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To find a cool job on New Year's Eve, negotiating an acceptable salary and not burning yourself out in the process would be a real miracle. And, as we know from experience, miracles are few and far between. So, what should you study right now and how to look for vacancies to start a new job in a month’s time? Lectera founder and CEO Mila Semeshkina will give you the right advice.
What should you study?
I advise you to pay attention to professions that can easily be used to build a career in the digital business, as I am sure it is the future. This also means high salaries, good company benefits, and surprisingly diverse career opportunities. So, what niche can you master in just a month?
SEO. Website optimisation is one of the most popular services in advertising agencies, and they charge thousands for this, although you can complete one order in a day (if you try hard enough, of course)! SEO can be similar to a mathematical problem ("Find which page of the site does not have an image description and load this description from the aforementioned file"), or it can be closely related to managerial competencies (for example, when you need to add keywords to the site materials that will not "burden" the texts and interfere with the understanding of the key idea).
A good SEO manager can adjust the site to the requirements of different search engines, to improve the position of the page in the search results, and set up simple advertising campaigns in Yandex.Direct or Google AdWords to sell web portal promotion along with contextual advertising. I always stand for income diversification (especially if it can be done by studying a small amount of information). You are going to explore micro markup, robots.txt and Sitemap.xml files (they determine how the automated system sees the site), algorithms of search engine robots, analytics collection services, and page ranking factors. And this is just the beginning! Although it sounds scarier than it really is. You can learn SEO in about a week, and pick up the tricks that will help you stand out among other specialists in the niche in just a couple of hours (by taking Lectera courses, of course).
Marketing. This is an extremely profitable niche that constantly requires new specialists. Marketing surrounds us everywhere: on social media, in newsletters from your favourite shops, in magazines, on advertising banners in the city, and news sites. The list is endless. In simple terms, marketing is a set of tools that allow you to sell your product to a client. In reality, these "simple terms" can be often found in complicated mechanics, solutions, and advertising campaigns.
A marketing expert is usually a versatile multitasker who knows how to customise the tools for attracting leads, calculate the most inexpensive ways to sell products to the target audience, and, if necessary, come up with creatives, which will then be launched as targeted advertising, testing them in the process. They should know how contextual advertising and targeting tools work, understand at least the basics of SMM and SEO, be able to analyse statistics, set up email newsletters, use data from CRM systems, and re-invent development strategies while also coming up with new ones. You can learn the basics of marketing in 3-4 weeks, but perfecting your skills will take months. So, don't waste your time and start now! Lectera, for example, has courses both for experienced marketing consultants and novice market researchers. Like most of our programmes, you can complete these courses in a couple of days. The New Year's holidays are just around the corner, so why not spend them productively?
Sales. Essentially, marketing, SEO, and related professions are in one way or another connected with the sale of goods to potential customers. However, in addition to specialists from these areas, the market needs sales managers. Those are professionals who can deal with the buyer's objections, close the deal, and turn the customer into a brand advocate. Such specialists earn hundreds of thousands of dollars (especially if they speak other languages and can work with foreign markets).
The salesperson's duties range from the actual sale and closing of the deal to negotiations with suppliers and individual stock formation. If you work as a sales assistant, you will need to learn customer communication scripts and study how various products differ from each other. If you are the one who contacts potential partners or sells something through personal contacts, you will have to learn how to keep records, draw up contracts, prepare payment documents, and, of course, speak eloquently. In any case, you will need a basic knowledge of marketing, logistics, accounting, ways of promoting a product on the market, and legislation. In addition, you will need to know the basics of organising a trade process. You can learn all this in 2-3 weeks, where you will spend half of this time practising. After all, selling requires skill, not memorised theory.
How can you quickly learn new skills?
First, try to determine why you are studying. Are you doing it to support the general New Year's bustle? Or to spend some free time? Maybe to get a new profession to improve your financial situation? Or perhaps to add additional skills to your toolkit to help you move to a new position? The goal should be specific and time-bound. Not "I will use this foreign language sometime later," but "I will pass the exam and go to study in another country where this language will be very useful to me." You no longer need to study in order to pass an exam and get a diploma, though. Now you will have to look for reasons for learning in your sincere intentions.
