How to Find a New Job: 4 Tips for Your 2023 Job Search

Hey, I'm Abbey and welcome back to the Lifework Balance YouTube channel. Today I have four tips for you on how to get a new job in 2023. So if you are burned out from your current job, if you are new to the job market and you're looking to get your very first job, or you're just looking for something more challenging or something different and a change of pace, then this video is for you. Before I jump into that, please go ahead and give this video a thumbs up if you're looking forward to learning a little bit more about how you can get a job in this upcoming year. And if you haven't already, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button as well as the bell so that you can receive Lifework Balance advice delivered directly to you every Sunday. Alright, so my very first tip when it comes to finding a new job in this upcoming year is to make sure everything is updated and current. So this includes going through your resume and making any changes necessary to ensure that it is the most up-to-date version possible. This should be relatively obvious because this is the document that you'll be using to apply to many different jobs and you want to make sure that it encompasses all the things that you've done in the past year or several years since you've gotten a new job. If this is your first job and you've never had a new job before, then it will be time to put all of your education and any relevant experience like volunteer experience, group projects, things like that down on paper. If you have never created a resume before, I have several videos on that topic and I even have a playlist all about resumes. So I've linked to that in the description box below. If you already have a resume and you just need to make those changes, then you should be able to make those tweaks to your master resume and then create a tailored resume for whatever job you want to apply to. Any updates could include additional trainings that you've taken throughout this year or the last couple of years, any professional associations that you joined or that you're a part of, any projects or quantitative metrics that you can include on your resume, any additional responsibilities that you may have started to take on over the last year or two. So add whatever needs to be added to your current documents to make sure that they're most up-to-date and current. Once you have updated your resume, then you may also need to make some slight tweaks to your general cover letter. I love cover letters. I highly recommend including a cover letter with every application that you submit. So if you are a little unsure about how to write a cover letter, I have a video about that, so please check out the video in the description box below. And finally, the last thing that you need to update to ensure it's current is your LinkedIn profile. If you don't have a LinkedIn profile yet, put that at the top of your to-do list. Your LinkedIn profile is your personal and professional online brand. Chances are someone who is considering hiring you into a position will Google your name. Your LinkedIn profile is one of the first things that will appear on this Google search, so make sure that you have an up-to-date, clean, professional LinkedIn profile that really shows who you are as a person and as a professional. Again, I have many videos on the topic of LinkedIn, so I've linked those in the description box below. Once you have ensured that everything is current, then it's time to start thinking about your personal brand and how that relates to your job search. So if you don't think you have a personal brand, you want to dig deep into thinking about what might your core values be. What is your personal mission statement and vision statement? Once you start exploring these different topics, and you can either do this on your own or with someone like me, you will start to gain some insight into yourself, which will help you focus your job search, which is one of my upcoming tips. When you know your personal brand, you know your core values, you know what is important to you and where you want to go, then it's a lot easier to focus your job search on organizations that align with that personal brand. Once you know your personal brand, you can also incorporate those different aspects into your LinkedIn profile. So if you're curious about what this looks like, check out my LinkedIn profile. I have a pretty robust summary and about me section, and I've included in those sections my core values and my personal mission and vision statements. I've also got that information on my website, so feel free to check that out. My third tip is to start working to improve your general interview confidence. If it has been a while since you've interviewed, or maybe you've never interviewed before, it can be really nerve-wracking, and it takes a lot of practice and preparation to be good at interviewing. So in order to start to improve your interview confidence, you don't just want to wait until the day before your very first interview. You want to start now, before you even begin the job search process. I have a ton of free resources available for you via my YouTube channel and also on my website. So this includes things like preparing your answer to very common interview questions, like tell me about yourself. Almost every interview will start off with some variation of that question. You need to have a short elevator pitch to tell the interviewer or interviewers about yourself. There are several ways your answer to this question can go wrong, so make sure you check out my video on that question specifically, but also check out my playlist on interview tips. I have videos about how you can answer very specific interview questions, and I also have videos about how you can set yourself up for success for various types of interviews, like video interviews versus in-person interviews. I also have some resources on how you can conduct a mock interview with someone else. Mock interviews are essential to your interview success. You need to practice answering interview questions. Now if you don't have someone who you can practice with, you can always record yourself and watch yourself back. Most people internally cringe when they hear that suggestion, but it's really important and valuable to be able to see how you actually are to someone else. How are your responses? What does your body language look like? That's really important data that can help you be successful during an interview. If you do have someone who can help you with the interview process, make sure