Job Hunting in the Time of COVID-19

As turmoil is rarely expected it often goes accompanied with other unpleasant ordeals and this is how my story begins.
 
A week or so after my company went bust, COVID-19 was declared to be a pandemic.

Now the situation was already beginning to look rather bleak, UEFA Champions League was being postponed and many other competitions were about to follow suit. My industry suddenly found it's main source of revenue suddenly disappear under it's feet and I guessed many other industries were about to feel the impact as well.

Okay. No time to waste. We can process the job loss and company going bust AFTER getting a job. This is not the time to be left without a source of income and medical insurance.

Step 1. Polish your CV

All classic CV advice applies. 
  • Don't forget to add your personal and contact details 
  • Cover your work history starting with the most recent experience first
  • Keep the experience relevant and to the point (ancient and obsolete experience is probably an overkill)
  • Summarize clearly what you've managed to deliver in 1-2 sentences. Avoid superfluous wording.
  • Cover education and training
  • Language proficiency
  • Achievements
  • References, named contacts and contact detail
I've used the https://jsonresume.org/ format to specify all details in a structured way, published it as a gist which then becomes readily available as a published web page (https://registry.jsonresume.org/schrepfler) which you can then easily print to PDF (don't forget to put some margins). Various themes are available to match your style and personality.

Step 2. LinkedIn

Activate temporarily LinkedIn Pro (there's a free one month trial), if you can land a job within a month and if it's not working for you, you can always cancel it.
Update your job history, you can use bits and pieces from the CV which you should already have done by now.
Open yourself for job offers, update all the detail as to which job opportunities you're after. This will allow recruiters to match their needs to your profile much more easily.

Identify the companies you would be interested in working in. Companies in your industry are typically where your skills are easily transferable and more often than not this works in your favor. Cultural fit is also important, if you like them for some reason there's good chance they'll like you too.

Identify their 
  1. Recruitment agencies if they keep recruitment external
  2. Careers pages
  3. Talent acquisition/HR recruitment people that are active on LinkedIn.
  4. Friends or LinkedIn acquaintances working at those companies.
Reach out, attach your CV. Adjust the message style to match the destination.

Step 3. Kanban workflow

Your next job now is to manage what happens next. You're going to go through various phases in the recruitment process, talking to many people, doing many interviews, gathering documentation to send, sending emails, waiting for replies, negotiating. As many things go, it's very easy to get sidetracked and miss sending a reply on time and be responsive.

To manage this, we'll setup a kanban board. I've used Trello but you can use others if you're already familiar with them. You can customize the phases to match your workflow, I've kept my to these basic steps: Evaluate, Engage, In progress, Archived, Accepted. If you want you can split In Progress to match the typically 1/2 interview phases that you'll go through.


Time to Grind. 

Your objective is to move every application as quickly as possible to the right. Even if you discard/archive the items it's better than keeping them around piling up. That includes chasing the contact to understand are you still an active candidate or you can move on. 

Move on. 

Don't get discouraged if your preferred choice does not materialize. Maybe it's just the timing, maybe it's something in your delivery/presentation, maybe they're not looking for your profile at the moment. 

Ask for feedback, evaluate your delivery, both conversational and technical, adjust and improve it. 

Keep improving.

Most of you are out of practice so doing it on the fly when the stakes are high might be a bit stressful. This is okay. This is a natural feeling. The good thing is that for most people once you're in the flow, these anxieties go in the background and you can focus on the task at hand.

Stay in the flow. Keep grinding.


Good luck!

  

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