How can I find a public sector job?

How can I find a public sector job?

In these days of the WORLD WIDE WEB, it is seen as the answer to every question. So isn’t the answer to how do I find a job?  simply ‘on the web’. Post your CV  on a big jobs board like Monster and sit back and wait.

Well it may be and you may well find jobs  vacancies on the web. But there are other routes as well, even in the public sector.

You can use the internet to find a job.

• There are Employers’ Sites – every local authority has a site and their vacancies will be on there, NHS employers, civil service jobs are sites where you can find those employers advertising.
  
• Dedicated jobs boards – who only publish jobs for certain sectors- such as Careers for Leaders, or The Ladders which publishes jobs in certain professions about £50k
  
• Profession specific sites- sites like People Management or Personnel Today, often attached to a professional institute will advertise a range of roles
  
• Web crawler sites – sites like Indeed, Simply Hired  or  Jobs1.co.uk can make life easy as they literally crawl the web to look at other sites and collect together all the vacancies.

There are some myths around  that all public sector or at least all local government jobs must be advertised. And they are just that, myths. The requirement is to get the best person for the job and to have a representative workforce. Together these two influences drove many organisations to advertise widely to recruit just such people. But it is not a legal requirement.

And think of the cost! Advertising in the press or on the web can cost a lot. So in these straightened times many organisations have changed their strategies. They may advertise only on their own website if at all.

So what sorts of jobs don’t get advertised?

The short term contract type, the temp roles, the ones where the actual employer is not the public sector organisation, the ones which are filled by contractors not employees.

So how can you find them?

Talk to the organisations that you want to target. Ask them how they fill such posts, do they have arrangements with agencies? Are they running their own in house agency/talent pool that you can join? Are they sourcing candidates through boards like Monster? Are they using FaceBook or Linked In?.

Talk to people who work within the organisations you want to work for. What they tell you about how people get to work there may be different from what HR believes should be happening. 

In spite of the tradition of open advertisement there are many opportunities that will never appear on the web.

for more career advice and tips on career advancement www.maryhopecareersuccess.com