Today, in the employment world under the Obama administration, the job market is tender as employers await new federal regulations and mandates coming from the government. If however, one is without a job, there is a great deal of pressure in being able to meet basic expenses. The approach to getting a job nowadays requires far more effort and originality than ever before.
Internet Job Sites, Resume Writing and Employment Listings
The new way of finding jobs through the internet results in a crowded field where everyone is straining to obtain the attention of the personnel department. The real problem in this whole matrix of employment sites is that most companies posting jobs that are large enough to have a real personnel department also utilize resume screening software. Unless one’s resume is optimized with appropriate keywords relating to a specific job opening, the resume submission never makes it onto the screens of the hiring managers.
There used to an interesting series of commercials that depicted the hiring process as one in which thousands or tens of thousand of candidates are running onto a football playing field in order to attract the attention of employers. The point of the ad was that unless one was so differentiated and used the "right" web site, they would only be just another face in a mob. In reality, all of the web sites nowadays: the good, the bad and the ugly, provide no real differentiation among job seekers.
U.S. Postal Service to the Rescue
While this writer is no fan of the post office, the fact is, that a resume in written form sent directly to a specific hiring manager, i.e., one who actually has a need for an employee, will find its way onto the desk more readily than any one of the thousands of internet resume submissions. Therefore, the first rule in the new reality of the current economy is to send a personal letter and resume directly to someone who may actually have a need for a particular skill set. Now of course, one has to balance the fact that it takes more effort to mail a resume than to e-mail a resume.
The advantage is that if one does his or her homework correctly, that person’s resume and cover letter is far more likely to end up in front of the hiring manager, allowing one to interview for a job. There is also caveat to all of the efforts one expends utilizing either e-mail or snail mail: many times the posting of a job is nothing more than a formality that a hiring manager does after he has already decided on a particular candidate. Further, it is often said that posted jobs only represent 10%-20% of the actual job opening that may exist in industry and if one is an older worker, the chances are markedly lower that they would be even considered for a job.
Job Requirements Versus Blind Resume Submissions
As stated above, many of the job for which people apply have already been taken. However, there is a huge number of jobs that probably could be filled by a company, if they were aware of available talent. Also, jobs may be available long before they are posted. With this in mind, often a candidate can merely send a resume and letter to a specific hiring manager indicating his or her interest in working for that company.
Now the key is that a job seeker should have the name of a specific person in whatever field or specialty area the job seeker has a background and interest. Blindly sending a resume to a company without a specific name within a functional departmental area will insure that the job seeker's resume is routed to the personnel office. The subtext here is: the "dead letter" office. It is a waste of effort and the money spent on postage.
If you, as a potential employee, do your homework well and send a resume to a current functional manager in a corporation, the probability is far greater that the resume will actually be read and considered. Certainly, the way electronic communications are nowadays, the chances of one's electronic resume submission actually winding up onto the desk of a hiring manager is infinitely less than the former method.
Nick Schklair - Nick Schklair, author, writer and business consultant has published a work on business startups in today's economy.
