Don’t use the carpet-bombing approach, of trying to apply for any and every possible job in Singapore, thinking that something will come through. This approach takes more time and doesn’t provide good results.
- Quality is definitely better than quantity and therefore you need to be very clear on the type of jobs you want to target.
- For our purposes: Job Target = Function + Industry. Function includes a few different jobs which are closely related in terms of the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to perform the job.
- Decide on a manageable set of job targets (2-4) and stick to those as far as possible during your job search.
- For best results, focus most of your effort on job targets where you have previous experience and education relevant to and valued by employers. I usually recommend spending 70-80% of your time on jobs where you have direct experience/education and the remaining on other jobs you might be interested in.
Once you finalise your job targets, make a list of target companies.
Do a bit of research on the internet and make a list of the companies you are interested in, for each job target. Having specific goals in mind is very useful and it will help you:
- Focus all your activities/efforts on achieving well-defined objectives.
- Save tremendous amounts of time.
- Increase the success rate of all your job search efforts.
- Avoid unnecessary frustration and ambiguity.