How to get that job: How to Get a Job: 10 Effective Tips to Land Your Next Role

How to Get a Job: 10 Effective Tips to Land Your Next Role

Looking for a new job? Or perhaps your first job ever? There are certain practices to consider when applying for jobs that can help you stand out from other candidates with similar educational or professional experiences.

In the past decade, a boom in technology has influenced the economy, including the largest growth and adoption of internet usage since the late 1990s. To add to that, the Covid-19 pandemic shifted how humans perceive “work.” In the US, the unemployment rate reached 14.8 percent in April 2020 [1]. Though that number has decreased to 4 percent in January 2022, remote work increased to 15.4 percent, indicating subsequent changes to our homes, concept of space and environment, relationships, and health [2].

Amid a recovering economy, job growth continues to surge. It’s a good time to apply for jobs and to build the skills you’ll need in your dream career. This article offers effective tips and best practices for getting a job.

How to get a job

There are many ways to get a job. Approaches vary depending on the type of job you’re after, and the industry and competitiveness of the job. Some may find networking and personal connections effective in their job search, but many people rely on the traditional approach of applying to and interviewing for a job. The process can be daunting, but these strategies can help you gain clarity and confidence as you embark on your journey.

1. Reflect on your career aspirations.

While you might try to sit down and apply for any job that you’re qualified for, taking the time to assess your career hopes and dreams can be a more satisfying and productive way to start a job search. Thinking about what makes you come alive can help you narrow down your search to target specific roles and careers.

Read more: How to Answer “What Are Your Career Aspirations?”

Envision your career future. Here are some questions that can help you:

• Are you passionate about a certain cause or industry? (Perhaps you get excited about supporting theatre arts or are interested in finance in emerging markets. )

• Do you want to become a leader of a team or organization, or do you prefer to be a creative and independent producer?

• What salary goals do you have? Do you aspire to earn a six-figure salary? 

• Do you value team cohesion and collaboration?

• What kind of lifestyle do you want?

• What skills do you bring to a job role? (For example, do you have a knack for persuading people through spoken or written communication, or are your skills more suited for patient care?)

2. Research potential industries and job roles.

Next, think about the types of industries or roles that you either have experience in or that pique your interest. Research everything you can about the food and beverage industry, for example, if that’s a business area that interests you. Have you considered a career in IT, data analysis, marketing, or UX design?

Say you have a degree in marketing; are you interested in pursuing a career in that field? If so, do you want to work for an agency or in-house for a company or non-profit? What type of marketing do you hope to specialize in—perhaps social media marketing, digital marketing, or content marketing? Drill down in your search to understand the different roles you could play within a field or industry.

If you’re thinking more about your lifestyle, consider remote jobs, jobs that let you travel, or jobs better suited for introverts.

3. Identify your transferable skills.

Once you have a better idea of your career goals and what types of jobs you’re interested in, think about how your experiences can apply to these roles. Identify your transferable skills, including technical skills and workplace skills you have acquired in your personal and professional life. 

If you are seeking your first job, your transferable skills might come from extracurricular activities, volunteer work, or daily life (for example, taking care of children or siblings). For those switching jobs or changing careers, you can mine previous work experiences for technical skills like data analytics or data entry, and workplace skills like leadership, creativity, and critical thinking.

Build the right skills for the job you want

Peer into the future. Do the jobs you’re applying for fit into your desired career trajectory? If not, and your transferable skills are not enough to propel you forward, consider building your technical skills to eventually land a job that aligns your skills with your lifestyle and offers a steady paycheck.

With Coursera’s professional certificate programs, you can build the right skills for in-demand jobs in just a few months—no degree or experience required.

4. Build your social media presence.

Now, more than ever, people are finding jobs on LinkedIn. In fact, six people are hired every minute on LinkedIn [3]. A majority of recruiters (around 87 percent) use it during the hiring process, especially when vetting candidates [4]. Your LinkedIn profile should reflect your current resume, along with links to projects, videos, and content you worked on. A professional, friendly profile photo helps recruiters put a face to the name, while a bulleted list of accomplishments using keywords can boost your credibility.

Though posting on LinkedIn is not necessarily going to get you hired, sharing and liking posts creates engagement and can help you get noticed by potential employers. If you decide to post, consider sharing pictures and summaries of projects you worked on, or articles that demonstrate your industry expertise.  

