When I talk with new clients, one thing I almost always hear in our first conversation is that they have been sending out countless resumes over the internet with nearly zero response from potential employers.
The internet can be a successful way to find jobs, but if you do it wrong, you can find yourself feeling burned-out and anxious from hours of surfing, sending and waiting.
Here are four powerful tips to get your internet job search activity running smoothly and easily with great results.
Tip #1: Use a Job Aggregator and Set Up Email Alerts
This single tip is worth its weight in gold. Using a job aggregator (a beta search engine) works just like Google. You type in what you are looking for and where you would like to find it, and it returns results from major and minor job boards, associations and companies. My favorite is indeed.com. When you set up daily email alerts you cut out all that wasted time surfing around for jobs. Now you simply have your coffee in the morning, quickly scroll through the open positions, save what you want, ditch the rest and you are done!
Tip #2: Don’t Just Use the Internet to Search for Jobs
To truly be committed to making your next career move a really good one, you must honor that commitment by using other, non-traditional methods to look for jobs. I prefer tapping into the 80% of the job market that isn’t advertised. By doing this, you can quickly identify your target market, best companies and associations to contact, land more interviews, and get bigger offers.
Tapping into the hidden job market works because positions that have yet to be advertised are generally more creative and flexible in terms of salary range and what the company is looking for. The hiring process in general is also strikingly easier and more informal than the typical rigid HR process entails.
If you want more in-depth instruction, be on the lookout for an upcoming invitation to my new Career Power Strategy Sessions coaching call on “How To Tap Into the Hidden Job Market” (of course, you have to be on my mailing list to receive it)! To get you started now, here is a quick tip: you can begin searching the hidden job market by using Google Maps to find companies in your geographic location and industry and Google News Alerts to track growing companies in your industry.
Tip #3: Delete Your Other Job Board Email Alerts
If you have been jumping from board to board setting up email alerts and accounts, now is the time to delete (yes delete) all of them. This will eliminate much of the overwhelm (and lots of junk advertisements) that has been filling your email in box. Replace it with an elegant and powerful job aggregator that you can easily set up email alerts with, and brand new positions that are matches for you will be delivered to your email inbox daily.
Tip #4: Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Network
Grow your network of recruiters and key decision makers in your industry of interest through LinkedIn! This is something you can do by finding and reaching out to these people through LinkedIn’s search box or your groups. If you are connected and they are looking for people like you, you will show up in their top search results!
And one last small tip: I recommend spending no more than 30 minutes each day reviewing jobs on the internet. Yes, you may find your next dream job from the internet, but creating a plan to use 2 or 3 other techniques for landing the job you really want will serve you much better than the small 1 to 4% response rate internet jobs generally yield from electronic job boards.
