Damburger

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 wary of.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personalized, very aimed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network is your lead generating machine.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job site and got over 600 applications in a week. For a single position. That’s increased job hunting competition.

Had a strong person contacted us before we placed the ad, they could have landed the job before having all that competition. How? By finding someone who knows an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew about of the job for at least 13 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 quick triage process. How? The same way any manager would. By passing over resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By passing over prospects whose cover letters gave us causes not to employ 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 candidates 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 jobs. But once those positions 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 thing to be aware of is how easily you can be investigated on the internet. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing insane, but enough to tilt 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!