One of the greatest challenges in your career is being job ready. With the changing landscape of recruitment, impacts of technology and a very volatile labour market, job readiness is something that can be the difference between job search outcomes and job search doldrums.
Job readiness covers a lot of factors, for many individuals they see job readiness as knowing your resume and online profiles are up to date and being able to interview effectively. These however are only a small component of being job ready.
Breaking it down further, job readiness to many recruiters and hiring managers is the difference between a mediocre candidate and a candidate ready to present for the job. Professionally, job readiness needs to include:
1) Understanding your job
It really should be a given but it is alarming how many people actually do not have an understanding of the role they perform and why it is needed within various organisations. This means that they also do not understand what skills are required today or in the future to be able to continue to effectively perform your role. Job readiness here can be achieved by staying up to date with systems, knowing the technical and practical side of your role and understanding where this positions sits within organisations.
2) Understanding the labour market
This is another key area that people need to be truly job ready. By understanding the labour market and labour market trends you will be able to understand the demands on your role in the industry and also what is required for the role in the future. This will assist in responding to questions such as “Where would you like to be in 3 years time” by understanding where your role needs to be in 3 years time.
3) Skills and development
Being able to articulate your skills, your gaps and areas of development will also help in not only ensuring you are job ready but that you can demonstrate this. One thing that is really frustrating is that individuals are not able to demonstrate during an interview that they have the skills required to immediately transition in to a role, or talk to the gaps and how they will be able to address these gaps to still be able to meet the demands of the role.
4) Presentation and communication
Fundamental to your success at the interview, being able to present in a way that reflects your understanding of the role, your level of professionalism and your personal etiquette assists in demonstrating you are job ready. Building from this, being able to communicate confidently, articulately and with clarity is also important for job readiness. Practice the interview skills and start to develop yourself from there.
There is a great deal more to job readiness than the above but these are key issues that are now being seen as the forgotten needs. For all individuals, whilst you are employed you need to remain employable, whilst you are not employed you need to demonstrate employability and whilst you are planning future employment you need to develop new levels of employability. Lifelong learning, career development and personal leadership are imperative to your success; and taking ownership of your own career is key to achieving this.
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