If you are currently a job seeker (or are worried that you’ll become one in the near future), you’ve no doubt been concerned about your prospects in these uncertain and unprecedented times.
Worrying about whether you’ll even be able to find a job at the moment has probably crossed your mind a number of times already. While things are so up in the air, it’s important to remember that it’s completely normal to feel anxious and unsettled about the current job market. While no one can say anything for sure, it’s likely to get worse in the coming weeks – and even months – before it gets better.
That’s not to say that nobody is hiring right now though. There are companies and industries that aren’t as affected by the Coronavirus outbreak, who are currently looking for staff.
We’ll be listing a range of jobs being advertised right now, during COVID-19, and providing you with tips from experts about what this means for you, and what you can do to get results.
Who’s currently hiring?
It’s true that many businesses have unfortunately had to stop trading indefinitely, but at the same time, there are still many places looking to hire new workers. Some industries are sadly collapsing, while others are coping with a huge increase in demand.
Here are jobs currently being advertised by some well-known Australian and international companies:
Call Centres
- Services Australia (formerly Centrelink)
- Telstra
- Optus
- ATO (Australian Taxation Office)
Grocery (including delivery)
- Woolworths
- Coles
- Aldi
- Costco
- Safeway
Food Delivery
- Deliveroo
- UberEats
- Dominos
- Pizza Hut
Others companies and industries that are likely to be hiring include:
- Online streaming services
- Insurance companies
- Health and medical
- Warehouse (such as pick and pack roles)
- Online learning companies
- Productivity software companies.
Expert strategies for job search success during the COVID-19 outbreak
Here are some actionable job search strategies that a number of career professionals have shared to help you in your job hunt while Coronavirus is still so prevalent:
Bec O’Connor
Resume Writer • LinkedIn Writer & Trainer – Career Consultant
How do I update my resume for a career change?
I’ve just finalised a resume for a flight attendant client who has had to pivot quickly.
Being a high performer in a highly service-focused industry, we looked at how he could add value to current available customer care roles in industries stable or growing in demand – there are currently call centre based roles in banking, finance, telecommunications, energy for example. He had some earlier career experience at the frontline of banking so we decided to bring this into focus. (You probably want to be going for the low hanging fruit in this market – i.e. the roles and industries you have the most closely aligned experience to)
Position Title
Target the resume for the role you want. Use this in the title of your resume, at the top.
Summary
Earlier relevant experience may be buried but it can hop to the top of your career change resume as a highly relevant accomplishment in the summary. We want to work from the job description pulling language from the posting of the job targeted. We found job descriptions of the types of roles being listed and scanned the common keywords and themes.
Passion projects, volunteering, and education should all contribute to what you describe here.
Where his previous resume was heavily focused on airline/travel experience, you can see the resume now plays up transferable skills and includes a title that references the job he’s targeting.
Customer Service Specialist Targeting Banking & Finance
Customer service specialist with background in high-volume banking (3 years) travel (6 years) and events (1 year). Experience has proven expertise in managing high-volume inbound enquiries, relationship management, sales, and creative problem-solving to connect customers with solutions and products. Goes above and beyond to create exceptional experiences positively impacting brand reputation.
Even if you don’t have direct exposure to the industry, you have developed/demonstrated skills that are relevant and useful to other industries, whether you realise it or not.
I recently worked with another client to undertake a skills audit to see what she could apply to other industries. Whilst she was in quite a technical role, here’s what we pulled out from her current PD and accomplishments:
- Process Improvement and Productivity Enhancement
- Project Management
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Attention to Detail
- Advanced IT
- Problem Solving/Troubleshooting
- Communication Skills – Conveying complex ideas in easy to understand manner
- System Administration and Support
- Report Development
- Change Management.
A highly skilled person any company would want on their team, right?
Also – you may read different opinions in this time about the way resumes should be formatted if you don’t have the direct experience. But try not to resort to a skills-based/functional resume. Recruiters are taught to scan resumes chronologically. Keep your career history in the order it played out (from most recent) but focus on the most relevant points which convey the skills needed.
Carolyn Smith
Award-Winning Certified Master Resume Writer • Marketing Recruiter • Founder & CEO of My Career Groove™ (Recruitment)
16+ years’ experience in helping managers and executives, secure interviews and in turn jobs in both the private and public sector.
The pandemic is hitting hard, so you can no longer solve the job search problem with just a great resume. It will help significantly, but it won’t necessarily be your golden ticket, as you will be competing, not with a dozen or so candidates, but potentially thousands.
If you are still employed, great – make sure you take this opportunity to reinforce your value to an employer, in person and on paper. You can’t afford to be complacent. If you find like thousands of others you end up on the dole line, you are going to have to pivot as fast as humanly possible, as the normal we know is not going to return for many months (as the government has taken a ‘flatten the curve’ approach to pandemic containment).
To pivot, you need to understand how the market is shifting. What jobs are being created to meet the new demands laid bare by the pandemic? It is these jobs you need to get to, before anyone else. For example, Woolworths advertised on Friday the 27th March, that they were seeking 20,000 staff to meet growing demand, including demand being generated from their online store. Other online services might follow this trend. Post services are coming under strain, so my guess is courier drivers might find secure employment.
Government is closing down some work units, but at the same time, will need to rapidly expand services fighting the coronavirus fight, such as administrators supporting the seamless supply of stock to hospitals or services supporting people impacted – think Centrelink and ATO who will need to meet the large demand in enquiries. Some law offices will expand rapidly in the area of employment law and insolvency. Target the sectors that will be employing, and forget in the short-term, sectors that are shedding staff by the thousands.
My advice to you is before you develop your cover letters, resumes and LinkedIn profile: get a GAME PLAN. Work out where the jobs are, so you can identify your relevant skills and shape your marketing documents to meet these sectors. Then ensure you don’t waste energy pursuing dead ends, by implementing a highly targeted job search plan. If you can afford to, use the opportunity to gain new skills required going into the future, as the future is probably not going to look the same as pre-COVID-19.
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” — Alexander Graham Bell
Johnathan Maltby
Career Consultant • Personal Brand & Career Management Consultant
RE-BRANDING YOURSELF
Many people struggle to effectively make the leap from one career or industry to the next because they still label and pitch themselves (even unconsciously) as what they were or currently are, and not what they want to be.
Just as a company re-brands themselves, so should you when changing careers.
To enable a recruiter or hiring manager to see you as a great fit for a new career or industry, you need to sound like someone who is already in that role or industry.
One of the easiest ways to re-brand is to look at the language and terminology of someone who is in that career already and start implementing it into your own branding material, such as your CV and LinkedIn profile, as well as the way you talk about yourself in your elevator pitch.
Look at the skills and activities that someone already in that role would have and do and, using similar language, start aligning your skills to that. What you want to highlight here are your transferable skills. In fact, you may have a good number of the necessary skills for that new career or industry already.
In some cases, you may be able to describe what you were doing in a previous role using the language or terminology that is used in the career or industry you want to be in.
Recruiters and hiring managers are looking to tick boxes in their head when matching a person to a role. If the language you use to describe your skills and experience is the same or similar to the language used in the career or industry you want to move into, then recruiters will be able to easily see the alignment and relevance and how they are transferable.
Want to revamp your resume and secure a new position ASAP? Get in touch with Resumes Masters now
Hopefully this article has made you feel less worried about job hunting during the current COVID-19 situation and these real, actionable tips and strategies can help ease your anxiety during these uncertain times.
The team at Resume Masters is here to help you make your career documents stand out and present the best version of yourself to recruiters and hiring managers. Contact us now if you need a resume, cover letter or selection criteria that will get you noticed.