Avoiding job hunter despondency...

I’ve spent the past few blogs sharing my observations about the recovery of the recruitment market and how creative agencies and employees are adapting to remote working and finding new and innovative ways to keep morale and productivity high.    We’re now in September (I know….) and recovery does feel like it is continuing with a higher number of briefs and clients getting in touch. This is all great but my latest observation has been seeing quite a lot of lethargy and depression in candidates who are out of work or who are on extended furlough and for whom that feeling of vulnerability continues. Last month I was all about confidence in the market and this month it is more about confidence of candidates.

I’m being very open with my candidates about how many roles I am currently working on.  Still somewhere around 15.  In normal times, it would be over 100 at any given time.   I work 85% on agency briefs  - so this could be marketing, advertising, digital - essentially any agency in the creative world and what I would say at the moment is that if a client does want to hire someone, they have intent and they want to hire fast.  So candidates who are available immediately do have an advantage although clients will wait for the right candidate.   For a typical account handling or client services role, there are multiple candidates applying for each role and yes, competition is fierce...but not impossible.     Clients are being very specific in their requirements so in most cases, it is reasonably straightforward to draw up a shortlist and provide clients with a small number of strong applicants for their role.    This might be based on specific sector experience, type of projects managed, ability to work in a small size (or large) team, channel experience etc.    So it is always worth getting in touch with a recruiter if you see a role advertised that you feel might suit your skill-set.  Most recruiters will consider you initially for the role that you apply for but they will also keep you in mind for anything else that they have now or that will come through in the future.  So you have nothing to lose by making contact and that contact will hopefully lead to a useful relationship - if not now, then down the line.  Good recruiters will be honest with you about why they don’t feel they can shortlist you for something and you need to trust them that if they felt they could put you forward for a role (and therefore make money), they would.  I think at the moment a little honesty goes a long way. Individuals who are out of work are losing confidence in themselves and the sector but if they understand the reasons why they are not shortlisted, it does make things easier. Feedback is important.


I would also say that if you see a role on a job site that you want to apply for, don’t spend a day writing a covering letter.  If a role is advertised by a recruitment agency, I can guarantee that the first thing the recruiter will do is to click on the CV.  Using the 6 second rule (really) they’ll scan it and know if you fit the criteria for the role.  Don’t be disheartened by the 6 second rule.  Contrary to popular belief, recruitment consultancy is a profession, recruiters know what they and their clients are looking for, they want to fill the role, they want to make money.  They will not ignore a CV that is relevant to a role. Good recruiters will not ignore a CV that is not relevant to this role but may be relevant to a future role.   I do like to see that an applicant has written a short email to accompany the CV but this just needs to have the correct salutation (me, not the last person who you applied to - be wary with copy and paste!) and a short precis expressing your interest in the role.  The only time a covering letter is required is when you are applying directly for a role to the employer or when it has been explicitly requested.  


I also work on in-house/clientside marketing briefs.  A recent Marketing Manager role was very popular.  I talked to over 25 candidates in all but the client who had also advertised directly and to another two recruiters, had over 150 CVs in total.    It was quite dispiriting for candidates to find out the level of competition but I worry that it is taken too much to heart and a little out of proportion.   It is perhaps more prevalent with a traditional Marketing Manager or Marketing Communications Manager role that we’ll see a higher volume of applications generally but every hiring manager or recruiter will have an ‘ideal employee’ in mind and it is from this that they will generate a shortlist.  I understand that it is very tricky when on a skills basis, a candidate feels like they tick all the boxes, however, with any role, it’s often first and foremost about skills...and then overlay that with culture, size of business, degree of ‘corporate-ness’, fit, chemistry, sector experience - and so on.    The role job description did have a couple of very specific requirements….and in fact, when the client whittled the numbers down, only a small proportion truly met the requirements that they’d been looking for.  Whilst I’d say it’s always worth an application (wild cards do sometimes get the job), it’s also worth being honest with yourself as to how many of the criteria you met.


Several candidates who I speak to are despondent about visually seeing how many applicants had applied for roles on online job boards.  They cited that this made them ‘not bother’ and that they felt applying for opportunities online was pointless. My response was that when I have a role with over 100 applicants online, I can guarantee that 95% of them are not based in the UK and are entirely unsuitable.   I was talking to a candidate earlier today and I said that of my 15 briefs, I’m actually struggling to find candidates for a couple of them.  How is that for Covid irony?  (UX Designer, Manchester, up to £38k and Head of SEO, Manchester, up to £45k get in touch if this is you!).     


My advice if you are out of work and becoming despondent at the small number of jobs advertised is to allow yourself a limited amount of time to check job boards.  Currently, they are not changing very much on a daily basis as recruiters are limiting their spend on advertising and going back to their databases but also simply because the number of actual roles available is low.  Make sure you are doing other things with your time because spending all day, every day trawling job sites is definitely not going to get you a new job any quicker than if you do it 3 times a week for an hour.  Do ensure you are signed up to job alerts from those job sites that you are registered to; this is way more efficient than trawling!  Please don’t spend days tinkering with your CV; it’s a good idea to have a strong generic CV which you can then tailor to specific roles if you need to.  Spending too much time analysing your CV is not the optimal way to spend your time, you’d do more good by going for a long walk.  Just make sure that your original generic CV is strong. 


You need to have an arsenal of job hunting tools and whilst job sites are part of that, it’s essential to talk to specialist recruiters (ask friends and colleagues for their recommendations) and also go through your own little black book of contacts.  In this climate, I’ve seen lots of examples of ex colleagues helping people out and it’s important not to feel ashamed of asking for help.  Don’t let pride get in the way!


So I suppose the moral of this blog is partly not to believe everything that you read/see.   And once again the UK media doesn’t help with it’s scaremongering and projected unemployment figures.  But also, it’s the realisation that none of us have much control over the way things are at the moment and without a crystal ball, we don’t really know what is going to happen as we hurtle towards Christmas.  Live in the moment, control what you can, do a bit of proactive job hunting but don’t be a slave to it. Give me a call if you fancy a chat.