A Clever Spell

The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job seeker, but also presents several possible challenges. It also adds great complexities, and a lot more things to think about…and be mindful of.

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

So where does the web fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on Craigslist and got 600+ applications in a calendar week. For one opening. That’s increased competition for jobs.

Had the right person contacted us before we posted the ad, they could have landed the position before having 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 11 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your cover letter and resume 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 HR professional would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By eliminating prospects whose cover letters gave us reasons not to hire 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 rejecting 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 feel of what companies are 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 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 thing 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 personal web pages that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to rock our thinking about who to employ.

AA-Careers provides a encompassing 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!