Lots of people have been getting new jobs lately which is great news! But if you’re not one of them and you’ve been looking for a while, it can all feel a bit… deflating.
There are plenty of people looking for jobs BUT 30% of travel industry jobs go unfilled. Hiring managers claim they can’t find the right people, and people cannot find the right jobs. This means there is a gap between what is available and what people actually want to do.
We all know the job market in general and our industry in particular have changed in the past few years. COVID meant mass redundancies and now companies are rehiring. There have also been a bunch of redundancies in the tech industry which includes our friends in travel tech companies. And this year I have heard of many redundancies and restructuring at corporate or global level in travel companies.
Automation and AI have become part of our daily life. The new kind of “product manager” is taking over the old kind of product manager. This is especially true for operations staff but even for my commercial friends, with dynamic rates and connectivity becoming the norm, there is less “work” to fill our time and we need to get savvy about how we add value.
So when you’re job hunting, you may spend ages filling in online applications, just to get no response from the recruiter and not even the chance to have a chat. Or perhaps you are reaching the interview stage but can’t work out why you can’t convince them that you’re the right person for the job. And no feedback there either!
It can feel like an exhausting hamster wheel, where you are expected to show up as your best self just to be rejected.
Read on for some inspiration and options of how to make your job hunt more successful, and hopefully less tiring, in three main areas: networking, communicating your value and mindset.
Networking
80% of jobs are filled through personal and professional connections. Meaning, if you don’t know people, you only have a shot at 1 in 5 of jobs available. More than that, people who find jobs through their network get more job offers, with higher wages and more senior positions, than people who apply online or send a CV. That means better satisfaction, longer tenures and more money in your pocket.
What you can do in 5 minutes
Decide on one networking action you can take in the next week. Use this framework to reveal your possibilities, then narrow it down to one which will be the most impactful:
What opportunities do I have to network online? And offline?
Do I do better in big groups, small groups or with individuals?
Do I need to network with people I know, or new people?
What you can do in 1 hour
Map out your network.
Make a plan including your dream industry, dream companies, relevant people who might one day hire you, people who are your peers now, and which recruiters specialise in your niche.
This means you will save your energy, time and maybe money as you will only be nurturing relationships that make a difference to your job hunt!
What you can do with help
Why are you networking anyway? If you don’t know why you’re doing something, your brain will find any excuse to not do it.
“It’s scary”
“It’s time-consuming”
“I wouldn’t know what to say”
“I’m not good with new people”
And even if you make it to the networking event, without a defined purpose, your conversations will be meaningless and won’t get you the results you need.
With my help, you can define your purpose in networking, take a good look at the mind stories that might not be helping you, and create a plan and pathway to move forwards with meaningful and relevant conversations.
No more excuses, just action with a side of compassion.
Communicating your value
Your value is not determined by if you are good at your job or not.
It is not determined by if you are good or not.
Value is determined by if you are good for the person you are talking to and the problem they need to solve.
What you can do in 5 minutes
Before an interaction, think WIIFM? (What’s in it for me?).
Got a 1:1 with your boss?
CEO of the company in town?
Going to a trade event?
Think about how what you are good at or experienced in, can help the person you will be speaking to. That will make you memorable.
If you find speaking up tough, read this.
What you can do in 1 hour
Let me guess, your LinkedIn profile reads like a tick-box of every task you had to do in different roles.
“Managed accounts”
“Ensured loading of rates”
“Responsible for customer satisfaction”
BORING.
By writing like this, you make any potential hiring managers have to do twice the work as they think about the job description they’ve written and whether the thing you’ve done enables you to do the things they need doing.
Once you have a few dream jobs in mind, rewrite your LinkedIn profile or CV for those jobs.
Meaning: imagine you already have the job, and look back at all your previous roles. How did they help you to get there?
- Account management becomes influencing various and varied stakeholders to follow your suggestions.
- Loading of rates becomes an eye for detail and an understanding of the numbers that allow profitability.
- Responsible for customer satisfaction becomes dealing with intense situations with a cool head.
What you can do with help
Imagine if every time you spoke to someone important to your job hunt, you had a clear and confident message to give them.
Imagine becoming known for the things you love doing.
Imagine opportunities coming to you, instead of you having to chase them.
This is the power of a personal brand.
It’s the magical combination of your strengths, interests, values and your spirit.
Together, we could dive deeper and define a personal brand for you which serves as a compass for making decisions, as a magnet for the right opportunities, and as an elixir to grow your confidence.
Read more here on how to take control of your career.
Mindset
“We Don’t See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are”
When I talk about mindset, I am talking about the patterns and stories we all have. These patterns help to reduce the amount of information processing we need to do, but they aren’t always helpful.
It’s important to get our mindset right. If we don’t, we can take things personally when they might have nothing to do with us. It’s much harder to be resilient without the right mindset, and job hunting needs resilience!
What you can do in 5 minutes
Celebrate your wins. No one else is going to do it for you!
Don’t just wait until you get a new job to celebrate – that will take time. Celebrate every step along the way.
Ask yourself right now:
What is one thing you’ve done today that is getting you closer to finding that ideal job?
Take back control of your journey, and give yourself a pat on the back for taking the next step. This also reinforces to your brain that you are doing the right thing, and helps with your resilience.
What you can do in 1 hour
“Imposter Syndrome isn’t just self-doubt in a spiky suit. It’s the gap between who you see yourself as being and who you think you need to be, to succeed and lead.”
clare josa
This identity crisis creates questions about our self not our skills (like whether you can learn the new system).
Who Am I To be hired?
What if they see through me?
What if they hire me then realise I’m a fraud?
What does it say about me that I got rejected?
Give yourself an answer to these questions so they start to lose their power.
Brainstorm your answer to the question:
Who am I to…?
(Get the job / Earn more money / Ask for help)
Make sure the answer starts with “I am” as it needs to be an answer to the identity crisis in your brain.
For example: I am a good listener. I am a safe pair of hands. I am a wizard with numbers.
Another way to think about this is: What ARE you because of your experience, personality and qualifications?
What you can do with help
Making changes is scary. This means our ego will often stop us from making changes to the status quo, even if it’s something we really want.
Changing jobs is a big deal, and if you think about how much it will change the trajectory of your life over the next ten years, it’s an even bigger deal.
If you feel a bit overwhelmed by that, it’s totally normal! It’s because your brain is trained to keep you safe and basically keep things the same.
If you don’t get your brain warmed up to the changes you are trying to make, you can self-sabotage.
You might procrastinate.
You might not apply for jobs because you think you’re not good enough (when you actually are).
You might not dedicate enough time to preparing for an interview because you’re sure you won’t get the job.
Together, we could work on getting very clear and precise on the goals you want to reach, dreaming big (properly big!) and then get your brain ready for it to happen.
When the brain is ready, a lot of obstacles melt away.
There’s more where that came from! Watch the webinar here:
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