Job Hunting Using the Web to Succeed
The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job seeker, but also presents several potential challenges. It also adds many complexities, and a lot more things to think about…and be mindful of.
Job hunting needs to be thought of as a highly personal, extremely aimed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of associates is your source for job information.
So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job board and got over 650 applications in a calendar week. For a single opening. That’s increased competition for job openings.
Had a suitable candidate gotten ahold of us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have gotten the job before having all that competition. How? By knowing someone at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew 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 to check your application materials thoroughly before submitting them. When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily removed with a speedy triage process. How? The same way any manager would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. By eliminating prospects whose cover letters gave us reasons not to engage them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating candidates whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by eliminating candidates who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.
So the great news is that job boards give you a sense of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, if you have a well honed 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 potential problem to be aware of is how easily you can be investigated on the net. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some pictures and comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing insane, but enough to rock our thinking about who to choose.
AA-Careers provides a comprehensive 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!