You can even reach out to recruiters on LinkedIn by sending a request to connect or messaging them using InMail. When crafting your message, explain who you are, what you’re looking for, and why you’re hoping to connect with them.

Finally, clean up your presence on other social media platforms. Delete any incriminating photos, such as smoking weed, imbibing alcohol before age 21, or any other activity that could be perceived as unprofessional. Keep your pages private for additional security. 

5. Conduct informational interviews.

Breaking into a new industry or field can be difficult, especially if you’re unsure whether that career is right for you. That’s where informational interviews come in. Job seekers can conduct this type of interview to gather insight into a prospective field or job role.

Here’s how an informational interview works:

• Decide what you want to know.

• Reach out and request a meeting.

• Develop a list of questions to ask.

• Get to know your interviewee.

• Send a thank-you note.

• Keep in touch.

Informational interviews build relationships, provide interviewing practice, and even open up future opportunities, especially if you make the effort to keep in touch with your interviewee.

6. Tailor your resume.

For each job you apply to, the best practice is to customize your resume to the job description. Recruiters and hiring managers like to see that you’ve understood their ethos, tone, and overall language and can speak it, too—meaning that your resume reflects their specific jargon (“creative briefs,” rather than “creative requests”). Your experiences should match the role’s requirements, and sometimes you’ll need to highlight or even omit certain skills and experiences. Always double-check your resume for spelling and grammar errors.

Read more: How to Make a Resume for Your First Job (+ Template)

Crafting your resume to demonstrate you are an ideal candidate is not enough. These days, applicant tracking systems (ATS) filter job applications, so you must make sure to strategically include exact keywords and phrases from the job description on your resume.

7. Write a customized cover letter.

This might sound like a lot of extra work, but you don’t necessarily have to write an entirely new cover letter for each job application. However, each cover letter you submit should definitely reflect your enthusiasm for the specific job you’re applying for. You can create a basic cover letter template for each type of job, and mark the places where you’ll tailor information to fit each job.

For example, if you are applying to three types of jobs, such as communications consultant, social media specialist, and marketing analyst, you can create three separate cover letter templates. In each template, list out specific skills and experiences relevant to each job type. Then, when you’re customizing your cover letter for the job, swap out your interest in one company for another, and tweak your language to fit.

8. Prepare for the interview mindfully.

The interview process can be intimidating. It is helpful to remember that an interview is a two-way street—while it may seem like you are proving your worth to an employer, it is also an opportunity to assess whether the employer and role will be fulfilling for you. Preparing for an interview can help you feel more confident, so you’ll present yourself in the best possible light.

To prepare, consider writing down or saying out loud your responses to the most common interview questions. Reflect on the role’s responsibilities, the skills needed to perform the role, and questions a hiring manager might ask to determine if you are the right fit. The role may require several interviews.

If your interview is virtual, and many initial screenings are, you might consider practicing mock interviews with a friend to ensure your tone and body language expresses your enthusiasm properly over the internet. Plus, small adjustments to your setup can make a difference. Clean up any clutter in your background, and make sure your internet, camera, and microphone are reliable and ready long before your interview begins.

Read more: Zoom Interview Tips: A Guide For Your Online Interview

If you expect the interviewer to ask structured behavioral questions, a good practice is to write down several STAR (situation, task, action, result) scenarios and describe them aloud. For panel interviews, try to remember each person’s name and make eye contact with each interviewer while you are speaking.

Job-specific interview questions

Some jobs have very technical skills and responsibilities, for which recruiters will ask questions to gauge a candidate’s ability to perform them. Here are a few guides with interview questions for specific jobs, including project managers, back-end developers, scrum masters, data analysts, UX designers, and IT and marketing roles.

9. Send a thank you email.

Always, always send a follow-up email to thank your interviewers for their time. The best practice is to write a couple of sentences about any highlights from your conversation that resonated with you, and to reiterate your enthusiasm. This simple act of courtesy and gratitude doesn’t require much time but can help solidify a hiring manager’s decision to hire you.  

10. Negotiate salary and benefits.

Congrats! After the applying, preparation, interview(s), and thank you emails, you got the job. Now, it’s time to negotiate your salary and benefits. Check sites like Glassdoor for data to confirm that your salary expectations are appropriate for the industry, company, and job role. 

