Finding a Job Using the Web to Win

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

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

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

Had a strong candidate gotten ahold of us before we placed the ad, they could have landed the job prior to having all that competition. How? By knowing someone at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew 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 removed with a swift triage process. How? The same way any HR professional would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us reasons not to hire 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 good news is that job boards give you a sense of who is 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 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 quickly you can be looked up on the web. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some personal web pages that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to sway our thoughts about who to choose.

AA-Careers provides a all-inclusive 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!