Top tip reminders for being proactive in a depressed employment market:

1. Be positive by staying proactive
2. Keep in touch regularly with all your contacts – calendarise and be polite but tenacious
3. Reciprocate – try to help others if you can, they will remember the good deed and return the favour
4. Make sure you send your CV updates to a saved list of relevant contacts on a regular basis, which is a great excuse to be in touch
5. Keep an eye on agency, news and job board bulletins, RSS feeds and job feeds
6. Occasionally, respond proactively and professionally to appropriate blog articles
7. Keep current on world and industry topical affairs to add texture to your conversations
8. It is a marathon, not a sprint, keep persevering but treat it like a job in itself by giving yourself down time and breaks

1. Check your CV – many have typing or formatting errors which mean that email addresses and telephone numbers don’t work.  Some do not even have a name or contact details
2. Use spell check and visually check afterwards that it has not made any strange corrections
3. Make sure your online profiles (i.e. LinkedIn or Facebook) are fit for purpose and that your personal profiles do not compromise your professional ones (watch language, images, controversial opinions etc.)
4. Keep checking your online profiles on each platform you use, check your contact details are up to date and that your security settings are appropriate for your needs
5. Use WORD format, not PDF for your CV – many databases search for key words and are not able to search PDF documents.  It is a compromise of practicality over appearance
6. Back up your contact lists and your CVs so that they can be easily recovered if your computer fails (dropbox and similar mostly free online storage can be very useful for that reason)
7. Keep a system of version control so that you know which version of your CV a specific employer is looking at.  There is nothing more embarrassing than not knowing what is on your CV
8. Have your name and ‘CV’ or ‘resume’ as your CV file name so it is easy to find and it is clear to a recipient what it is and who it is