Summer has a funny way of giving us perspective.
Perhaps you’ve had a holiday. Spent more time outdoors. Seen more of the people you love. Or simply enjoyed a slightly different pace.
And now September is appearing on the horizon. If the thought of getting “back to normal” is filling you with dread, you might already know that something needs to change. Maybe you’ve been thinking about finding a new job for a while.
Then you see the headlines about the UK job market and think:
Perhaps I’d better stay where I am.
Not so fast.
Yes, the UK job market is tough
The latest UK labour-market figures were released by the Office for National Statistics today. There are currently around 707,000 vacancies in the UK, with 2.5 unemployed people for every vacancy.
Vacancies are below their pre-pandemic level and, outside the pandemic, we haven’t seen vacancy numbers this low since 2014.
So I’m not going to pretend it’s an easy job market. It isn’t. But here’s the bit I really want you to hear:
A tough job market doesn’t mean there are no opportunities.
People are still changing jobs. Employers are still recruiting. Dream jobs are still out there. You might just need to change the way you look for yours.
Stop competing with everybody else
Think about the way most people look for a new job.
- They go to a job board.
- They type in a job title.
- They scroll through the vacancies.
- They spot something that looks vaguely suitable.
- They send in an application.
- And wait.
Then they do it all over again. The trouble is, as soon as a vacancy appears on a job board, everybody else can see it too.
And many jobseekers naturally gravitate towards larger, better-known organisations. They’re more likely to have recruitment teams, careers pages and the budgets to advertise widely.
They can also feel more secure. But a big employer isn’t necessarily a secure employer. Large organisations restructure, merge, close departments and make redundancies too.
Meanwhile, there are around 1.4 million private-sector employers in the UK and approximately 1.15 million of them employ fewer than ten people.
That’s an enormous number of potential employers that may never appear in your usual job-board search. So if you’ve been applying for job after job without getting anywhere, today’s figures are not a reason to simply apply for even more.
It’s time to compete differently.
Start with what you actually want
Before you search for another vacancy, get clear about what you’re looking for.
And I don’t just mean a job title.
- What do you want your working day to look like?
- What are you good at – and enjoy doing?
- What matters to you?
- What kind of people do you want to work with?
- What do you want more of in your life and what have you had quite enough of, thank you?
You can’t conduct a focused job search if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Once you do, something interesting happens.
You can stop asking:
“What jobs are available?”
And start asking:
“Where might I find the work I actually want to do?”
That’s a very different search.
Stop looking for vacancies. Start looking for opportunities.
Make a list of organisations you’d genuinely like to work for.
- Research them.
- Follow them on LinkedIn.
- Find out what they’re doing.
- Who works there?
- What are they talking about?
- Are they growing? Changing direction? Launching something new?
- Who could you have a conversation with?
Because not every opportunity starts life as an advert on a job board.
Sometimes there’s already a vacancy and the employer simply hasn’t advertised it yet. Sometimes somebody is quietly considering moving on. Sometimes a business is growing and the owner knows they need help but hasn’t quite worked out what that help looks like. Sometimes there’s a problem that needs solving or a project that needs somebody’s attention.
And sometimes the right person appears at just the right moment.
That’s what we call the hidden job market in the UK and it’s much bigger than many jobseekers realise.
And it isn’t necessarily a collection of secret vacancies waiting for you to discover them. Sometimes the opportunity doesn’t even exist as a vacancy yet.
What if you could save your future employer thousands before day one?
I’ve spent time on both sides of the recruitment process.
Before becoming The Dream Job Coach, I spent many years managing large retail stores and recruiting people myself.
Around 20 years ago, we estimated that it cost my employer approximately £15,000 to recruit and train one salesperson.
Recruitment agencies routinely quoted fees of around 10–30% of the successful candidate’s first-year salary. Print advertising was expensive too. Recruitment costs money. It also takes time.
So, as an employer, I was always delighted when someone walked into my store and asked for an application form or brought me their CV.
Even when I was fully staffed.
Because “fully staffed” only meant I didn’t have a vacancy that day. I knew that, sooner or later, somebody would decide it was time to move on.
And when that happened, having the details of somebody who had already made a good impression sitting in my talent bank was a huge advantage.
Instead of immediately spending money on advertising or calling a recruitment agency, I already had somebody I could contact. And if I could recruit a great person while saving the company thousands of pounds in the process?
Well, that was a good way to earn a pat on the back from my boss too!
“We’re not recruiting” doesn’t mean “we’ll never recruit you”
This is something I really want jobseekers to understand.
If you approach an organisation you’d love to work for and they tell you they aren’t recruiting at the moment, you haven’t failed. You’ve discovered that they don’t have a vacancy today. That’s all.
If you’ve done your research, approached them thoughtfully and made a good impression, you’ve also achieved something important:
They now know you exist.
And when somebody hands in their notice three months later, who might they think of?
Of course, there are no guarantees. Some organisations have formal recruitment procedures they must follow. Some won’t keep speculative CVs. Some simply won’t need somebody with your skills.
That’s fine. You don’t need every employer to say yes.
You need the right conversation with the right person in the right organisation at the right time.
And when you do apply, make it count
I’m not suggesting you should stop applying for advertised vacancies. But when you find the right one, don’t fire off another generic application and hope for the best.
Do your research. Understand what that employer actually needs. Show them why you can help.
Use AI to support your thinking if you want to, but don’t ask it to do the thinking for you!
Your application needs to sound like you, demonstrate your strengths and make it easy for the person reading it to understand why they should meet you.
Because when more candidates are competing for fewer advertised opportunities, blending in isn’t going to help.
Don’t compete harder. Compete differently.
The latest figures aren’t wonderful. But they’re definitely not a reason to give up on finding work you love.
And they’re certainly not a reason to spend another year in a job that’s making you miserable because you’ve convinced yourself there’s nothing else out there.
If summer has given you a little perspective and you’re heading towards September thinking something needs to change, listen to that feeling.
Get clear about what you want. Work out which organisations could offer it. Research them. Start conversations.
And don’t wait for your dream employer to advertise your dream job before you introduce yourself.
Make sure they know you exist.
Because you don’t necessarily need to search harder.
You might simply need a better strategy.
I believe your dream job is out there. Our job is to find it.
