Collectively finding job opportunities

Finding the right roles to apply for can be time-consuming, and confirming their suitability can be confusing. Work together to cut down the time you spend searching for roles and spend more time focusing on making good applications.

Job Search Exercise Learning objectives

Our goal is to collectively do the following:

• Search for jobs using different online platforms.
• Locate the Collective Job Research form.
• Identify key company information in a job advert.
• Add 1 job role to the Collective Job Research form.
• Check the suitability of the found job roles.

Set-Up

• Split up into groups of no more than 5
• Set a whole class timer for 30 minutes

Instructions

• Find the Collective Job Research form.
• Each team should select no more than 3 different platforms based on the list on the first tab of the Collective Job Research form.
• Each team should use a different set of platforms than the other team.
• Search for jobs using keywords and filters.
• Identify a suitable job role that you want to apply for.
• Find the job opening advertised on the company website if possible.
• Identify key company information in the job advert. (Try using this tool to find the key information)
• Add the link and information about the vacancy to the Collective Job Research spreadsheet.

Search Terms Exercise

• Choose a job site to use
• Look at the skills and experience you have listed on your CV
• Try different combinations of those skills 
• Try different combinations of job titles that you’re interested in

Note: What changes do you see? 

• Do some search terms return results that are a better match for you?
• Make a note of the most the most effective search terms. You will use this in a later section

Filters Exercise

• Pick a job board and a role title
• Search for the role using different variations of filters. 

Note: what changes do you see? 

• Do some search terms reveal jobs that you’re more interested in? 
• Make a note of the search terms that are most helpful to you. You will use this in the next section.

Alerts Exercise

• Using the filters and search terms you found in the previous exercises set up alerts on different job sites.
• review these alerts as they update you over the next few weeks.
  • Are they finding good job openings?
  • How can you refine your search terms and filters to be more useful?