These days, it is culturally acceptable and even expected that you will negotiate. Chances are, the job letter comes with salary information. A good rule of thumb, when in doubt, is to negotiate 10-20% above their initial offer, in addition to the benefits package. Often, these packages will be similar for every employee of a company, but year-end bonuses, signing bonuses, and paid time off (PTO) may vary. Do your research, and feel free to clarify any questions with the hiring manager before accepting a job offer. 

Next steps

To build new skills for your career and prepare for your dream job, consider earning a professional certificate from Coursera. Whether or not you want to become a project manager, Google’s Project Management certification will deliver valuable skills that are useful in nearly any career. You’ll practice strategic communication, learn how to solve problems and manage stakeholders through real-world scenarios—all at your own pace.

Read all of Coursera’s job-related articles here: Job Search Guide: Resources for Your Next Career Move

Related articles

• What Is an Informational Interview? And How to Make the Most of It

• How to Choose a Career: 7 Ways to Narrow Your Options

• 10 Ways to Enhance Your Resume

• Transferable Skills: How to Use Them to Land Your Next Job

• Interviewing Skills To Benefit Your Career

• Zoom Interview Tips: A Guide For Your Online Interview

Article sources

1. Congressional Research Service. “Unemployment Rates During the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46554.” Accessed February 18, 2022.

2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment Situation Summary, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm.” Accessed February 18, 2022.

3. LinkedIn. “About Us: Statistics, https://news.linkedin.com/about-us#Statistics.” Accessed February 18. 2022.

4. Jobvite. “Jobvite Recruiter Nation Report 2016, https://www.jobvite.com/jobvite-recruiter-nation-report-2016/.” Accessed February 18, 2022.

Written by Coursera • Updated on May 31, 2022

This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.

All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

This article is part of our 2017 career guide, and hasn’t been updated in a while. If you’re interested in the ideas here, you want to check out our newer key ideas series too.

When it comes to advice on how to get a job, most of it is pretty bad.

1. CollegeFeed suggests that you “be confident” as their first interview tip, which is a bit like suggesting that you should “be employable”.

2. Many advisers cover the “clean your nails and have a firm handshake” kind of thing.

3. A coach on AOL says that “you need business cards in your pocket at all times.” Which is great advice for job applicants who are so qualified that strangers at parties want to hire them, if only they had their email address.

Over the last five years, we’ve sifted through a lot of bad advice to find the nuggets that are actually good. We’ve also provided one-on-one coaching to hundreds of people who are applying for jobs, and hired about 20 people ourselves, so we’ve seen what works from both sides. Here, we’ll sum up what we’ve learned.

The key idea is that getting a job is about convincing someone that you have something valuable to offer. So you should focus on doing whatever employers will find most convincing. That means instead of sending out lots of CVs, focus on getting recommendations and proving you can do the work. Read on to get a step-by-step guide.

Reading time: 15 minutes.

The bottom line

• Getting a job is a sales process. Think of it from the employer’s point of view, and do what the employer will find most convincing.
• Get lots of leads, especially by asking for introductions.
• Prove you can do the work by actually doing it. Do a project before the interview, explain exactly how you can solve their problems or seek a related position first.
• Once you get an offer, actually negotiate.
• Do whatever it takes to keep yourself motivated e.g. make a public commitment to apply for one position per day or find a partner to search for jobs alongside.

Table of Contents

• 1 Stage 1: Leads
  • 1.1 You need lots of leads
  • 1.2 How to get leads: Don’t just send your CV in response to job listings, use connections
  • 1.3 How to get referrals
  • 1.4 Recruiters and listings
• 2 Stage 2: Conversion
  • 2.1 When the process is highly standardised
  • 2.2 Do free work
  • 2.3 How to prepare for interviews
• 3 Stage 3: Negotiation
  • 3.1 How to negotiate
  • 3.2 Negotiate after you’ve started
• 4 Stay motivated
• 5 Check out our advice on different jobs
• 6 Never job hunt again
• 7 Conclusion
• 8 Apply this to your own career
• 9 New to 80,000 Hours?

Let’s be blunt. You’re not entitled to a job, and hiring is rarely fair. Rather, getting a job is, at root, a sales process. You need to persuade someone to give you responsibility and a salary, and even put their reputation on the line, in exchange for results.

We’ll list key advice for each stage of the “sales” process: (1) finding opportunities (leads) (2) convincing employers (conversion) and (3) negotiating. The common theme is to think from the employer’s point of view, and do whatever they will find most convincing.

