Career planning

Plan career options

Successful job seeking is based on understanding your personal competence, strengths and motivation. A clear set of job goals is a good basis for your job search plan. Review your work history and qualifications to identify the underlying skills, values, and then the work environments that are for you. The more focused your goals, the easier it is to develop a good plan. This will help you in planning your career direction and creating your CV and online profiles.

Once you have defined your career goals then you can explore opportunities in the areas you are interested in. The The Labour Force Barometer (työvoimabarometri.fi) can support this with estimated demand for workforce in key occupations in the Tampere region.

Define your professional profile online

Create your LinkedIn profile based on your career interests. Be active within your profile, for example posting articles and following groups and companies of interest. We also recommend you to create a job alert for your interests. See here how: Job Alerts on LinkedIn.

Update your CV and cover letters

Update your CV and cover letters and adapt them to the opportunity you are applying for. A good CV format will get the recruiter’s attention immediately.

CV We advise 1 page, emphasizing aspects of your career and your skills that are most relevant to the role you are applying for.

• Personal profile: a clear description of your professional experience and personality (soft skills).
• Skills: list most relevant for the role first

Your profile and your skills are the most critical items to make your profile stand out, and it’s likely that a recruiter reads these first to understand if you are a good match for a role.

Use the same terms and language from the job add to describe these, and apply this approach throughout your cv.

• Photo and references: photos are commonly used. References indicate that persons in positions of responsibility are willing to recommend you for a role. So good to

    add these to your cv with the permission of your recommenders.

• Work experience: most recent first: title, employer, start / end dates, short role description. Include an achievement in the role to create more impact. e.g. achieved significant cost savings through improvement of planning and budgeting working methods
• Portfolio:  for academic and other portfolios create these in GitHub, LinkedIn, other  and link out to this content from your cv
• Cover Letter: An opportunity to describe how you fulfil the requirements defined in a job advertisement
  • Describe your motivation in relation to the role and company you are applying for, as well as what you have to offer (based on long term career goals)
  • Read the job ad carefully and ensure your letter is a good match for the job ad requirements(use the same terminology)
  • Describe how can add value using your successes related to the position you are applying for
  • Use your personal and technical skills as relevant for a particular job
  • Ensure as far as possible you address all requirements of the role
  • If you can't fulfil all the needs in the ad, don't be discouraged, mention your experiences of learning new things