This is part two in a series of blogs I felt compelled to write after hearing story after story from friends and family members about the escalating challenges in the current job search environment. In the first blog I talked about the legions of job-seeking superbots you now have to compete with in every career opportunity you pursue. You may not realize it yet, but your competition are applying for hundreds of jobs using a combination of technology and sweat equity to play the numbers game in hopes of muscling their way into finding work. Seemingly every job posting now has 200, 300, even 500 applicants. The strategy that got you a job three years ago won’t work anymore. It’s a new playing field and it’s getting tougher every year. But rather than lament the situation, we need to change our own game plans and stack the deck back in our favour.
If you haven’t seen it already, check out my blog on how to build the perfect resume. Also check out my resume template for Microsoft Word. Its the one I recently used to beat out a ton of competing candidates to land my dream job.
Get my resume template for Microsoft Word.
There is a pretty standard five step process a typical applicant needs to go through in order to ultimately get a job offer. It helps to look at each step kind of like a level in a video game. Each level requires its own special set of tactics in order to pass. You need a strategy at each stage or you won’t consistently differentiate yourself enough to get the volume of job offers you want.
I have the benefit of interviewing people virtually every week so I’ve seen the best and the worst job search tactics out there. I’ve compiled a set of strategies for each stage of the job search process that I would use if I were looking for work right now – they’re like cheat codes for finding your next career.
In this blog we’ll focus on stage one – how to jump out of the applicant pool. There are two fundamental issues I see job seekers struggle with at this stage. The first is getting your application or resume seen in the first place. A friend of mine recently applied to 10 jobs on LinkedIn and told me several weeks later only 1 of the 10 applications had even been read. How are you supposed to make those numbers work? This is like a baseball player only getting one at-bat per week and expecting to perform – you need a certain minimum number of opportunities at the plate to give yourself a reasonable chance of hitting a homerun. Thankfully there are a couple tactics I’ve seen that will help you get your applications in front of more eyeballs.
The second issue many of us struggle with is how to differentiate our resume in the event it is actually read. To play the baseball metaphor again this is akin to making a good swing when you finally get a pitch to hit. You can’t hit a homerun if you don’t take a homerun swing. A recruiter I trust recently told me she spends about 30 seconds scanning each resume she reads to create the initial pool of applicants to screen. What do you need to do to make your resume stand out in 30 seconds? I’ve got a great tip that is proven to help you stand out in a pile of resumes.
Here are a few tips the will dramatically improve your success at the first stage of the job search funnel. Adopting these tactics will get you further in the job search process and ultimately improve the probability of getting a great job faster.
If you’re only applying for jobs by sending an email to one person or applying through one channel you’re not maximizing your chances of getting noticed. The most successful job seekers take a multi touch approach to campaign for the jobs they want. Here’s a nice summary of that approach by professional resume writer Michael Howard. Rather than sending your resume to one person and hoping for the best, you need to research a variety of people in the company who might have influence on the job you’re pursuing and reach out to all of them. That list might include HR staff, the hiring manager, the department head, potential peers or even junior people in the department. You can use LinkedIn or the corporate web site to get email addresses and phone numbers for a wider number of potential influencers for the role you want.
While the first tip requires a time investment, this next one requires a financial investment – albeit a small one. There are many differing opinions about the value of a premium LinkedIn account but for the purposes of making your applications stand out, I think it’s well worth it. For about $25 a month you gain access to the “Featured Applicant” status (shown in the picture), which makes all your job applications rise to the top of the pile. This is a massive step to getting more eyeballs on your resume and frankly the $25 per month investment, even when times are tight, is worth it if you land a job a week or a month sooner than you otherwise would.
Also known as an infographic resume or graphical resume, the visual resume is woefully underused despite its incredible power to differentiate a candidate from competing applications. Here are some examples of what I’m speaking about. I’ve probably reviewed a hundred resumes this year and maybe one of them was designed with some visual creativity. If a recruiter or hiring manager has only 30 seconds to review your resume, there is NO better way to stand out than to use this type of eye catching, visually compelling resume. Trading in your old word doc, text based resume for one of these will dramatically increase the number of phone screens and first interviews you get. They don’t guarantee you’ll get an offer, but they will get you farther in the process. There are several sites that will guide you through the process of building a visual resume – this article covers the best of them. Even if you don’t pay for a design service, you can create a very simple one like I did using standard office tools. Just by adding some colour, accents and framing around key points, your resume stands out from the crowd.
Give these tips a try and let me know if your job search improves. Next week I’ll be blogging about some sure fire tips to get past a phone screen.
If you missed the first blog in the series check it out here.
