Securing that job in a difficult time

Bonuses… One could easily keep writing about this issue but I think I’ve written enough about that recently.  Now I’d like to share some insights about searching for a job in these hard time, picked up by my colleague Aidan Hetherington at a recent presentation by Previsor.

One message is that graduate recruitment is chiefly unaffected by the credit crunch, which may come as a surprise to many. At the same time jobs are becoming less generalist and more specific. The message is also that companies now are looking for future talent rather than demanding that specialist insight here and now. Not surprising, is it absolutely vital that applicants have researched the company well so make sure you know the company you are targeting, especially in terms of the company’s mission and culture. If you do that then you are likely to benefit from the fact that many organisations scan applications electronically, looking for key words. Your company research as well as the job description will give you valuable pointers in this direction. Extra curricular activities has become even more important and especially those that relate to leadership roles. Finally, many companies especially banks now very much into this whole web 2.0 thing and use social networking sites etc for recruitment.

On a different note, one thing that I found particularly interesting was the story about the ‘bionic eye’ on the BBC website. Developed by the company Second Sight in the US, it is a simple yet amazing concept: a camera + video processor mounted on sunglasses send images wirelessly to a miniscule receiver on the outside of the eye. Through tiny but complicated means this signal is passed on to the optic nerve to the brain. Brilliant! This is of course is not the same as eyesight and patients will have learn to interpret these signals and make sense of them. But it is definitely an interesting step forward.