If you have found yourself among the ranks of the millions of Americans currently unemployed, you would know how competitive finding a job can be. The financial crisis that gripped the world starting in late 2008 is still continuing to ravage employment levels the world over. Unemployment is stranded at a high level in the U.S. and many other countries for several years now. With that said, people are still being hired. People are still getting employment and establishing a future for them. Regardless of whether they were just laid off from a previous employment, switched careers, or recent graduated, people are still able to get employment. The only difference is there are more people applying for a smaller pool of jobs. There is more competition now for jobs and you have to be prepared for this reality.
Thankfully, finding a job has become much easier using the internet. By “easier” we do not mean that your chances have improved. What we mean by easier is that it is easier to get leads. Getting a job still boils down to one person and that person is you. You still have to qualify for the job, you still have to impress the person interviewing you, and you still have to have the skills and the attitude to bring it all together and make the job work out. Use these steps to help you find a job online and establish a clear system for gaining meaningful employment.
Honest but Open-minded Self-Assessment is Crucial
Self-assessment is crucial. When you are looking for work, you are really selling a package or a product and that product is yourself. You are selling your skills, experience, and potential. In essence, you are recruiting potential partners to help them help you add value to their organization. If this is not how you look at finding work, given the tough job market nowadays, this should be your mindset. It is all about adding value. You should think of being not just an employee for an organization, but also an active partner or contributor to that organization. At the end of the day, you are adding value through your current skills and your potential to the organization. If the resume reviewer and/or interviewer do not see this, you do not get a job. That is the bottom line. This is the winning mindset for getting a job. All other mindsets are spotty at best and do not lead to consistent results. Make this your mindset.
With this mindset firmly in place, assess your skills. What skills do you bring to the table?
That is the bottom line question that the person reviewing your resume will be thinking about and that is what you should be thinking about as well. Make a list of the skills that you have gathered from your job experience. Do not focus on narrow training. For example, if you work as a mail clerk at a large company, your first instinct would be to say that you were sorting and routing mail, you were delivering communications, and that kind of thing. That is too narrow. You should look at not just the actual job description that you had, but also what larger skills you learned. Taking the mail clerk experience, it means facilitating communication. It means prioritizing delivery lists and/or creating delivery plans. Look at your job description as the beginning stage of your skills assessment, but do not end there. Look at the specific related skills that this job taught you. Did it help you become a better communicator? How did it do that? What was achieved? How constant was that and what did that lead to? Did this job involve some sort of planning? What kind of planning skills were involved? What did it lead to? What did it build up to? Think along these lines. Just because you have a “menial or lowly” job title, it does not mean that your skill set needs to be restricted and low level as well. Most jobs teach people interpersonal skills, time management skills, project management skills and a whole host of important skill categories that employers need. Think in terms of a big picture. Do not lie, do not exaggerate and do not embellish. Doing so would be fatal to your application. However, be very analytical and see which skill sets apply to your particular job task and your job experience.
The same analysis should be applied to education
Just because you majored in a seemingly restrictive or focused major, for example nursing, does not mean that your skill set collection is also narrow. If you drew your skill set description too closely to your major, you would only be qualified for small set of jobs. You are basically cutting yourself out from the large job market. Look at your education and look at particular classes, collection of classes that you took, and what skill sets were involved for those classes. For example, if you majored in History, historian jobs are quite few and far between. A job as a historian is not the only thing a History degree prepares you for. Again, you have to look at the big picture. Humanities, social sciences and social studies courses like history, comparative literature or American literature and other courses all share common skill sets like critical analysis, critical thinking, comparative analysis, research skills and a whole host of analysis-related skill sets. Your job, when looking for employment, is to look at your degree, look at the classes you took and break them down into skill sets that you are confident that you learned from those courses and optimally help you with a prior job experience. If you are fresh out of college and you do not have any previous experience, see if this skill sets helped you in your internship or your volunteer work or community service work. If you do not have that type of experience, try to see if any of these skills you actively use on your personal time so that an employer can see based on solid evidence that you can give them that you truly learned these skill sets.
