:Forest Folk

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

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

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on a popular job board and got 600+ responses in a calendar week. For a single position. That’s increased competition.

Had a strong person called us before we posted the ad, they could have landed the position before running in to all that competition. How? By finding someone who knows someone at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone was aware 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 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 fast triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By rejecting prospects whose cover letters gave us reasons not to employ 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 trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the great news is that job sites give you a feel of who is hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. 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 downside to be aware of is how quickly and easily you can be checked on on the internet. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to swing our thoughts about who to choose.

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!