Effective Job Searches

There is a great cautionary tale with a happy ending over on the US News Blogs (http://www.usnews.com/blogs/the-inside-job/2008/09/23/why-google-might-be-killing-your-job-search.html) about a strong job candidate who would get to the final rounds of hiring and repeatedly get passed over. There are two things to learn from this: evaluating your results, and checking your online reputation.

Evaluating Results: “Josh” was getting to the final rounds of hiring, and knew that he was a strong candidate, but kept being passed over. He was dropped without good explanation. Rather than continuing down the same path, Josh realized that something must be wrong with how he was conducting his search. When he could not figure it out himself, he asked for outside help.

Periodically you need to review your effort and progress in all parts of your search. If you are sending out lots of resumes but never getting called, your resume is not doing its job. If you are networking, but not finding opportunities, your networking skills may need an overhaul.

Salespeople talk about a sales funnel: you need a certain number of calls to generate a meeting, a certain number of meetings to generate a sale, etc. Look at your search the same way and make sure that you are getting through the stages of your search often enough to be successful.

Online Reputation: This is covered in many online articles, but it is worth repeating. Josh had a problem with ex-employees ruining his online reputation. Your name may resemble someone else’s enough that you are hurt by their online activities. Check the things that you do online, but also try to find your name the way someone else might: through Google, or LinkedIn, or Facebook, or Spock, or any one of a number of other sites. They may be finding someone that isn’t you.