Jobs in my area: how do I find out who is hiring in my area

You might be asking yourself: how do I find jobs in my area? How do I find out who is hiring in my area? Where should I look for jobs in my local area?

But, hang on a minute, we'll look at these important questions. First, though, you need to put together a job search strategy. This goes beyond writing or updating your CV – although this is certainly part of it - as it defines how you are going to conduct your search. This means listing the actions that you are going to take, where you are going to look and who you are going to approach.

When you are only interested in a job in your local area, this means doing a little more than simply looking on the biggest jobs website in the country or western hemisphere. Digital communications may have opened up a world of opportunity when it comes to job hunting, but if you only look on a single website, you will be greatly restricting your options. You need to know where to start and, just as importantly, where to stop, and this is where your strategy comes in, as it provides a structure to follow.

Here we look at some of the different ways in which you can now search for local jobs. We are assuming that you already know the kind of job you want and the geographical area in which you want to work, or that you are well on the way to identifying them.

Where should I look for jobs in my local area? The Local Press

When looking for jobs in your local area, the local paper is still as good a place to start as anyway. Even if all the job advertisements published find their way onto a careers website, there may be a day or two’s lapse before they are published online. So, check which day is the ‘jobs day’ and buy the paper early, as they often sell out on this day. Another option is to go to the local library to read their copies, but you may have to wait if someone else is there first.

How many advertisements you find will obviously depend on how healthy the economy is in your area. If there are not many job adverts and none at all for the kind of job you are seeking, then it might be necessary to reassess your goals. If living locally is most important, you may need to aim for a different kind of job. If the type of work is more important, then you may need to relocate. The best approach is to study the jobs pages for a while before you start your job search, so that you have an idea of what is available.

Some jobs at a higher salaried or management level may not be advertised in your local paper, but in national or regional publications. In these instances, it may be worth looking at the specialist employment pages as well as the general jobs pages.

Not all organisations can afford display advertisements, so look in the classifieds jobs section as well. You may find jobs with very small local companies here, or with non-profit organisations.

If an advert looks interesting and you seem to fit their requirements, ring up or email and ask for a job description. This doesn’t mean you have to apply, but you can start reading in more depth about the kind of person the employer believes is right for the job.

Apply for a local job online through local websites

You are also now in a position to start looking at local job websites, for these allow you to run more specific searches in your local area. The advantage with online advertisements is that you can often click through to the job description there and then.

An obvious place to start is with your local and regional newspapers’ websites. Here, you can explore job adverts that were published in previous editions of the papers and which you might have missed. Sometimes, employers opt to publish in the newspaper only or website only, so by doing this, you are covering all the bases. You can also look at newspapers that you did not buy.

National Jobs Websites

There are an enormous number of jobs websites that present you with tens of thousands of job advertisements. Many of these will not appear in the local newspapers, as employers anticipate job seekers using the Internet extensively nowadays. Sites fall into several categories:

• Those featuring adverts by employers who have chosen – and therefore pay – to advertise there, meaning that job descriptions and links to their websites are included.
• Those that simply pull together adverts that have appeared in newspapers and on websites belonging to the related newspaper groups.
• Those that concentrate only on specific industries.

Rather than searching through them all, you would do better to concentrate on just two or three. Pick the highest profile sites and / or those relating to the industry you work in. Fortunately, you can narrow the advertisements down by using the search engines on these sites.

You can search by a range of criteria. As you are seeking a job in your locality, you can start by entering your geographical area (usually by postcode / zip code or town / city name), along with a keyword, job title, or industry sector. You will soon become familiar with how many results are produced by particular search strings and will know whether to make your search wider or more specific.

The majority of national sites allow you to register your details. Doing so enables you to upload your CV so that employers can view it, sign up for email alerts each time jobs relevant to your search are added to the site, and apply for jobs directly via the site. You will also be notified directly when jobs matching your search criteria are added to the site. Always read a site’s privacy policy before registering and keep notes of where you upload your CV, so that you can update it or remove it later on.

Part 2 - Jobs available in my area

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