Job Hunting Using the Net to Your Advantage
The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job hunter, but also presents several possible challenges. It also adds some complexities, and a lot more matters to consider…and be careful of.
Job hunting needs to be thought of as a highly personal, extremely directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of contacts is your source for information.
So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job site and got 600 plus applications in a calendar week. For one position. That’s increased competition for jobs.
Had a strong candidate called us before we ran the ad, they could have gotten the job before running in to 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 12 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 fast-paced triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job. By eliminating 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 job hunters 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 who is hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. 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 and easily you can be checked out on the web. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to rock our thinking about who to choose.
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!
