.jpg)
Job hunting or job seeking is the act of looking for employment, due to unemployment or discontent with a current position. The immediate goal of job seeking is usually to obtain a job interview with an employer which may lead to getting hired. The job hunter or seeker typically first looks for job vacancies or employment opportunities. Common methods of job hunting are:
using a job search engine
- looking through the classifieds in newspapers
- using a private or public employment agency or recruiter
- finding a job through a friend or an extended business network or personal network
- looking on a company's web site for open jobs, typically in its applicant tracking system
- going to a job fair
Knowing the employers
It is expected the job seekers will have done a reasonable amount of research into the employers. Some basic information about an employer should be collected first before applying the organization's positions, including full name, locations, web site, business description, year established, revenues, number of employees, stock price if public, name of chief executive officer, major products or services, major competitors, strength as well as challenges.
[edit]Networking
Contacting as many people as possible is a highly effective way to find a job. It is estimated that 60% or higher of all jobs are found through networking. [1]
[edit]Applying
One can also go and hand out résumés or Curriculum Vitae to prospective employers. Another recommended method of job hunting is cold calling or emailing companies that one desires to work for and inquire to whether there are any job vacancies.
After finding a desirable job, they would then apply for the job by responding to the advertisement. This may mean applying through a website, emailing or mailing in a hard copy of your résumé to a prospective employer. It is generally recommended that résumés be brief, organized, concise, and targeted to the position being sought. With certain occupations, such as graphic design or writing, portfolios of a job seeker's previous work are essential and are evaluated as much, if not more than the person's résumé. In most other occupations, the résumé should focus on past accomplishments, expressed in terms as concretely as possible (e.g. number of people managed, amount of increased sales or improved customer satisfaction).
[edit]Interviewing
Once an employer has received your résumé, they will make a list of potential employees to be interviewed based on the résumé and any other information contributed. During the interview process, interviewers generally look for persons who they believe will be best for the job and work environment. The interview may occur in several rounds until the interviewer is satisfied and offers the job to the applicant.
[edit]Job hunting in economic theory
Economists use the term 'frictional unemployment' to mean unemployment resulting from the time and effort that must be expended before an appropriate job is found. Search theory is the economic theory that studies the optimal decision of how much time and effort to spend searching, and which offers to accept or reject (in the context of a job hunt, or likewise in other contexts like searching for a low price).