Find the range of jobs and job descriptions that your skill sets can fit in
This is a crucial stage in our analysis. During self-assessment, it is very easy to pigeon hole yourself into thinking that whatever your degree in school was narrowly restricts your employment prospects or career opportunities. That is a fatal mistake. You have to look strongly at skill sets because if you can sell these skill sets and they fit the needs of your employer, you will get a job. That is the good news that many people ignore or overlook during this time of job shortages. The first thing you should do is you should look at your skill sets and study them and look at the job descriptions of a career path that you are interested in or jobs that are abundant in that particular geographic area you are interested in. See if you can fit the skills that you have with these job descriptions. If you cannot and you truly want to go into that direction, you can always volunteer or go into a special training program for that particular career. The key is to create some sort of fit and not limit yourself to a very narrow job title or job classification. This would greatly help you once you are starting to compile a job lead list.
The next step for self-assessment for employment is assessing your mobility
Make sure that you are not putting geographic barriers between you and employment. Figure out what is the farthest you would move to get a job. This would really help you when you are looking for job leads over the internet because most job leads are listed by geographic region. First you start off with your current location and then you branch out into cities to determine which cities near your current location that you can move to and then regions within your state and then which neighboring states or far-flung states you are willing to move to. The key here is the wider the net you cast, the higher the chance that you would get a job. It is really a numbers game and what boosts the number of your job leads is geographic sensitivity. If you are willing to pack up and go wherever there is a job, your chances are higher than a person who is very specific regarding geographic preferences.
Compile a Long Job Lead List
As mentioned above, finding a job online really boils down to a numbers game. The more jobs that you apply for, the higher the chance that you might get employed. You must make it a priority to compile a very long list of job leads. Follow these tips to help you compile the most comprehensive job list you can get a hold of. The first stop is the job sites. There are numerous job sites on the internet such as monster.com, hotjobs.com and many other job sites. They come in differing classes and categories, but they all boil down to large national job sites and specific job sites. What you should do is first hit the large job sites like monster.com. The downside with these websites, although they do have a lot of listings, is they also have a lot of people trawling through their listings. You have more competition there, but still they are your first stop in getting your feet wet with finding a job online. Get the leads from there. Just because there is a lot of competition does not mean that you are automatically shut out of the process. You just might still be able to get a job. The key is just to pad your numbers and get as many job leads as possible on your list.
The next step is to go to specific company websites and look for their corporate hiring page
There are many companies that do not advertise on large job sites like monster.com and just post their job offerings on their own corporate sites. Create a huge list of companies that are in the industry that you are interested in. Find their official websites using Google and just hit all their corporate pages. There may be some gems there. The great thing about this approach is you have less competition. Most people looking for jobs online just hit the large job sites and stop there. Go the extra mile and reap the extra reward. Go to where your competition is not going. This greatly increases your competitive advantage when trying to find a job online. Another direction you could take is also looking for smaller job sites. There are many huge job sites like monster.com, but there are even smaller job sites that do not get much traffic that have very few listings. Do not consider them all worthless. The key here is as long as the job advertisement is up to date, it is a valid lead. Hit as many of these smaller job sites as you can. Just keep in mind to hit only websites that update frequently. You do not want old job advertisements.
Job leads through industry association websites
A great way to get a competitive advantage is to look for job leads through industry association websites. Most industries have industry associations, so figure out the largest associates for that particular industry you want to work in, find their official websites and contact them via the contact page or e-mail. Try to network with them to figure out which companies are hiring or if there is some specialized training assuming that you do not have a background in that industry. Regardless of what you are looking for, make sure to hit the association websites because your competition most likely is not and this gives you such a tremendous leg up against other job seekers. Put in some time to doing this and this might yield some gems for you.
Do not forget classified ad sites like craigslist.org
Craigslist is great for finding local jobs, but they have a huge network that covers not just the United States but also many countries all over the world. Use Craigslist to find job ads. Also use classified ad websites like Craigslist not just to find full-time jobs but also part-time or trainee jobs or internships. If you are a fresh graduate and you do not have any experience or you are trying to shift from one industry to another, do not be turned off by internships. The sad reality is most employers are looking for experienced people. Internships and part-time jobs are priceless in getting you experience. Do not look down on them and look at them for what they are–opportunities to help you get to where you need to go. Craigslist is great and similar classified ads sites are great for finding part time, internship or volunteer jobs. Just because they do not pay or they pay less does not mean you should ignore them. Every step on that road to the career industry you are passionate about is a victory. Use these classified ads resources to get that smaller or internship or unpaid job to get you on your way.
