The Lava Bot

A modern job hunting campaign is by nature fairly 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 highly personal, highly aimed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network is your source for information and opportunities.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on Craigslist and got more than 650 responses in a calendar week. For one job. That’s increased competition.

Had a suitable candidate gotten ahold of us before we ran the posting, they could have gotten the position 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 was aware of the job for at least 7 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 triage process. How? The same way any manager would. By passing over resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. 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 candidates whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by eliminating prospects 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 positions. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, 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 issue to be aware of is how easily you can be investigated 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 tilt our thinking about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a extensive 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!