I thought I’d share a horror story with you that’s closer to your career than you think. More times than not, job seekers tell me their main job seeking strategy is to search the major online job boards for open positions. Most find jobs and companies they’re suited, sometimes perfect for. They take care to fill out an online application which is, for those of you who’ve done it, the equivalent of being cyber-waterboarded. Unfortunately, even premium job board services like The Ladders send you to a hiring company’s website and the online application process begins. After a significant amount of time is spent saving and uploading and entering information, the SUBMIT button is pushed and the waiting game begins.
*Insert cricket sound here.*
Most job seekers don’t understand what happens after their resume is sent off into cyber space. Unfortunately, over 80% of the people I talk to use online job boards as their main tool of job seeking, and around 90% of those people either rarely or never hear anything after they submit their resume.
Companies that use online applications do so for several reasons. First, and most importantly, they use recruiting software that manages the intake of resumes and applicants. This is more cost effective than having a live person manage every resume that comes in. Which brings me to my next point – there isn’t a live person that receives your resume when you fill out an online app. And that leads to the next point – there is not a live person looking at your resume after you send it in. What happens is that the information you load via your resume and the online application gets housed in a database, an online folder if you will.
The recruiter or hiring manager, runs a query based on keywords they established for the open position when they posted the job. Those resumes that hit the keywords most frequently are contacted for the job. Those who don’t are “deselected” and never hear another word. Recruiting software is also used to provide auto-responses, i.e. “thanks for your application, if you are a skill match we’ll call you…” It provides tracking of applicants for legal reporting reasons and tons of statistics for in-house use, like cost of hire and time it takes to fill a position. The bottom line is that rarely does a resume get into the hands of an actual person, which is why you never hear anything.
There has been much ado about candidates cold-calling on recruiters and hiring managers, particularly in this crazy job market. I, personally, think it’s imperative to get your resume in the hands of a live person if you’re going to actually get the job ball rolling. So, my solution is to make sure you get a contact name along with completing the online application. Unfortunately, many times, the screening process won’t begin unless you’ve completed the online application process. The good news is that’s not the only tool you have.
Call the company’s general number and talk to the receptionist. Ask for the name and the contact information, email, phone and fax, of the person in charge of the engineering department, if you’re applying to be an engineer. If they won’t give that information out, ask for the name of the Human Resources Leader. If the company has an automatic phone answering system, punch in an extension until you get a live person and begin the process of getting a name and contact information. Sometimes it’s a lot of work to get an actual contact, but aren’t all things worth having worth it? I always say – it’s a full time job finding a full time job. You have to put the work in to get the benefit out, particularly in a sluggish economy.
In closing, doing what it takes to ensure your resume is viewed by eyeballs and not sitting in a database somewhere is a critical key to starting a dialogue with a hiring company. There are 100 applicants for every job posted on an online job board. Let the other 99 people get sucked into the black abyss while you reap the benefits of putting a little elbow grease into your job search!
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