We didn’t see the recession coming, but it’s here, and we’re well encumbered in an economic slowdown. You may even be recently unemployed. You can stop reading the newspapers, but you can’t escape the actuality that the United Kingdom is in a deep recession and it will be with us for some time.

Yet, there are always methods to help get yourself into a better financial position. The orthodox ways of searching for a job are not so good when you have 80 other people trying for the very same job. Picking up the local newspaper, browsing the dole office, etc – you’re just part of the masses looking for work in this uncreative way.

It’s much better to be proactive in areas your competitors (the unemployed) are less likely to be active in. These days many firms publish job vacancies on their company website, so go to Google and type in key words to target local companies. Vary your key words between location only e.g. jobs in Tamworth Staffordshire England, and job type and locale e.g. cleaning jobs in Tamworth.

One more alternative is to go it alone – to be self-employed. What we’ve discovered over the last year or so is that large corporates can go bankrupt very quickly. Being self-employed puts destiny in your own hands, which is something no employee of a company can ever say they have. The main thing is you pick the kind of job you love since you will need to be motivated.