Access To The Internet

The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job hunter, but also presents several potential challenges. It also adds some complexities, and a lot more things to think about…and be wary of.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personalized, very directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of contacts is your source for job leads.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job board and got over 650 responses in a calendar week. For a single opening. That’s increased competition for job openings.

Had a strong candidate called us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have secured the position prior to having all that competition. How? By knowing someone at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone was aware 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 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 eliminated 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 passing over candidates whose cover letters gave us causes 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 rejecting candidates who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the good news is that job sites give you a feel of who is hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those jobs 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 issue to be aware of is how easily you can be investigated on the web. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to sway 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!