Without question, the biggest challenge I hear about from the people I lead and coach, is how difficult it has become to stand out from the massive crowds of people applying for every job. How to find a job? Well, the internet, frankly, has made it a lot harder. It has just become way too easy to apply for jobs in high volumes now, and we need job search strategies that can help us stand out from the crowd and gain direct access to more hiring managers.
25 years ago you had to actually mail in your resume or physically walk into a place to apply for a job. In that world, you just didn’t have the time to apply for many roles so you had to make sure the ones you did apply for were really well suited to your skills and aspirations. That made it easier for everyone – we self-selected to a great extent. There was less of a need to develop sophisticated job search strategies.
I think it also made things easier for employers because the people applying for roles really wanted the jobs they were going for and truly believed they had the qualifications to be successful. So there were fewer total applicants per job and each candidate was a better fit on average. Even 10 years ago, before LinkedIn, and continuous streams of job postings on twitter, tik tok and everywhere else, you were still somewhat limited to the number of jobs you could apply to by how many emails you could send.
But now, as we sit here today, things have completely gone off the rails.
Here’s a quick story to illustrate just how crazy things have become.
I interviewed a guy a year or so ago who dropped some knowledge on me that has been in my mind ever since. In the course of our conversation he explained to me, quite proudly, how he’d figured out the magic formula for the job search. During the month long period he’d been looking for work he’d refined his job search process down to a science. In 30 days he had applied for 1,000 jobs to get 20 phone interviews which lead to 5 in person interviews and ultimately 1 job offer.
1,000 applications!!?? In a month!
This is the ultimate example of the environment you’re now competing in. You’re up against job seeking super bots who are playing an almost incomprehensible numbers game to find work.
How are you supposed to win in this environment?
And just in case you’re saying to yourself … “well, this sounds like an extreme example – I’m sure it’s not that bad …” Just check some random job postings on LinkedIn and you’ll see 400 and 500 applicants for every role. It’s crazy.
How supposed to stand out in a pile of 450 resumes? (Check out my blog post on this subject)
How are you supposed to match the pace of other people applying for 1,000 jobs every month?
Even if you wanted to – Do you have the time or ability or access to the tools to play this numbers game?
How do you separate yourself from the crowd and find work in THE most competitive job market we’ve ever seen?
The biggest hurdle is right up front. Separating yourself from the 449 other people who all applied for the same job. How do you get noticed at all?
If your job search strategy is only applying for jobs by sending an email to one person per job or applying through one channel (e.g. company web site), you’re not maximizing your chances of getting noticed and you’re going to have a hard time getting enough first and second interviews to actually land a job – especially if the job market tightens up.
The most successful job seekers take a multi-channel approach to each job they apply for. They don’t try to play the numbers game but they don’t use conventional tactics either. They actually campaign for the jobs they want. Unlike the numbers game playing super bots, these job seekers apply for fewer total jobs, but apply double or triple the effort for each job they choose to apply for.
In my experience as a hiring manager, this is the best way to compete and win in todays out of control job search market.
A good place to start is with a quick description of the two sources of resumes hiring managers receive. As a hiring manager myself I can boil the resumes I actually get the opportunity to look at into two camps.
The first camp are the resumes I get sent from our recruiting department. These are the HR professionals who sift through the 450 applications that come in from the website and LinkedIn and pick out 10 or 15 unicorn applications for me to review. To successfully make it through this filtering process your resume needs to be perfect and you need to check every single box. It’s extremely difficult to compete this way. My blog post on visual resumes is a good resource for improving your chances of standing out in a giant pile of 449 other resumes.
The second source of resumes that I actually read, and the focus for this blog, come from employees inside the company and former colleagues I’m still connected with in some way. Here’s why this channel is so important – I read 100% of these resumes because they came to me through people I know or work with. As a good corporate citizen and conscientious networker, I feel compelled to give these resumes my attention regardless of quality. If a guy in the IT department who I’ve never met, sends me a resume from his old college roommate for a job I’m hiring for – I read it – every time. This is completely the opposite of the first channel where you have to have a unicorn-like resume to get through the crowd.
Even more importantly, because the resume came to me from a co-worker or former colleague, I more often than not, feel compelled to at least do a phone call or exchange an email with the applicant. That can be huge – it can overcome many of the challenges you face in finding a job. If you can find your way into this group of applications, you never get screened out for not having perfect experiences or the world’s sexiest CV – if you can find some connection to the hiring manager – it doesn’t even need to be good – you give yourself a real shot.
So what can you do tomorrow to start applying the multi-channel application strategy in your own job search strategies? Here are 4 steps I’d recommend you take to circumvent the giant line up of 450 resumes and dramatically improve your chances of getting based the first step.
Rather than sending your resume or application to one person per job posting for 20 different jobs and hoping for the best, apply for 5 jobs and spend 4 times as much effort on each one. This is the optimal strategy for beating your numbers game playing competitors.
Use the company website, your social networks and LinkedIn to get your resume in the hands of 5 different people who work at the company you’re applying to. You will be surprised how easy it is to figure out corporate email addresses or to find some loose social connection to people at these companies.
Once you have names and email addresses for people at the company, send a short note with your resume politely asking if they would mind forwarding your resume to the hiring manager. In my experience you should get about an 80-90% hit rate on these. People like to help.
Repeat this process for each of the jobs you’re applying for. It will take considerably more time than the quick hit, one shot application process, but it will dramatically increase your chances of getting to the first and second interview stage for each role you apply for.
How to find a job? What are the optimal job search strategies? The multi-channel campaign approach to the job search is critical to finding work in today’s hyper competitive environment. Give it a try and let me know in the comments section how it works for you.
