Successful Job Searching Strategies
By Simon Erlich
This article provides you with tips on how to make your job search more efficient and effective.
When searching for a job, do you spend hours scrolling through job posting websites and firing off your resume off to as many postings as possible? If this sounds like you, you might want to consider booking an appointment with a career adviser ASAP. Otherwise, keep on reading below and consider also exploring our blog post on how to write a successful resume.
So How Do People Get Jobs?
If the answer to job seeking is not to search the internet sending out resumes, how does one do it? Good question. First, we need to put the shoe on the other foot and consider how employers prefer to hire. The graphic below illustrates this nicely.
Why, you might ask, do employers hire this way? Let’s discuss. Hiring employees takes up a tremendous amount of an organization’s time and resources: new positions must be scoped, job descriptions written, postings advertised, applications reviewed, interviews scheduled, interviews conducted, candidates considered, offers sent out, and new staff trained. Now imagine all of this work could be avoided, thus giving employees more time to focus on growing the business?
Well, it can be. See the base of the pyramid. The time commitment of a hiring process is one of the main reasons employers prefer to hire internally; when hiring internally employers know exactly what they are getting in a candidate. This is not only a good business decision, it is also human nature. For example, when you go away and you need someone to look after your baby, your pet, or your house, who do you go to first? Someone you know and feel confident in, of course. There exists an important level of trust that comes with preexisting relationships. This trust is as crucial in finding a pet sitter as it is in finding an employee.
Of course, if you are reading this article you are unlikely to already be working for an organization and eligible for internal positions. So, we encourage you to work your way up the pyramid and do the next best thing(s).
From our previous discussion, we can clarify our job searching goal: You are trying to situate yourself as someone an employer can be confident in. Since you probably do not have direct connections with tonnes of employers, you need to create other opportunities for them tobe confident in you. As per our pyramid, this means you need to establish relationships and connections that can both vouch for your skills and abilities as well as connect you with colleagues and job openings. If you cannot get to know an employer personally to build trust, building a relationship with someone that the employer trusts is the next best thing. Here is a playful example of how this scenario unfolds:
Employer, Bill, is talking to his golf buddy, John, on the golf course.
“Hey John, we have been playing golf for 10 years now and you are a friend I respect and trust. I have a question for you.” Bill says.
“Sure, go ahead.” Replies John.
Bill goes on, “So I just had one of my IT specialists quit yesterday and it was right in the midst of our website redevelopment process. I do not really have the time to set up a whole hiring process. Didn’t you say a while back that you knew some people in IT?” says Bill.
John replies, “Ya, I know a few folks that I play trivia with on Wednesday nights. They are great people, you would get a long with them well. I think one of them, Sarah, is looking for a job.”
Excitedly, Bill says, “Really? That sounds great. If Sarah is interested, can you pass along my phone number and ask her to call me on Monday about the position? I would really like to hire for this position fast, but also want to ensure it is someone who fill fit in. If you say Sarah would fit in, I think this could be a great fit!”
This scenario depicts the all so commonly occurring referral. In this scenario, you want to be Sarah. Sarah has a professional network and has let them know she is job searching.
Okay, so what is my point?
Having a network of people that can vouch for you, or at least connect you to uneasy to find job opportunities, is a far more effective job seeking strategy than throwing your resume into the internet abyss and hoping it is the last one left on the desk of a hiring manager. This scenario encapsulates the job seeking strategies from our pyramid just above internal promotions and it is where you should be investing the majority of your job searching time and energy.
Conclusion
So, now you know there is a better way to go about your next job search. However, there is still much more to job searching than simply building a professional network. If you now think it might be helpful to have some professional guidance in figuring out how to successfully find a job, consider booking an advising session. See what we can do for you.