A modern job hunting campaign is by nature quite Byzantine. 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 personalized, highly directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of contacts is your lead generating machine.

So where does the web fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job board and got over 650 applications in a week. For one opening. That’s increased job hunting competition.

Had a strong candidate called us before we ran the posting, they could have landed the position before getting all that competition. How? By finding someone who knows someone at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew about of the job for at least 10 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 taken out with a quick triage process. How? The same way any HR professional would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us grounds 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 passing over prospects 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 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 thought out 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 potential problem to be aware of is how quickly and easily you can be checked out on the net. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some personal web pages that were in questionable taste. Nothing illegal, but enough to rock our thinking about who to choose.

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!

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