Misrelate

A modern job hunting campaign is by nature fairly complicated. 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 search needs to be thought of as a highly personal, highly targeted marketing operation 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 recently posted a job on Craigslist and got over 650 applications in a calendar week. For one position. That’s increased job hunting competition.

Had a strong candidate contacted us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have gotten the position before getting all that competition. How? By knowing an employee at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew 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 removed with a speedy triage process. How? The same way any employer would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By passing over prospects whose cover letters gave us causes 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 eliminating prospects 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 jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, 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 quickly and easily you can be checked on on the web. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to rock our thinking about who to choose.

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!