7 Secrets To Creating Job Opportunities
- get into nuclear
- Jan 20, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 22, 2023
Below is taken from a lesson as part from our six steps to get into nuclear.
A job opportunity is any encounter that might turn into a job. Such as a role you apply for directly, a friend who might know of an opening, or a side project you might be able to get paid for.
Opportunity Is Everywhere
It is not unusual that when looking for work, you may have to apply to 70 positions before getting a response, let alone an opportunity to interview.
This illustrates the first thing to know about job opportunities; you must find many of them. Especially early in your career, it can easily take 20 to 100 engagements before finding an open door. Getting rejected 20 times is normal. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon refer to this as being "OK thanks-ed" after being rejected more than 500 times before landing roles in Hollywood - early in their careers, at the end of the audition, the casting director would say "OK thanks", to which they knew they hadn't been picked for the role. However, don't be dismayed, we are here to help, and there is much you can do to raise your chances of success, which is what we’ll now cover.
How to make your own luck: Don’t just send your CV in response to job listings, use connections.
The most obvious approach is sending your CV to many companies applying directly via live job postings on job boards. This is often the first thing career advisers mention - the bad advice we discussed in earlier steps...
The problem is that sending out your CV and responding to many Internet job ads can create no opportunities. The author of a best-selling career advice book, Dick Bolles, estimates that the chance of landing a job by just sending your CV to a company is around 1 in 1,000. That means if you send out one hundred blind applications, you only have a 10% chance of landing a job. The theory of this is that once an opportunity is live on a job board, it’ll be flooded with applicants from all directions - if they don't know you, you stand little chance of making the cut. Moreover, the positions on job boards tend to be standardised and mainly by large companies. Consequently, they don’t always advertise many of their best positions. The best opportunities are less competitive because they are hidden. You need a different way to find them. The key is to leverage an employer's most desirable opportunities. Employers prefer to hire people they already know, or failing that, to hire through referrals – an introduction from someone they know. Think about it from the nuclear employer's point of view. Which would you prefer: a recommendation from someone you trust or 20 CVs from people who saw your job listing on indeed.com? The referral is more likely to work because;
the person has already been vouched for.
it’s less effort — screening 20 people you know nothing about is challenging.
referrals also come from a better pool of applicants — the most employable people often already have a job or many offers on the table. Hence, they rarely respond to job listings.
For these reasons, many recruiters consider referrals to be the best method of finding candidates. However, job seekers usually get things backwards — they start with the methods that recruiters or hiring managers least like.
Successful applicants find around 50% of jobs through connections, and many are never advertised. So, in short, if you don’t pursue referrals, you will miss out on many opportunities.
So, how do you put yourself in a position to get referrals?
To get referrals, here’s a step-by-step process:
1. First, update your LinkedIn profile. This isn’t because you’ll get a great job offer through LinkedIn — that’s pretty rare. It’s because people who are considering meeting with you will check out your profile. Focus your profile on your most impressive accomplishments. Be as concrete as possible, e.g. “ranked third in the nation” or “increased annual donations 100%”.
Cut the rest. It’s better to have two impressive achievements than two impressive achievements and three weak ones. Finally, search yourself on Google and do anything you can to make the results look good (e.g. delete an embarrassing old blog or social media post).
2. If you already know someone in the industry who can hire people, then ask for a meeting to discuss opportunities in the nuclear sector. This is close to going directly to an interview, skipping all the screening steps. Remember, there doesn’t need to be an open position – employers will often create positions for good people. Before you take the meeting, use the advice on how to prepare for the interviews below. 3. For the first encounter, ask for a meeting to find out more about jobs in the industry: an “informational interview”. If it goes well, then ask them to introduce you to people who can hire you, effectively getting a referral from this person. Do not ask them for a job if you promised it was an informational interview. 4. When asking for more introductions, prepare a specific description of the types of opportunities you’d like to find. A good example is “an entry-level marketing position at a company in nuclear engineering education”. Do not say I'm looking for “a job in nuclear” or “a job that fits my skills”. Being clear makes it easier for people to come up with ideas, so lean towards too narrow rather than too broad. 5. Failing the above steps, turn to the connections of your connections. If you have a good friend who knows someone in nuclear who can hire you, then you could directly ask that friend for a referral. Ideally, you will reach out to someone you’ve worked for in a role that you performed well. 6. If your connection cannot refer you, then ask them to introduce you to people in the nuclear industry who can hire. Then we’re back to informational interviews, as in step two. 7. To find out who your connections know, use LinkedIn. For example, say you want to work at BAE Systems. Go to LinkedIn and search “BAE Systems”. It’ll show a list of all your contacts who work at BAE Systems, followed by connections of connections who work at BAE Systems. Pick the person with the most mutual connections and get in touch. Remember, if you have 200 LinkedIn connections, and each of them has 200 connections that don’t overlap with the others, then you can reach at least 10,000 people using these methods.
8. If you still haven’t got anywhere, it may be worth spending time building your connections in the industry first. Read our advice on how to network. Start with people with whom you have some connection, such as your university alumni and friends of friends of friends (3rd order connections). Your university can probably give you a list of alumni who are willing to help in the nuclear industry. There are often groups you can join and events you can attend. Otherwise, as a last resort, you can start cold emailing.
9. If you don't feel you have a strong enough network just yet or feel uncomfortable reaching out to people you hardly know for recommendations, get in touch with Get Into Nuclear.
Daily, we speak to and refer people like you to nuclear employers, training providers and one of the thousands of people in the industry willing to help. Let our network be your network.
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