Job Search Using the Net to Your Advantage
The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job hunter, but also presents several potential challenges. It also adds many complexities, and a lot more things to consider…and be careful of.
Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personalized, highly directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of associates is your source for information and opportunities.
So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on a popular job site and got hundreds and hundreds applications in a calendar week. For one position. That’s increased competition for jobs.
Had a suitable candidate gotten ahold of us before we posted the ad, they could have secured the position prior to having all that competition. How? By finding an employee at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew about of the job for at least 9 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 removed with a fast triage process. How? The same way any employer would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our job. By passing over candidates whose cover letters gave us grounds 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 rejecting 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 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 try, 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 quickly and easily you can be investigated on the web. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some pictures and comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing insane, but enough to rock our thoughts about who to hire.
AA-Careers provides a broad 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!