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 great complexities, and a lot more things to consider…and be wary of.
Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personalized, extremely targeted marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of associates is your source for job information.
So where does the web fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job site and got over 650 responses in a week. For one job. That’s increased competition for job openings.
Had a strong candidate contacted us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have secured the position before having all that competition. How? By knowing someone at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone was aware of the job for at least 14 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 eliminated with a swift triage process. How? The same way any manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By rejecting prospects whose cover letters gave us grounds 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 job hunters who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.
So the great news is that job sites give you a sense of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those positions 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 downside to be aware of is how easily you can be checked out on the net. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to sway 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!
