The Synchronous Converter

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

Job search 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 associates is your lead generating machine.

So where does the web fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on Craigslist and got over 650 responses in a calendar week. For a single job. That’s increased competition for jobs.

Had a suitable candidate gotten ahold of us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have gotten the position prior to getting all that competition. How? By knowing an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew about of the job for at least 12 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 taken out with a swift triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By passing over candidates whose cover letters gave us reasons not to engage them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating job hunters 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 great news is that job sites give you a sense of who is hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those jobs 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 potential problem to be aware of is how easily you can be investigated on the web. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some personal web pages that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to tilt our thoughts 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!