While the rest of this guide is about working out which job is best for you and the world, here we focus on the practicalities of taking action on your plans. Just bear in mind there’s no point using salesmanship to land a job that you wouldn’t be good at – you won’t be satisfied, and if your performance is worse than the next best applicant, you’ll have a negative impact.

We wrote this article to prevent the opposite situation: we’ve seen too many great candidates who want to make a difference failing to live up to their potential because they don’t know how to sell themselves.

Stage 1: Leads

A lead is any opportunity that might turn into a job, like a position you could apply for, a friend who might know an opportunity, or a side project you might be able to get paid for.

You need lots of leads

We interviewed someone who’s now a top NPR journalist. But when he started out, he applied to 70 positions and got only one serious offer.

This illustrates the first thing to know about leads: you probably need a lot of them. Especially early in your career, it can easily take 20 to 100 leads to find one good job, and getting rejected 20 times is normal. In fact, the average length of a spell of unemployment in the U.S. as of February 2016 is seven months, so be prepared for your job hunt to take that long.¹

However, there’s much you can do to raise your chances of success, which is what we’ll now cover.

How to get leads: Don’t just send your CV in response to job listings, use connections

Many large organisations have a standardised application process e.g. the Civil Service, consulting and Teach for America. They want to keep the process fair, so there isn’t much wiggle room. In these cases, just apply.

But what do you do after that? The most obvious approach is to send your CV to lots of companies and apply to the postings on job boards. This is often the first thing career advisers mention.²

The problem is that sending out your CV and responding to lots of internet job ads has a low success rate. The author of the best selling career advice book of all time, Dick Bolles, estimates that the chance of landing a job from just sending your resume to a company is around 1 in 1,000.³ That means you need to send out one hundred resumes just to have a 10% chance of landing a job. This is because once an opportunity is on a job board, it’ll be flooded with applicants.

Moreover, the positions on job boards need to be standardised and mainly at large companies, so they don’t include many of the best positions.

The best opportunities are less competitive because they are hidden away, often at small but rapidly growing companies, and personalised to you. You need a different way to find them.

The key is to find leads in the way that employers most like. 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 their 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 hard. Referrals also come from a better pool of applicants — the most employable people already have lots of offers, so they rarely respond to job listings.

For these reasons, many recruiters consider referrals to be the best method of finding candidates.⁴

But job seekers usually get things backwards — they start with the methods that recruiters least like.

Source: “What Color is Your Parachute?” 2015 edition

Moreover, applicants find around 50% of jobs through connections, and many are never advertised. So if you don’t pursue referrals, you’ll miss many opportunities.

How to get referrals

You need to master the art of asking for introductions. We’ve put together a list of email scripts you can use.

To get referrals, here’s a step-by-step process. If you’re not applying for a job right now, skip this section until you are.

1. First, update your LinkedIn and other online profiles. This isn’t because you’ll get great job offers through LinkedIn — that’s pretty rare — it’s because people who are considering meeting 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”, “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 embarrassing old blog posts). Here’s a guide.
2. If you already know someone in the industry who can hire people, then ask for a meeting to discuss opportunities in the industry. 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 interviews below.
3. If you know them less well, ask for a meeting to find out more about jobs in the industry: an “informational interview”. If it goes well, ask them to introduce you to people who may be able to hire you, which is 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 one sentence, specific description of the types of opportunities you’d like to find. A good example is something like: “an entry level marketing position at a technology startup in education”. Two bad examples are: “a job in software” or “a job that fits my skills”. Being concrete 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 who’s able to hire you, then you could directly ask that friend for a referral. The ideal is to ask someone you’ve worked for before where you performed really well.
6. If your connection is not able to refer you, then ask them to introduce you to people in the industry who are able to hire. Then we’re back to informational interviews as in step two.
7. To find out who your connections know, use LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social networks. Say you want to work at Airbnb. Go to LinkedIn and search “Airbnb”. It’ll show a list of all your contacts who work at Airbnb, followed by connections of connections who work at Airbnb. Pick the person with the most mutual connections and get in touch.
8. Remember, if you have 200 social network 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.
9. There are lots of people in the 80,000 Hours LinkedIn group who are happy to give advice on applications, and may be able to make introductions.
10. If you still haven’t got anywhere, then it may be worth spending some 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 each industry. There are probably some good groups you can join and conferences to attend. Otherwise you can resort to cold emailing. Here’s a guide to getting jobs with no connections. Here’s a guide to finding anyone’s email address.

