Job hunting can be tricky sometimes. It all depends on your experience and your skills of course. But sometimes it seems like it’s near impossible to find jobs that are good fits to your profile / interesting for yourself intrinsically.
With international jobs it kind of makes the search harder but also better at the same time. Harder because your options are even wider meaning you have so much more to choose from. But also better because not only might you find the job of dreams, you might also find it in the country of your dreams. That’s why we thought it might be useful to give away some do’s & don’ts that you can apply yourself in order to make your job hunt more efficient.
Do’s
Get organized: Make sure you know where you apply and on which portals you’ve registered so that when a recruiter calls you, you are not totally surprised that they found your cv on a international job portal.
Prepare for all job interviews: Even when you you’re not really feeling it from the beginning, you never now the opportunities a job could hold for you in the future: growth opportunities, finding another dream job in that country, making essential professional connections for later…
Write thank-you notes after interviews to all interviewers: Even when you don’t get selected your chances to land the job are technically not over. Write a thank you note or ask for feedback to the interviewer and who knows what may happen after.
Get clear on what you want: Especially with international recruitment, the possibilities are endless. If you happen to speak a very in demand language you can have 15 different job opportunities that are all relevant for you. Try to get clear and decide from the beginning where you would like to go and what kind of job you would like to do.
Expect the job search to take longer than you think: Don’t get discouraged when it takes longer than you’d have hoped to find a job. Something it goes extremely fast and sometimes it feels nothing is coming your way. Be patient, be prepared that it might take a while. If you have free time, try to work on new skills that might be useful for your cv.
Don’ts
Resume mistakes: Be mindful that recruiters can’t really use a CV where your latest job experience was 5 years ago. When you have a lot of gaps in your CV. Try to give some explanations about it in the cover letter or somewhere in the CV. Also remember that when you are dealing with international job hunting always put your CV in English
Not including cover letters: While not all clients ask for this, you will clearly have a head start when you write one. Candidates usually don’t have the inspiration to write this, but remember that it still is a very strong tool in the world of recruitment.
Outdated job portal accounts: Make sure everything is up to date account wise on the job portals you logged yourself in. Also try to not login on too many websites, because it’s easy to lose an oversight on which sites you actually made an account.
Wrong behaviour – body language: Sometimes due to outside circumstances, candidates can have a bad day, be in a bad mood. While this is perfectly normal. Note that first impressions are extremely important in recruitment. With recruiters & interviewers. So try to always be mindful of this.
Not a professional social media presence: Whilst social media accounts are personal (in a way). Bare in mind that companies can go and have a look at this. So if you are applying, just remember to have a look from time to time what you’ve posted on your timeline and how it all looks. Of course LinkedIn is the official ‘professional’ social medium. So at least have this one updated if you have an account, which is also very much recommended.
Even though there are always a lot of variables that determine whether somebody might get a job or not. The most important aspect of interviewing / applying is your attitude. A positive attitude, mindset will get you way further than a negative one. And is sometimes, even more important than your CV.
If you ever have questions on why the job hunt isn’t going well, a lot of interviews seem to go bad or just some other tips in general feel free to contact me and ask me some questions at jean-nicolas@multilingualjobsworldwide.com
