Best Practices To Securing Your Dream Job and Building Your Career

In a committed effort to assisting fellow graduate youths who are yet to find job placement, I wish to bring to your notice, unannounced secret and internal job recruitments taking place in most companies in Nigeria and abroad.

In subsequent days ahead, I will also be churning out eye-opening articles aimed at inspiring, educating and informing readers, especially the graduate and non-graduate youths on how to:

1.       Search for suitable jobs more conveniently and effectively

2.       Position yourself to be the best candidate during job recruitment

3.       Find unadvertised job vacancies

4.       Be self-employed while job-hunting

5.       Remain focused despite unemployment syndrome, and many more.

I will be posting most of these articles on nairaland.com forum, but if you want to be the first to know, and the first to know about secret unadvertised job openings in Nigerian and foreign companies, then try to be checking on my personal blog, yes, I repeat, ‘try to be checking’, at least, it doesn’t cost you a dime, nor does it remove anything from you aside some minutes of web surfing to get informed.

For a start, let’s look at one of the procedures to find some unadvertised company vacancies that are genuine and real.

Sometimes you may be wondering why some companies don’t advertise their job vacancies, and you sometimes feel that companies that don’t advertise their vacancies on national dailies, and on internet job boards are poor, or unpopular, but that’s not the truth because most do that for a purpose.

Do you know that to advertise a job vacancy in a national daily most times cost companies fortune? To have your advert cover a full newspaper page, run into hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of naira, depending on the newspaper involved. Aside this advert cost, a company that makes the decision to publicize their job vacancy via national daily, will also face an unscrupulous crowd of applicants (including those already working and those that are still idle). All these cost companies a lot of fund and may sometimes encroach into their annual budget. Above all, the Human Resources department of the company (should they decide to handle it themselves without contracting it to a recruiting firm like Kimberly Ryan, Philips Consulting, AETI, Prossel, etc) don’t always find it funny in such situations; that’s why you see them utilizing all possible means to eliminate a huge number of the applicants at the first screening.

HR departments aren’t beasts or ghosts, they are humans like you and me, and they also have brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends who are equally job-hunting, so they don’t really derive pleasure in turning down some applicants, but they have to do it to ensure fair recruitment, and to ensure the best candidates are hired, even though they hardly achieve fair recruitment of best applicants for most job positions.

What then am I trying to say? Most companies in an effort to evade some of the aforementioned challenges- cost implication, handling of large number of applicants, etc, don’t like advertising their job openings on national dailies, so you need to be smart and informed to dig out some job openings.

Therefore, as an applicant desiring to secure your dream job, you don’t only need to package your CV,  you need to stay accurately informed/networked with people that matters, and you also need to continually update yourself with the latest happenings in your chosen field, how?

Network with people, both in Church, online, at seminars, parties, etc, and be bold and honest to tell them your current employment status so they can always know when to inform you of a certain job opening or career opportunity. Then acquire short-term skills to further boost your CV and place you ahead of other applicants. Such short-term skills include and not limited to: Computer software skills (try and get certified, and not just acquiring the ordinary computer school certificates, get certified so you can as well apply for international job vacancies), HSE (Health Safety and Environment) skills, Drilling courses (basically for engineers and technicians), HVAC  skills (Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning and Cooling), etc.

Attend career seminars related to your field; yes I know that it is not that easy financially, but keep trying, God will see you through.

Even though you have graduated, your studies is not over…don’t throw away your books just because you have graduated and served in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). Keep buying educating books, keep downloading informative ebooks and keep searching on the internet for good materials to always update your knowledge. Try and reduce the time you spend on social networks chatting with unknown and known people for fun, and invest more time in browsing for vital information that will help you build an enviable career in future.

Don’t ignore the importance of networking. Thank God for internet, it has made networking more easier than in the past, so make wise use of the internet to network with people that will add value to your life, career-wise.

Let’s stop here for now, we will continue shortly.

Now, let’s look at how to find some company unadvertised job vacancies.

First, let me ask you, how many times do you visit those your favorite company websites’ career page?

Do you know that most companies like I have earlier said don’t like publicizing their job openings using other mediums aside their official company website? Now, let me ask you again- how many times have you seen or heard Julius Berger Construction company advertise for job vacancies on a national newspaper, or do you think they don’t recruit?

Schlumberger is another company that hardly announce their vacancies outside their company website.

What about General Electric? Guinness Diageo? United Nations? World Bank, etc? These companies and more recruit secretly most times, and you keep wondering how your friend, neighbor, etc got his/her job with them, it is no other way than being smart and wise, while you keep waiting for newspaper and internet adverts.

Hey! Wake up…if you truly want to know about most unadvertised company vacancies, always visit their official website, that’s one sure way to find out. We will be discussing other methods with time.

Currently as I speak, Schlumberger is recruiting (click HERE), so are many other reputable companies including SHELL, etc.

To have firsthand information on unadvertised job vacancies, always visit my personal blog (Ng Blog). I know what you may be thinking- this writer is trying to get people to visit his/her blog, oh yes, of course! And by the way, I didn’t asked you to drop money there, I only asked you to visit to get great information that will add value to your life, even more than you get when you visit most celebrity gossip websites and blogs that only leave you panicking and discouraged as you read unscrupulous, exorbitant lifestyles of most celebrities when you cannot afford a decent lunch.

Be wise, do things that will add value to your life this new year and see yourself elevating higher and higher, wishing you all God’s divine favour this year.