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

Job search needs to be thought of as a personal, very aimed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of associates is your inside source for information and job leads.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job board and got 600 plus applications in a week. For a single opening. That’s increased competition for jobs.

Had a strong person contacted us before we ran the ad, they could have secured the position prior to running in to all that competition. How? By finding an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew 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 careful to check your application materials thoroughly before submitting them. 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 manager would. By passing over resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us grounds 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 prospects who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the great news is that job boards give you a feel of who is hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, 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 easily you can be looked up on the internet. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some pictures and comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to tilt our thoughts about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a broad 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!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 9:28 pm and is filed under Life Of Management, Marketing Hall, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.