The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job hunter, but also presents several potential challenges. It also adds some complexities, and a lot more things to consider…and be wary of.
Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personalized, very targeted marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of colleagues is your inside source for information and job leads.
So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on Craigslist and got over 600 responses in a calendar week. For one opening. That’s increased competition for jobs.
Had a suitable candidate called us before we ran the ad, they could have landed the job before having all that competition. How? By finding an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 10 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 passing over resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us reasons not to hire 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 prospects who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.
So the great news is that job sites give you a feel of who is hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, 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 investigated 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 sway our thinking about who to hire.
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!