| Tags | employability-sprint |
With a job search – as with any kind of search – it’s pointless searching if you don’t know what you’re looking for!
It’s worth spending a little bit of time exploring the industries/niches you’re interested in to get to know them a little better before you dive in and start applying for jobs left, right, and centre. Taking the time to do this will make your applications more focused and authentic, and may dramatically boost your success rate.
Bill Burnett is the director of Stanford University’s design programme at the d.School where they run a course called “Design your life”. It applies the powerful principles of design thinking to life and career design.
We find this process very powerful and would like you to give it a go.
For each field/industry/niche you might want to enter, do some “quick and dirty” research, answering the following question: What specific skills are in highest demand? Think of the following:
Start thinking about the companies and industries that interest and motivate you. Having an idea about the type of business environment you want to work in helps you gain perspective about the work you want to do and how you want to bring value to an organisation.
A target company list can be as simple as listing out the companies you think of in a spreadsheet or digital document. You can use professional online communities and networking sites, like LinkedIn, to research companies and connect with other professionals.
Skim through 10-20 relevant job descriptions and see if you can get a feel for the types of skills and experience sets that employers seem most interested in hiring for. (Tip: searching Google for “jobs Data Science Nairobi” will pull together job listings from a wide number of job listing sites.)