Job Search Using the Web to Succeed
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009A modern job hunting campaign is by nature very complicated. While the internet has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and possible challenges for job hunters.
Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personal, very directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of colleagues is your inside source for information and job leads.
So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on Craigslist and got hundreds and hundreds responses in a week. For one position. That’s increased competition.
Had a suitable candidate contacted us before we ran the posting, they could have gotten the position before getting all that competition. How? By finding someone who knows an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew about of the job for at least 7 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 eliminated with a swift triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By eliminating 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 job hunters whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by eliminating prospects who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.
So the good news is that job boards give you a sense of who is hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those jobs 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 checked out on the web. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to swing our thinking 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!