Hit all Geographic regions with your job description
Finally, when it comes to compiling job lead list, we cannot emphasize it enough to hit all the geographic regions that have that particular job description or job classification you are looking for. It all boils down to a numbers game. The more job leads that are on your list, the higher is the chance that you might get hired. Nothing boosts your list size more than expanding your geographic preference. If you have no problems with moving across town, moving to another city within your state, moving to another region in your state, moving to another state, or moving to another country, your chances are much higher than people who are locked to a specific geographic area. The truth of the matter is most of your competition are locked geographically. Most people cannot just get up and sell their home to move to their new place of employment. This is a great competitive advantage and mobility is key. Also certain industries and certain job classifications favor people who have shown great mobility. Sales jobs, advertising representative jobs and consulting jobs to take just a few, view mobility very favorably.
Applying Online Requires a System
Applying for a job online is not just a simple matter of responding to an e-mail, attaching your resume and clicking “submit.” If you want to get hired, you have to take more effort than merely blasting your resume out. Use these following tips to turn your resume and the application process into competitive advantages. The truth of the matter is most of your competition do the basic online job application steps described above precisely. They just find a listing, write a very generic e‑mail and then they attach their resume. The good news is most of the people applying this way get rejected. Human resources departments do not even consciously reject them. They are automatically rejected because their e-mails are formatted wrong or the application was just routed wrong.
Use these systemic weeding features to your advantage. How?
The first step is to customize your resume to each job you are applying to. Your resume is selling a very important product–you. You should refocus your skills descriptions based specifically on the job that you are applying for. What are the skill sets that they need? What is the organization trying to have you accomplish if you were an employee? Knowing this information, repackage your skill sets in such a way that it highlights your value proposition to your prospective employer. If the job requires heavy analytical skills, highlight the critical thinking analysis, research and critical coordination skills you learned from your school work or your previous employment. Human resource departments look at each applicant as a potential team member. What do they bring to the table? Your resume must clearly spell out your value proposition or it goes straight to the trash can or a computer’s recycle bin. When customizing each resume, focus on your specific achievements at school or at work. What projects did you complete? What projects did you participate in? What skill sets were involved? Again, you have to make your resume scream out that you have a particular skill set that the job you are applying for requires. Do not let the resume screener do any detective work. Spell it out for them. Make the connection leap out. These people are overworked. They have to process dozens, if not hundreds, of applications in a short period of time. Make it easy for them. Draw a strong connection between your experience, your skill sets and what they are looking for. Again, it all boils down to salesmanship. Make your resume sell you and sell you hard.
Once you have customized each resume and cover letter or cover e-mail message to each particular job you are applying for, submit but do not forget to follow up. Following up gives you a competitive advantage over other job seekers because most job seekers just send out a massive blast of e-mails with resume attachments and never follow up. When you follow up, it might mean the difference between your application going straight to the recycle bin or being pulled from the archive and being reviewed. Following up also tells the organization you are applying to that you are serious, diligent and persistent. These three values are desired by most organizations the world over. They are not just looking for hard workers that know how to do something, they are also looking for people that continue pursuing a project and engaging in a project until it is completed. Follow through is quite rare nowadays and if you show the ability to follow through to your prospective employer, you definitely get a competitive advantage. When following up, it makes sense to have a system so create a Microsoft Excel file where you track the places where you are applying to and you list the dates that you called up or e‑mailed following up on your application. This helps you get a big picture of the jobs that you have applied to, the progress that you are making and the areas that you need to focus on.
The Bottom Line
There are no two ways about it. We are in a very tough economy right now and there is a lot of competition for jobs. For certain industries, there are even job shortages. Do not pigeon hole yourself into a particular job description or job classification. Look at your skill sets in broad terms because you will see that these skill sets apply to differing industries and differing job classifications as well. With this broad view, compile as big of a list of job leads as you can using the internet and when applying online, be very systematic and customize your application. Shot gut approaches do not work. Take rifle shots instead. The more time you put in to looking for a job, the higher is the chance that you will get a job. Turn looking for job into a job. Get serious, get focused, and get the results you deserve.