Remember to use the scripts when asking for introductions.

Scripts

Recruiters and listings

We prefer the above tactics, but recruiters can be worth talking to, and are often more effective than just making cold applications. Look for those who have a good network in the industry you’re interested in. If you want to work in an organisation with a social purpose, check out ReWork. There are also recruiters who specialise in new graduates e.g. GradQuiz (UK).

In case you want to browse job listings, which does sometimes work, and can be a useful way to get ideas, we listed the main sites in the footnotes.⁵

Stage 2: Conversion

When you’re in contact with someone who has the power to hire you, how do you convince them?

Again, think about it from their point of view. Once at 80,000 Hours, we were trying to hire a web engineer. Most applicants just filled out our application form, while one sent us a redesigned version of our career quiz. Which application is more convincing? The person who sent the quiz was immediately in the top 20% of applicants, despite having very little formal experience.

Employers are looking for several qualities. They want employees who will fit in socially, stick around and not cause trouble. But most importantly, the employer wants to be sure that you can solve the problems they face. If you can prove that you’ll get the results the employer most values, everything else is much less important.

So how can you go about doing that?

When the process is highly standardised

In these cases, like Teach for America or many government jobs, you have to jump through the hoops. Maximise your chances by finding out exactly what the process involves, and practising exactly that. For instance, if it’s a competency interview, find out which competencies they look for, then have a friend ask you similar questions. Some public service organisations publish the rubrics they use to assess candidates.

The most useful thing you can do is find someone who recently went through the process, ask them how it works, and, if possible, practice the key steps with them. Sometimes there are books written about exactly how to apply.

Most employers, however, don’t have a fully standardised process. What do you do in those cases?

If you’ve already done the same work before, then you just need to practice telling your story. Skip ahead to the interview tips. But what about if you don’t have much relevant experience?

The basic idea is: do free work.

Do free work

The most powerful way to prove you can do the work is to actually do some of it. And as we saw, doing the work is the best way to figure out whether you’re good at it, so it’ll help you to avoid wasting your own time too.

Here are three ways to put that into practice.

The pre-interview project

This is what the web engineer did with our career quiz, as above.

1. Find out what you’d be doing in the role (this already puts you quite a way ahead).
2. In particular, work out which problems you will need to solve for the organisation. To figure this out, you’ll probably need to do some desk research – here’s a simple guide – then speak to people in the industry.
3. Spend a weekend putting together a solution to these problems, and send them to a couple of people at the company with an invitation to talk more.
4. If you don’t hear back after a week, follow up at least once.
5. Alternatively, write up your suggestions, and present them at the interview. Ramit Sethi calls this “the briefcase technique.”

See some more examples in this article (8min read, also where we got the term “pre-interview project”).

Speaking from personal experience, we’ve overseen four years’ worth of competitive application processes at the Centre for Effective Altruism, and doing either of these would immediately put you in the top 20% of applicants, even if your suggestions weren’t that good. It demonstrates a lot of enthusiasm, and most people hardly know anything about the role they are applying for.

Trial period

If the employer is on the fence, you can offer to do a two or four week trial period, perhaps at reduced pay or as an intern. Say that you’re keen to work there and feel confident that you’ll work out. Make it clear that if the employer isn’t happy at the end, you’ll leave gracefully.

Only bring this out if the employer is on the fence, or it can seem like you’re underselling yourself.

Go for a nearby position

If you can’t get the job you want right away, consider applying for another position in the organisation – like a freelance position, or a position one step below the one you really want. Working in a nearby position gives you the opportunity to prove your motivation and cultural fit. When your boss has a position to fill, it’s much easier to promote someone he or she already worked with than to start a lengthy application process.

How to prepare for interviews

If you can show an employer you can solve their problems, you’re most of the way there, and you can ignore most of the interview advice out there. However, you won’t always have time to prepare, and there’s more you can do to become even more convincing.

Here’s the best advice we’ve found on preparing for interviews. It’s also useful for getting leads while networking. If you’re not actively looking for a job right now, skip this section for now.

