TN9 Info

A modern job search campaign is by nature quite involved. While the internet has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and potential challenges for job hunters.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personal, extremely directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of contacts is your source for job information.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job board and got hundreds and hundreds applications in a calendar week. For one job. That’s increased competition for job openings.

Had a suitable candidate gotten ahold of us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have landed the job prior to running in to all that competition. How? By finding someone who knows someone at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew about 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 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 eliminated with a swift triage process. How? The same way any HR professional would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job. By rejecting prospects whose cover letters gave us reasons 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 great news is that job sites give you a sense of who is 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 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 potential problem to be aware of is how easily you can be looked up on the internet. As we Googled several job hunters, 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 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!

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