Second, draw up a schedule. Do you have one free hour per week? Then use only this free hour. Do you have 20 minutes every evening? Pace yourself - there is no point in trying to fit all the courses you bought during Black Friday into these 20 minutes. You can learn new terms or re-read notes on the way to the office. Furthermore, you can listen to the lectures in the car or while during sports. You can ponder over the tests during your break. Trust my experience when I say that you can find time to study even with the busiest schedule. If that's what you want, of course.
Third, establish a reward system. I'm not talking about eating chocolates every 10 pages of a boring textbook, but unique and relevant ways to really cheer you up and motivate you to study. Are you happy when you are watching your favourite TV show? Then watch it after completing the scheduled lessons. Do you just want to scroll through the news feed, trying not to think about anything? Allocate half an hour before dinner for this. I always oppose procrastination, that is, shirking from work or school under any pretext, but not in favour of replacing rest with incessant brain activity.
Fourth, use tests. In a fortnight, you will be able to remember only 10% of what you read and about 50% of what you watched. To memorise information, you need to interact with it while studying. Interaction can mean tests (I practice surface testing before studying the material and a more in-depth one immediately after completing the course), dialogues with new terms, case studies without the correct answer, or full-fledged sketches.
Fifth, don't demand over-the-top performance from yourself. The brain can focus on a single task for about 20 minutes. Then it switches to something else, whether it's your Instagram, text in instant messengers, a cat that needs to be fed urgently, or a colleague inviting you for a cup of coffee (if you work in an office). And that's fine! Overproductivity can lead to burnout, and at a much faster rate than you think. Allow yourself to walk at your own pace.
Where do you look for work?
To be honest, different resources will be relevant for each industry. A top manager is unlikely to find an interesting job for themselves on an aggregator site, as an intern will fail to find a suitable jop opening in a chat of headhunters looking for CEO-level managers. As an initial study of the market, I recommend taking a closer look at the largest vacancy aggregator HeadHunter, "Budu" project, Up to me, Grintern (suitable for beginners), Alena Vladimirskaya's telegram channels (and her Facancy service), careershace, VDHL, and the Jobby bot.
Those who have already gone through these options and did not get the desired result can seek survival in professional chats on Telegram (believe me, there are a lot of them) and simple networking. Tell about your job search on your Facebook page, for example. You will see, many of your friends will respond to the call to recommend you to their contacts!
Can't figure out what you would like to do next professionally? Are you striving to build a clear career map and create a foundation for growth in the industry you are interested in? Well, try taking my unique career marathon! It will help you decide on the direction which you should go in, and finally start changing your life for the better.
How do you look for a job?
If you want to find a job quickly and cut losses, consider vacancies not only strictly suitable for your speciality. Find out what else the set of duties that you are performing is called. You can do this by examining the tag cloud attached to each vacancy. For example, a journalist may be referred to as a writer, rewriter, or copywriter. And all these positions will be pretty similar to each other. Search for offers using all variations of profession names and pay attention to recommended vacancies (this feature is always available on aggregators).
I advise you to customise your resume as much as possible so that it fits the different niches you are applying for. Do not be too lazy to do this! Having the right facts on your CV will greatly increase your chances of getting hired quickly. Sometimes customising your resume means rewriting just a few words and removing some information blocks.
Contact your ex-colleagues who have gone to work for other companies. Ask them if their companies are looking for someone with your skills. Even if they say no to you now, they will still remember you as a cool pro ready for new projects. And this means a lot.
If you have read up to this point, It seems you are really interested in starting a new career in the new year. If so, , then sign up for our job search course. Right now, everyone can take it free of charge! However, only alimited number of positions are available, so hurry up! In the course, we will analyse the main mistakes people make in the job search process and find a formula to help you become the perfect candidate for your dream job.
