Looking for a job is a traumatic experience full of anxiety and financial insecurity – and that’s just thinking about your CV! We’ve put together our top 10 hacks to survive in the job search hustle, stand out in the crowd and land your dream job. These are hacks for people who have just left School/College/University or looking to move jobs after a little experience.

1. Only send your CV to jobs you want and have got the skills for, no amount of hacking or blagging is going to rescue you when the recruiter asks a question you have no idea about. The main reasons for this are:
2. You’ll come across as desperate in a job interview which is never a good look.
3. Job searching is a full-time job anyway so you’ll be wasting time that is better spent on more suitable applications or enjoying not having a job.
4. Spend more time on a select number of applications rather than pinging a load around. Think the less is more mentality or Feng Shui of the job searching world.
5. If the job description has listed attributes, they’re looking for you to say how you meet all of them. To hack this don’t cherry pick your faves – go for all of them. If there is something you’re not 100% on, rack your brain for a time when you have embodied this skill even if it’s not in your professional life so far. The more you believe it the more likely your employer will too. With big jobs a computer will be checking your cover letter which can just tick all the attributes off in order to get to the next round where a real person might read it.
6. Rehearse interview questions. Sit down with a relative or someone with experience in a similar role and get them to research the company a little and ask you interview questions. This will get you used to thinking on your feet and may even cover possible questions you will get asked in the real interview. Possible questions include but not limited to:?
7. Why do you want this job?
8. What skills can you bring here?
9. Tell me what you think your role here would be?
10. Avoid large national job listing websites. CV Library and Monster – we’re looking at you. It is highly unlikely you will get a job here due to the volume of applicants. You’ll also get bored of random recruitment agencies calling you up and never hearing from them again. Focus your search down – look for a job within a specific industry or local to where you live, this will yield much better results than firing your CV into the internet.
11. Research the company.
12. You know what goes on there – this means you’ll come across as well informed in an interview and be able to ask probing questions.
13. Who their competition is – think about ways this company is different or ways they can stand out from competition.
14. A little about the industry – you know if there’s any regulations, any factors that affect the industry and future problems they may face etc.
15. It’s not what you know it’s who you know. Hack your attitude towards work, as a friend of mine says – “never say no to a coffee”. Which in this case means never turn down an offer to go and look at a job or a trial shift. If your mate’s mate reckons they can get you a job get their number and chase it up. If your mate’s parent says you can go and work with them always go for it as this is an opportunity to get your foot in the door with little effort.?
16. Make a cheat sheet of yourself. List all the best bits and weaknesses about yourself and memorize it, you’ll be able to pull from this in job interviews or if you randomly get chatting to someone. Knowing these things off by heart means you won’t get stuck if someone springs you the questions: “Why should we hire you?” or the timeless classic “What’s your biggest weakness?”.
17. Think about what you can bring to the company?
18. Unique skills – what sets you apart from the other punters? This could be anything from interpersonal skills to advanced knowledge of the canals in Cambridge, it just needs to relate to the job.
19. Unique perspective – approaching tasks in a way that sets you apart from everyone else. Perspective is also quite a handy buzz word to drop in communication that gets recruiters all hot under the collar.
20. New ideas to push the company forward. As a young person knowing tech and having fresh ideas is something that you have over all the other employees that have been working there for time.
21. Copy and paste your written words into Google Translate. It’s easier to hear mistakes in your writing than reading the same paragraph over and over again, as well as being super little effort.
22. Pick yourself up after being knocked down. This is probably the most important lesson here and is a hack of your mental attitude. Everyone gets rejected from jobs, it’s just part of the hustle. Spent a bunch of money on travel to get to interviews then rejected in the last stage? It’s a kick in the teeth but you’ve gotta keep getting up and trying again. The right job will find you as long as you keep searching and are open to it.

We really hope you have found the above hacks helpful and by following these you will be well on the way to landing that job you’re after. Feeling the need to suggest some hacks of your own? Tweet us!