Whether you’re a recent graduate, a seasoned professional, or someone looking to switch careers, navigating the competitive job market and getting hired can be a daunting task. Especially as the current unemployment rate among young South Africans, aged 15 to 34, stands at 44.3 %.
It is therefore crucial that you stand out from the crowd when applying for jobs and when going through the interview process. Try these four tips to help you achieve just that:
- Highlight your strengths: If you’re not clear on your own strengths and capabilities, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to project those to a future employer. It’s important to understand and easily list what your key differentiators are from other candidates. How can you showcase your strengths and the impact that you might be able to bring to the new role?
- Understand your gaps and upskill yourself: The benefit of assessing your skills and competencies is that it might be clearly apparent where the gaps might be. To make yourself as employable as possible, consider short courses to boost your skills and close the gaps. Look into courses such as occupational health and safety, logistics and supply chain management, human resource management, marketing, business management and hospitality and tourism.
- Make your CV stands out: Keep in mind that your potential employer receives hundreds of CVs every month from candidates. With the sheer number of applications that they are required to process, you’ll need to make sure that both your cover letter and CV stand out immediately. As a starting point, do your homework to make sure that the cover letter is personally addressed to the recruitment contact and references the company to which you’re applying. In addition, be sure to review the job description in detail to make sure that you list skills and traits that you know match what they’re looking for. You have a few seconds to make an impact, use it.
- Go in well-prepared: Critical to entering an interview environment is having done your research on the company itself and the broader market. What does the company specialise in, and how do they rank in the broader industry? What are the challenges and issues they might be dealing with? A quick scan of news articles will also bring you up to speed on their current headspace. Other resources might be the company website, social media, industry publications and influencers.
For more information on upskilling yourself, visit IQ Academy.
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