Looking for a Job Using the Net to Succeed
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010A modern job search campaign is by nature quite Byzantine. While the web has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and potential challenges for job hunters.
Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personalized, very directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network is your inside source for information and job leads.
So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on a popular job board and got 600+ responses in a calendar week. For one opening. That’s increased competition for job openings.
Had a strong candidate contacted us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have secured the position prior to having all that competition. How? By knowing an employee at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 12 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?
Be careful how you submit your application as well. When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily taken out with a quick triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us grounds not to employ them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating prospects whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by rejecting job hunters who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.
So the good news is that job sites give you a feel of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, if you have a well written resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.
Another issue to be aware of is how easily you can be looked up on the internet. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to rock our thoughts about who to hire.
AA-Careers provides a extensive set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.
Be careful out there, and good hunting!