Finding a Job Using the Internet to Your Advantage
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009A modern job search campaign is by nature quite intricate. 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 hunting needs to be thought of as a highly personal, extremely directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of contacts is your source for job information.
So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on a popular job board and got over 600 responses in a week. For a single opening. That’s increased competition for jobs.
Had a strong candidate contacted us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have landed 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 about 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 sure to check your application matierials carefully! 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-paced triage process. How? The same way any employer would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By eliminating candidates whose cover letters gave us causes not to employ them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating prospects whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by rejecting job hunters 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 jobs. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, if you have a well thought out 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 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 insane, but enough to tilt 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!