The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job seeker, but also presents several possible challenges. It also adds great complexities, and a lot more matters to think about…and be mindful of.
Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personal, highly directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of colleagues is your source for job information.
So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on Craigslist and got 600+ applications in a calendar week. For a single job. That’s increased competition for jobs.
Had a strong person contacted us before we posted the ad, they could have secured the position before having all that competition. How? By knowing an employee at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone was aware 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 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 removed with a fast-paced triage process. How? The same way any manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us reasons not to employ 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 rejecting candidates who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.
So the great news is that job boards give you a feel of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of positions. 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 issue to be aware of is how quickly and easily you can be checked on on the web. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing insane, but enough to swing our thinking about who to employ.
AA-Careers provides a comprehensive 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!