Looking for a Job Using the Web to Your Advantage
A modern job hunting campaign is by nature very complicated. While the net has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and possible challenges for job hunters.
Job search needs to be thought of as a personalized, very aimed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network is your lead generating machine.
So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on Craigslist and got 600+ applications in a calendar week. For a single opening. That’s increased competition for jobs.
Had a great candidiate called us before we ran the posting, they could have secured the position before getting 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 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 HR professional would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. By rejecting prospects whose cover letters gave us causes not to employ 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 job hunters who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.
So the great 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 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 downside to be aware of is how easily you can be checked out on the web. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to sway our thoughts about who to employ.
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!