1. When you meet an employer, ask lots of questions to understand their challenges. Discuss how you might be able to contribute to these challenges. This is exactly what great salespeople do. A survey of research on sales concluded “there is a clear statistical association between the use of questions and the success of the interaction.” Moreover, when salespeople were trained to ask more questions, it made them more effective.⁶

2. Prepare your three key selling points ahead of meetings. These are the messages you’ll try to get in during the discussion. For instance: 1) I have done this work successfully before, 2) I am really excited about this company, 3) I have suggestions for what I could work on. Writing these out ahead of time makes it more likely you’ll mention what’s most important, and three points is about the limit of what your audience will remember. That’s why this is standard advice when pitching a business idea. If you’re not sure what you have to offer, there’s an inventory exercise at the end of the article on career capital.

3. Focus on what’s most impressive. What sounds better: “I advised Obama on energy policy” or “I advised Obama on energy policy, and have worked as a high school teacher the last three years”? Many people fill up their CVs with everything they’ve done, but it’s usually better to pick your one or two most impressive achievements and focus on those. It sounds better, it makes it more likely you’ll cover it, and it makes it more likely that your audience will remember it.

4. Prepare concrete facts and stories to back up your three key messages. For instance, if you’re applying to be a web engineer, rather than “I’m a hard worker”, try “I have a friend who runs an organisation that was about to get some press coverage. He needed to build a website in 24 hours, so we pulled an all-nighter to build it. The next day we got 1,000 sign-ups.” Rather than say “I really want to work in this industry”, tell the story of what led you to apply. Stories and concrete details are far more memorable than abstract claims.⁷

5. Work out how to sum up what you have to offer in a sentence. Steve Jobs didn’t sell millions of iPods by saying they’re 30% better than mp3 players, but rather with the slogan “1,000 songs in your pocket”. Having a short, vivid summary makes it easy for other people to promote you on your behalf. For instance “He’s the guy who advised Obama on climate policy and wants a research position.”

6. Prepare answers to the most likely questions. Write them out, then practice saying them out loud. The following three questions normally come up: (1) Tell me about yourself – this is an opportunity to tell the story of why you want this position and mention one or two achievements (2) Why do you want this position? (3) What are your questions for us? Then usually the interviewer will add some behavioural questions about the traits they care most about. These usually start “Tell me about a time you…”, then are finished with things like: “exhibited leadership”, “had to work as a team”, “had to deal with a difficult situation or person”, “failed” or “succeeded.” You can find a list of common interview questions here.

7. Practice the meeting, from start to finish. Meet with a friend and have them ask you five interview questions, then practice responding quickly. If you don’t have a friend to help, then say your answers out loud and mentally rehearse how you want it to go. Ask yourself what’s most likely to go wrong, and what you’ll do if that happens.

8. Learn. After each interview, jot down what went well, what could have gone better, and what you’ll do differently next time.

To learn more about sales, our top recommendation is SPIN selling, which is based on in-depth research by Neil Rackman.⁶

Stage 3: Negotiation

Negotiation begins after you have an offer, once the employer has said they’d like to hire you.

Most people are so happy to get a job, or awkward about the idea of negotiating, that they never try. But ten minutes of negotiation could mean major benefits over the next couple of years. So actually consider doing it.

For instance, you could ask the employer to match your donations to charity. That could mean thousands of dollars of extra donations per year, making those ten minutes you took to negotiate among the most productive of your life.

You could also negotiate to work on a certain team, have more flexible hours, work remotely, or learn certain skills. All of these could make a big difference to your day-to-day happiness and career capital.

Negotiation is not always appropriate. Don’t do it if you’ve landed a highly standardised offer, like many government positions — they won’t be able to change the contract. Also don’t do it if you’re only narrowly better than the other candidates or have no alternatives. And definitely don’t negotiate until the employer has made an offer — it looks really bad to start negotiating during the interview.

However, we think negotiation should be tried in most cases once you have an offer. Hiring someone takes months and consumes lots of management time. Once an employer has made an offer, they’ve invested many thousands of dollars in the process. The top candidate is often significantly better than the next best. This means it’s unlikely that they’ll let the top candidate get away for, say, a 5% increase in costs.

It’s even more unlikely that they’ll retract their initial offer because you tried to negotiate. Stay polite, and the worst case is likely that they’ll stick to their original offer.

Negotiation should be most strongly considered when you have more than one good offer, because then you have a strong fallback position.