it's someone who will give you honest feedback. They won't just say, oh you did great, every answer was amazing, but they'll have some good feedback on how you might be able to change your answers because they maybe know you well, or maybe they didn't feel like your answer answered the question fully. So having a mock interview is essential to your overall interview success. Again, I have a video all about how to do mock interviews, so I've linked to it in the description box below, and it is included in that interview tips playlist. It's a pretty robust playlist, it's got lots of different videos on it, but it's a great resource to start your interview prep. And my fourth and final tip is to just start the job search process. Now you do not just want to wing it and apply to any job that comes up. You want to be focused about your job search process. People who are focused during the job search process find that they have higher quality applications, and higher quality applications tends to mean fewer quantity of applications. If you have focus, you'll tend to connect with jobs that are truly a good fit for you within organizations that are also good fits for you. That's perfect because if you can find a job and an organization that's a good fit for you relatively quickly, then your job search process won't last months. You don't just want to throw your resume at every job. You want to know the different types of jobs that you want to apply to. Now this doesn't mean that it has to be your dream job, it doesn't mean this has to be the career for the rest of your life. What it does mean is that it's a job that is a good fit for you right now. If you're unsure about even what types of jobs you could start applying to, check out the free resource Onet through the Bureau of Labor Statistics here in the United States. Again it's a free resource and it goes through a bunch of different occupations where you can do some research about what some of the key duties and responsibilities might be, and you can start to narrow down the different types of occupations that are a good fit and are maybe not so much of a good fit. Once you know the different types of jobs that you want to apply to, then it's time to make your list of the different types of organizations that you want to work for. Now this doesn't have to be a completely exclusive list, but just a list to get your brainstorming going. Know the companies that would be your dream companies to work for, and then you can start to find companies that are similar to those dream companies that could be building blocks or stepping stones to that dream company eventually. So when you know the types of roles that you want to apply to, and the different types of organizations that you want to apply to, you can really focus your job search to help you find the right job and the right organization for you, and submit a much higher quality application rather than just throwing your resume to every job that you want to apply to. Once you have found that specific job that you do want to apply to, remember to tailor your resume. Tailoring your resume can feel like a long process, however once you do it once, chances are you'll use just tweaked versions of that tailored resume for similar jobs in the future. So it's really not going to be that much work in the long term. Tailor your resume. Hiring managers and applicant tracking systems, which are the computer programs that review resumes or applications before a human does, can usually tell the difference between generic resumes and tailored resumes. It is to your benefit to spend some extra time adding specific words and phrases from the job posting to your resume and even your cover letter. First the applicant tracking system will review those documents and your application as a whole to look for those keywords and phrases and will generate some sort of score for a person to determine if you're a good fit or not. Then a person will review your application and your documents. The first review will take a very short amount of time. They are skimming through your documents, they're skimming through your application, looking for those keywords and phrases that could indicate that you have the skills, the education, the experience necessary in order to meet minimum qualifications. If it is not crystal clear that you have those minimum qualifications or even those preferred qualifications, then they are not going to waste their time reviewing your application or your documents. So you need to do the work on the front end to ensure that your application won't immediately be tossed to the side. You do this by tailoring all of your documents. Again, I have a video on this topic. I've linked to it in the description box below. Check out my tips on how you can tailor your resume. And then finally, when it comes to focusing your job search, this almost goes back to one of my previous tips about increasing your interview confidence. You don't just want to practice general generic interview questions. You want to review the job description and see if you can pick out different types of interview questions that they might ask you that are job-specific. So these could be technical questions or role-specific questions or these could be behavioral-based questions that are job-specific. So for example, if you are an engineer and you're applying to an engineering position, then there might be a behavior-based question that asks how you have solved a specific type of engineering problem in the past. So do some work and research through the job description to try to come up with some interview questions that you might think would be asked during the interview. All of these tips together will set you up for success for your job search in this upcoming year. While it can be stressful, it might even feel time-consuming, it will be worth it in the end for you to spend this time up front updating your documents, creating your personal brand, tailoring your documents, and focusing your job search. So I hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please go ahead and give it a thumbs up. And if you have any questions, comments, thoughts, or ideas on this topic specifically, please let me know in the comments box below. I love receiving comments and respond to them each individually. So if you leave me a comment, I will get back to you as quickly as I can. If you haven't already, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button as well as the bell so that you can receive life work balance advice delivered directly to you every Sunday. Thanks and I'll see you next week.