Job hunt in uncertain times!

My redundancy had put me in a very difficult spot. But with no luxury of choices, my only pursuit was to get economically active once again.... and quickly!!

During the past few months, my job hunt became my full time job. I pursued a multi directional approach, and there are two specific channels that wish to stress upon.

Alumni network: One should never under estimate the power of your alumni network. I moderate the Cranfield MBA Alumni group on LinkedIn and it never ceases to amaze me how impressive and high profile the Cranfield MBA alums are. I carefully searched for alumni who work either in the industry or function where I am seeking career opportunities and contacted them. Most of them responded and in fact, one senior even shared information on a specific role that was posted on his organisation's intranet. Get the message? I had beaten the traffic of external candidates when he put my CV through the employee referral.

FTSE250: I must say that I had never heard someone share this approach of job hunt and in these changing times, I'd assure you that this is perhaps the most effective route. I picked up the FTSE 250 list, visited the careers section of each organisations' website and checked if there were any advertised roles that met my objectives. Many organisations also allow you the feature to create job alerts whenever any new roles are posted.

For some reasons, I have never had success with recruitment consultants....partly because I see a lot of cowboys in their field. Quite a few would actually ask me details on which organisations am I talking to, what roles etc. and then go on to approach those firms to secure business relations.