workforce rather than being advertised.
Other times a particular vacancy is filled through an informal process facilitated by the network of contacts that a recruiter and an applicant have in common. It’s not the most common, but it does happen, which is why it’s so important to leverage the role of networking during a job search process: you never know which company will unexpectedly fall in love with you without having to go through the motions of job offers, interviewing and competitors.
In any case, in general, what we know as signing up for a job offer is the most common method to progress in the job search process. This usually happens through specialized portals or job boards listed on the websites of companies and professional associations.
What should we keep in mind about job offers?
1. The content
There are many types of job offers in terms of quantity and accuracy of the content. For example, many offers do not provide information about the company offering the job and do not always clearly indicate the real conditions regarding working hours and salary, although it is very common to find vague expressions such as “full time” and a more or less specific salary range.
There are many types of offers, you will have to decide whether to apply based on the little or a lot of information you have.
Normally it is specified whether the position is an employee (in other words, when the company hires you) or a freelance (what we know as “self-employed”).
Some offers give a very brief description of the job functions while others provide very extensive information not only about the functions but also about the person’s professional profile and other information about the company.
Whatever the material is, you should work with it to decide whether or not to apply for the position. In any case, whenever job offers allow you to attach a CV you have prepared yourself, remember the most important thing: you must adapt it to the offer before attaching it. Attaching it without having reviewed and adapted it is a mistake that can eliminate you from the selection process before it begins.
2. Opponents
As with the rest of the content, one piece of information that you sometimes have and sometimes don’t is the number of people also applying for the same position. Some job portals indicate the number of applications for job openings, which will give you a bird’s eye view of your chances.
Many times you won’t know if you’re competing with three people or three hundred. If you see that there are dozens or even hundreds of people who have already applied for a job you are considering, you don’t lose anything by applying yourself, although your application will most likely never be reviewed. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s worth it or whether you’d rather pass it up.
3. Follow-up on the application
Active job search is not called “active” for nothing, but because it implies that the candidate does more to find a job than just prepare a CV and sign up for an offer with three simple clicks before sitting down to wait for a call.
Far from it, the active search for a job includes, among other things, keeping track of the job offers to which the employee applies. If you know the name of the company, or the recruiter, or have their e-mail address or other methods of contact, it’s worth considering using it to inquire about the status of your application.
Many tutorials on job search assume that this follow-up should always be done. Personally, I wouldn’t say that: first of all, there are times when it’s impossible since you have no way of contacting them. Other times, you simply don’t know how the recruiter in question is going to take the fact that you are contacting them again and it would be a mistake on your part to assume that they are going to see this as a point in your favor. When in doubt, think about it and, if you decide to try your luck, do it politely, simply, and, of course, don’t insist.
Common mistakes when applying for a job offer
1. Applying for an offer for which you do not meet the requirements
It is true that, normally, nothing is lost by trying. It is also true that companies set minimum requirements to fill their vacancies not only because they are looking for the right candidate to fill the vacancy, but also because they want the process of looking for the right candidate to be easy.
In short, it is not advisable to approach an active job search randomly to see what happens. You don’t have to sign up for everything. If you are not very clear about your professional objective and you apply to every job offer that comes your way, you may be unnecessarily burning bridges with that company in the future. In the best-case scenario, you may be wasting time and feeding expectations that will generate avoidable frustration when they are not fulfilled.
2. Not adapting your CV to the specific offer
We sometimes discover job offers that interest us but we don’t bother to review the CV we are going to apply with because we assume it is already correct. Other times, time is running out and we rush to apply for an offer so as not to be left out and we send the first CV we find on our computer. It can also be that we do not read what the offer says carefully and, therefore, we do not adapt our CV correctly.
Remember to tailor your CV to the specific offer and then decide how you will follow up on your application.
Actively looking for a job means taking five minutes to carefully examine and review what you’re going to do to apply. A few minutes to tweak here and there and present ourselves correctly can make a big difference between finding a job and not finding a job.
3. Messing up in the follow-up
Remember that inquiring about the status of your application is not always possible and certainly not mandatory. There will be times when it is very easy to do so and even recommended. There will also be times when it is better to be cautious and wait. If you finally write an email to the recruiter to ask about your application, do it in a simple way, showing your availability, thanking for being taken into account… and, please, read what you have written before sending it: if you have not made any spelling mistakes when writing your CV, it would be a shame to do it when writing an email that nobody has asked you for, wouldn’t it?
Emotional well-being for companies
At ifeel, we understand that it is not possible to take care of the company without taking care of the psychological well-being of its employees. To do so, we have an emotional well-being program for companies, designed by our team of occupational well-being psychologists with one main objective: to help companies place employee health at the center of their strategy to build their mission statement.
Thanks to this partnership, the people in charge of HR departments can receive personalized, data-driven advice on how to make good decisions in a company to get the most out of the teams they are in charge of and take better care of the psychological well-being of the people in them.
Moreover, this program offers employees a holistic mental health care service structured at different levels according to their needs. This service includes, if required, online psychological therapy with a psychologist specialized in cases like theirs. Try our program today so you can see how it could help you.We hope you have found this post about job offers interesting. If you want more information about our emotional well-being program for companies, simply request it and we will contact your team as soon as possible. You may also be interested in this post about mental health at work.
