Looking for a Job 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 matters to think about…and be careful of.
Job search needs to be thought of as a highly personal, very directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of associates is your source for information.
So where does the web fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on Craigslist and got over 650 responses in a calendar week. For a single job. That’s increased competition for jobs.
Had a strong person gotten ahold of us before we posted the ad, they could have gotten the position prior to getting all that competition. How? By finding someone at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone was aware 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 sure to check your cover letter and resume 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 speedy triage process. How? The same way any employer would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job. By eliminating candidates whose cover letters gave us causes not to engage 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 trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.
So the good news is that job boards 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 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 quickly and easily you can be checked out on the internet. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some personal web pages that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to rock our thoughts about who to choose.
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!
