Stand out from the crowd

With unemployment soaring, this checklist will boost your chances of finding a role

- DAVID THORNTON

With more than 800,000 Australians unemployed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ever-present threat of more losses, understanding how to give yourself the best chance of landing a job is more important than ever. Securing a job involves finding opportunities, tailoring your skills – and, if necessary, undertaking further training – preparing an application and presenting yourself in the best possible light at the interview.

Despite government intervention with the JobKeeper scheme, the pandemic has seen the number of those without a job hit high levels.

Unemployment jumped in April by 104,500 people to 823,300, while the unemployment rate increased from 5.2% to 6.2%. The impact on hours worked was also significant. The total fell by around 9.2% between March and April.

This meant a high number of employed and unemployed people left the labour force – which also means there was a high number of people without a job who didn’t or couldn’t actively look for work or weren’t available for work, says Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ labour statistics.

The number of underemployed people also rose sharply, by 603,300 to a total of 1.8 million, while the underemployment rate rose to a record high of 13.7% (up 4.9%).

1 The search

Before you can prepare for a job interview, you first need to understand what is available.

The federal government’s Jobs Hub website is a good place to start. Here you’ll find job listings categorised by sector and geography, a list of in-demand jobs and a range of other resources.

Then there are the private job search agencies, including SEEK, Indeed, CareerOne, Glassdoor, Ethical Jobs.