The three whales, supporting your job search process, should be: your resume (curriculum vitae), cover letter, and references from your previous employers. The big mistake of many is ignoring the last one – it is as important as the other two.

One might say that most employers ask for references only at the point when they make a job offer, so it does not really matter if you have them or not. This is only partially true: normally the reference are required at the final stage of the interview only, however if there are several candidates for the same job position, the preference is most likely to be given to the one who has the most reliable referrers. Ideally, you should have three job references (of course, you can have more than that, but not less) – this is the usual expectations of the most of Human Resources or recruitment agencies representatives.

You can get recommendations from the people you reported to in you past job role. Normally there are two or three of them, so pick those you used to have the best rapport with, and ask them to provide you with job references for the future employment search.