How to negotiate

Explain the value you’ll give the employer, and why it’s justified to give you the benefits you want. The idea is to look for objective metrics and win-win solutions – can you give up something the employer cares about in exchange for something you care about? For instance:

• I’m going to redesign your sign up process, increasing the conversion rate by 1%, which is worth millions of dollars to you, so I’d like to be given donation matching up to $50,000. This is something I value, and the company can claim tax benefits on the donations.
• Other people with my level of experience in this industry are usually paid $50,000 and can work at home two days per week. But I’d prefer to work with you. Can you match the other companies?
• I’m really motivated to learn sales skills, so I’d like to work alongside person X. This will make me much more effective in the role in six months.

Lots has been written about salary negotiation, so this hardly scratches the surface. Here’s a good guide (30 minutes). Ramit Sethi also has tips (14 minute video and free pdf guide in exchange for newsletter sign up). If you want to get more advanced, check out the book Getting Past No by William Ury, who developed the negotiation course at Harvard Law School.

Negotiate after you’ve started

Once you start the job, try to perform as well as possible, and then negotiate again. Most employers will be very unwilling to lose someone who’s already doing excellent work. Just bear in mind, most companies have a standard review process, so wait until then to make your ask.

Stay motivated

The job search may be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done — you’ve probably never been rejected 30 times in a row before. And you may have to do most of it alone. It makes online dating look easy.

This means that you’ll need to throw every motivational technique you know at the job hunt. For example, set a really specific goal like speaking to five people each week until you have an offer, publicly commit to the goal, and promise to make a forfeit if you miss it. We know one job seeker who, although he is liberal, promised to donate to the Trump campaign if he missed his goal.

One of the most useful approaches our members have found is pairing up with someone else who’s also job hunting. Check in on progress, and share tips and leads. Alternatively, find someone who was recently successful at a similar hunt and is willing to meet up and give you tips.

To get more practical tips on how to motivate yourself, check out the book The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter. And we have another article that lists evidence-based ways to stay happy, productive and motivated.

Check out our advice on different jobs

The best way to get a job depends on the type of job you’re pursuing. Go to our career reviews and scroll to the end of the profile to see customised advice for each type of job.

Never job hunt again

Your job hunts will get easier and easier as you build career capital.

The most important thing you can do to put yourself in a better position is to gain more connections, so you can get better referrals. We have tips on that here and in the next article.

Also focus on developing strong skills and crushing it in your work. The best marketing is word of mouth — employers seeking you out rather than the other way around. If you’re great at your job, then people will actively want to refer you to employers, because it’s doing them a favour as well as you. Read our article on career capital to find out how to never have to job hunt again.

Conclusion

Getting a job can be an unpleasant process, but if you go through the steps in this article, you’ll give yourself the best chance of success. And that will make sure you fulfil your potential to find a satisfying career and contribute to the world.

Apply this to your own career

What are the most important three steps to take in order to get into your top options?

Try to be as specific as possible. Some good examples: complete an online course in statistics; follow up with my boss at my last internship; read my top-recommended problem profile. The key steps probably involve speaking to people.

When are you going to do each of these? Many studies have shown that writing down when you’ll do a task makes it much more likely you’ll actually do it – it’s called an “implementation intention”.

Take a break.

How to get a job for growth

Alena became a HR director when she was not even 30 years old, although until that moment she had mainly worked with numbers and analytics. How did it happen?

“After university (I have an economics degree), I ended up in a bank and worked in the loan department for four years, analyzing the business of clients who applied for a loan. I quickly realized that I would like to work with people more. Somehow on hh. Common crawl en I saw an unusual vacancy – another bank needed a project manager to accompany changes in the motivational scheme. It required analytical skills, the ability to work with reports and tables, conduct presentations and knowledge of the English language. I was a perfect fit, except for one “small” point: I had never worked in HR. nine0005 However, something told me that this was my chance. I wrote a motivation letter, sent a resume, completed a small task, and very soon I was introduced to the manager – it turned out to be an American consultant who led this project. I know that at least two dozen candidates applied for the position, but they took me. It’s just that I was the best “friend” with numbers, and I also had fluent English. Over the year, we completely redesigned the motivation scheme for both sales and support functions. Together with the manager, I held several dozen presentations and workshops on working with the new system. But then the contract ended – and Mike (external consultant) walked away from the project. For a few more months, I supported the process as a holder of knowledge and systems, and then I received an offer to lead the HR team (before that, there were several disparate departments – recruitment, personnel records management, training). I accepted the offer on the condition that during the first half of the year I would receive additional education specifically in HR. I believe that my decision to apply for that project vacancy was one of the most important in my career.” nine0005