The Press Hacker

The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job seeker, but also presents several possible challenges. It also adds several complexities, and a lot more matters to consider…and be wary of.

Job search needs to be thought of as a personalized, extremely aimed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of colleagues is your source for job information.

So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on a popular job site and got 600+ responses in a week. For one job. That’s increased competition for job openings.

Had the right person called us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have secured the job before running in to all that competition. How? By finding an employee at our company 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 removed with a fast-paced triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By eliminating candidates whose cover letters gave us grounds 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 passing over job hunters who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the good news is that job boards give you a sense of who is hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, if you have a well written 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 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 swing our thoughts 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!