Looking for a Job Using the Web to Succeed
A modern job search campaign is by nature fairly involved. While the net 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, extremely directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of contacts is your source for information.
So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on a popular job site and got over 600 responses in a calendar week. For a single opening. That’s increased job hunting competition.
Had a strong candidate called us before we placed the ad, they could have secured the position before running in to all that competition. How? By knowing someone at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone was aware of the job for at least 11 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 fast-paced triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. By rejecting prospects whose cover letters gave us causes not to hire 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 eliminating prospects 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 positions. 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 downside to be aware of is how quickly 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 thinking about who to employ.
AA-Careers provides a all-inclusive 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!
