By: Claire Wilson. Last Updated: April 2022

image-showing-7-job-hunting-mistakes-that-are-avoided-using-advanced-coaching

One Of The Biggest Challenges With Career Change Job Hunting…

… is that everyone thinks they already know what they’re doing. Because who doesn’t know how to write a CV, right?

Firstly, everyone thinks they know how to write a CV… they often don’t.

And secondly, a successful modern-day career change job hunting is about so much more than writing a CV and sending it out to employers.

How To Know If You Need Help

Below you’ll find a more detailed discussion of those 7 common job-hunting mistakes that people often make while changing careers.

Can you honestly say you’re not making any of these common job-hunting mistakes? Because making just one of them will severely impact the efficiency of your job hunt. Even if you only make one of these mistakes, your job hunting skills would benefit from some updating.

7 Most Common Job Hunting Mistakes People Make When Changing Careers

  1. Starting a job hunt by updating a previous CV
    Many job hunters start their job hunt by digging out a CV they’ve used in the past and updating it. You should NEVER do this! You should start every new job hunt with a blank page, writing a CV from scratch, capturing the most important aspects of your history for that job hunt.
    And of course, what you write is extremely important. Do you know how long your CV should be? How to adapt it to every job? What to write in your personal profile section? How to sell your skills to an employer even if your experience is only from other industries?
  2. Not using social media in a job hunt
    LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook all have a role to play in a modern job hunt. If you’re not using these platforms effectively, you’re not job hunting to your full potential.
    Do you know the weekly routines a job hunter should be going through to pull out all the useful job-hunt information from these networks? How to write a LinkedIn page when you’re changing industry? We can walk through the benefits of using these platforms and talk you through how to do it successfully, even if you’ve never used them before.
  3. Applying for less than 5 jobs per week (yes, really!)
    Job hunting is a numbers game and we know that you should be aiming for a minimum of 5 applications per week to keep the momentum up. Any less than that and you’re significantly impacting how long it will take you to secure a job.
    And yes, this is a realistic number for anybody.
  4. Only applying for positions when there’s a job advert
    One of the biggest mistakes people make – so many roles never reach the job advert stage. Professional networking and speculative applications play a huge role in the candidate identification these days, you need to do more than reply to job adverts.
    Are you actively networking? Do you know how to make the most of networking opportunities and the questions you should be asking? Are you aware of the differences in writing a speculative application?
  5. Not having a ‘personal pitch’ ready to use
    If you don’t have a personal pitch that you can recite at a moment’s notice, you’re not fully equipped to job hunt.
    Don’t know what a personal pitch is? Then you really need some job hunting advice.
  6. Only talking about duties and responsibilities of previous jobs – not transferable skills and achievements
    When you’re reskilling, the duties you carried out in your last job are unlikely to be directly relatable to a new position you’re applying for. If your CV only states what your job required you to do then you’re underselling yourself – you need to learn about transferable skills.
    Can you identify transferable skills? Have you gone through your history and picked out yours? Do you know how to match these to a job advert?
  7. Not sending a thank you note after every interview
    Sending a thank you note and following up from the interview is something that very few people do. If you’re not doing it, you’re missing a significant chance to set yourself apart from other candidates.
    There’s actually a lot that people take for granted about interviewing, we can help you figure that out too.

What You Can Do To Update Your Job Hunting Skills

If you’re making any of these mistakes (even one of them), you’re not giving yourself the best chance of landing a new job quickly. You’ll probably be successful eventually, but why waste effort and time in a haphazard job hunt?

Check out our 25-week job hunt template – the step-by-step guide to your job hunt that you didn’t even know you needed. Before you get started (or get frightened off by the daunting looking spreadsheet!), we’d actually recommend you start with this blog post that explains all about the template and how to use it.

Also check out our Job Hunting Resource Centre for a comprehensive collection of articles, templates, and checklists that were all developed with a career change job hunt in mind.

About the Author

Image with Claire Wilison from GetReskilled Team

Claire Wilson

Content Marketing and Career Coaching

Claire runs GetReskilled’s Advanced Career Coaching Programme – our specially devised job hunting course that helps our trainees take that final step into employment by leading them through the job hunting process. She is extremely enthusiastic about helping people reach their final goal of employment in their new career path.

Claire has a BSc (Hons) in Medical Biology from Edinburgh University and spent 7 years working in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.