Knoware House

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

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

So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on Craigslist and got 600 plus responses in a week. For a single opening. That’s increased competition.

Had a strong candidate called us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have secured the position before running in to 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 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 removed with a quick triage process. How? The same way any manager would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By rejecting prospects whose cover letters gave us grounds not to employ them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating prospects 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 sense of what companies are 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 downside to be aware of is how easily you can be checked on on the web. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some personal web pages that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to swing our thoughts about who to employ.

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!