Compliments of the Season and Welcome Graduate Job Seekers to the Workplace Wonderland

Ola Amigos and a warm and fuzzy welcome to Two Double Oh Nine, so fine!

Okay, okay, so you may not be all that thrilled to be back at work or even more so, back in the swing of the Job Seeking thing but to open the year off on a positive note I thought I’d start out by saying…this year is YOUR year.

In fact forget two thousand and fine, I dare you to call it “Two Thousand and Mine!”

:”)

Everything that you want this New Year to  be and everything you set out for it to be, can and will be yours, provided you inject each day with as much personal integrity, honesty, patience, balance and persistence as you can muster up.

I’m certain that some days you may falter and others you may just be in a bad mood which of course is all perfectly ok.

“Mama, said that there’d be days like this” but prevail and prove to be stronger than the challenges you are presented with and I can guarantee succeed you will.

So yes, welcome back everyone, I hope you all missed me as much as I missed you and I hope that you are all in high spirits ahead of the renewed potential of the New Year.

Speaking of potential, the New Year has also introduced the class of 2008 to the South African job market and brought about a new era of talent, skills and possibility in the form of recently graduated Job Seekers.

While it seems to be a common focus in most of the media out there at the moment, I thought that perhaps Id jump on the bandwagon and add my two cents worth of value to graduates entering the Job Seeker market.

Aside from the obvious of creating a winning CV and keeping your eyes peeled for opportunities, graduate Job Seekers should remember to make use of and utilise all available job hunting resources available to them.

• Tap into varied means of Recruitment resources through that of utilising Online Job Portals such as Jobs.co.za as well as making use of the services offered by Recruitment Agencies.

Both offer unique opportunities to all Job Seekers that both provide solutions to varying needs;

Job Portals:

- Offer 24 hour access to Job search by industry location or job function

- Provide the opportunity to upload or create tailored CV’s in order to sell transferable skills

- Utilising pre defined job alerts to search for jobs without having to actively search (automated    functions that alerts Job Seekers of possible matches once located)

- Ability to refine searches to pinpoint exact opportunities that you may be looking for.

Recruitment Agencies:

- Personalised service offered whereby agents search on behalf of the Job Seeker based on the person to person relationship.

- Act as a middle man between job seekers and corporate clients with niche hiring requirements.

• Learn from the advertisers and creatively market your skills interests and accomplishments. There is nothing appealing about a wordy CV that has relied on the use of a thesaurus to sell its contents. Remember that as graduates, you will not have extensive levels of experience as yet which means you need to tap into creatively appealing ways to sell who you are and what you plan on accomplishing in the early stages of your career. Offer foresight and depth into ways in which you plan on succeeding and goals you plan on reaching. Display your drive your motive and your determination to learn and grow and your “No Fear” attitude towards hard work.

• Where possible try to gain experience through apprenticeships, learner ships and other experiences by which you can expand your exposure to varied industries and interests. You can’t win if you don’t play and the only way to know what you will be truly happy building a career around is by trying out the different roles that interest you. Not only will this help you to identify things that you like and dislike, but will also further groom you by developing your work experience and tools to cope with this new stage in your lifecycle.

• Begin to network with those that know you. At this stage in your career game you don’t have a working reputation to sell your skills. Instead, chat to friends, family and family friends and discuss options that they may be able to offer to you or perhaps even know of other acquaintances that may be interested in hiring graduate staff. The more you communicate your interests and desires, the more people will be able to offer their help and guidance as well as possible workable graduate opportunities. Remember that most placements are made through word of mouth and just because you are a graduate, doesn’t mean the same does not apply.

For more Job Seeker advice on how to prepare a CV, write a cover letter or anything more that you may require in order dive into the wonderful working world, please visit the Job Seeker advice pages on Jobs.co.za and if you have any questions or a specific problem that you are currently facing, leave me a comment in my blog or drop me a mail at;

joblog@jobs.co.za

I will be back again soon with more news, advice and some fun here and there.

Namaste little ones and welcome to the “Wonderland of Work”

Jo Blog

joblog@jobs.co.za

0861 JOBS 101

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 4:56 pm and is filed under General Jobs.co.za, JoBlog's Workplace, Top Tips for Job Seekers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.