online job search Archives - Interview Doctor

I attended a panel discussion about recruiting recently. The panel included someone who wrote resumes, someone representing a staffing agency and two company representatives who handle recruiting as their primary task. I was not on the panel so I kept quiet.

I hate to tell candidates what I learned. I hate to be the one to confirm your deepest fears. But I have to. I can’t hold this in any longer.

The company representatives shared how they work. These two folks place ads in the Interwebs, gather resumes and responses in their applicant tracking systems, then they sort through them until they find 5 to 10 candidates that seem to meet the criteria. They forward those resumes to the hiring manager for review and dispose of the remaining resumes.

Yes, they said that! Not just one. These panelists are well respected enough to be asked to be on a panel. They were unapologetic, unembarrassed and matter of fact.

I never wanted to truly believe this was true. But both of these panelists confirmed it. They were busy and had no time to review all the responses. They stopped reviewing resumes when they found the first few that seemed good.

I have so much to say about this I am not sure where to start.

HR people: If you do this you should be ashamed. No wonder colleagues outside of HR go around you. This kind of “service” is not helping. I don’t care how much you have to do. If you are recruiting you are responsible for finding top talent to help your organization grow and achieve objectives. No amount of paperwork is more important than this top strategic responsibility. Figure out how to rearrange your day so you can review all the resumes and make a sound selection.
Hiring managers: Be aware that you are NOT getting the best talent you can get if you are getting only the first few people who meet the requirements. Aren’t you a tiny bit curious about who got excluded? I suggest you get more involved in the screening process and insist on a thorough search. External recruiters and staffing people are waiting to help. Maybe it is time to outsource the search process to the pros?
Candidates: I am so sorry. I am embarrassed on behalf of my HR colleagues. I did not think it was true. Now that we know this sad situation, all the more reason to avoid the online application process. Go around it. If you feel like you have some extra time and absolutely must, go ahead and submit the application but do not have any confidence that you will necessarily get results. The black hole is real. Conduct a search with a job search marketing plan to find the people and companies interested in hiring people like you. Reach out to people. Make new connections. Network like crazy. Have a lot of coffee. Get your name out there. Anything you do to reach the real people who make decisions is better than sending your resume into that dark hole that is online applications.

We founded The Interview Doctor to help candidates present themselves better so they can find the job they love. I have said many times that even if I can “fix” every candidate, we still have a problem. Companies cannot make the best match unless the managers doing the hiring are able to organize an effective search.

We can help candidates make a better impression and companies organize a better search for the right candidate. Companies: Get help. Maybe we are the 12 step program you need!

Do you agree that knowledge is power? With social media, just be willing to look.

A couple of months ago, my partner Katherine Burik and I wanted to have a presence at a state professional association meeting. Neither of us could attend, so we decided to advertise our Interview Doctor business, and invite participants to connect with us using Twitter. Since that event, attended by 200 professionals, yes, we did connect via Twitter with some of the participants that attended. The real benefits came in learning about the other Twitter-savvy vendors, companies working in our jobs-careers-interviewing service arena. And then, investigating who they are and what they do; it’s taught us a lot more about our marketplace.

Here’s a sampling of the new Twitter connections, with vendors from the conference:

@get_jobLinked: a headhunter group from Montreal Canada, “Headhunters of the New Generation.”
@InterviewIQ: that’s Karalyn Brown, HR person and “the most connected Australian woman on LinkedIn.”
@NewCareerGuru: Holistic Job Search, a web site that offers some basic tips, and uses their site as a search engine conduit for employers and job seekers.
@HR_Missy: HR person, a Michigan fan, who tweets and twitters, now over 1,000 followers; learned from her that you can engage another Twitter person to retweet your favorite tweets.
@JenBest: a one-person resume-writing service.
@VelocityS2: a site that “creates tools for job seekers and employers looking for the perfect talent/company.”

Of these six Twitter sites (15 others not listed here) that posted at the Ohio state HR conference like The Interview Doctor, only one, @HR_Missy, has more followers than our Twitter connection (@interviewdoctor); we’re at 686 followers today. Nearly all of the others were in the 200-300 follower range. This was kind of an eye-opener to me. Our message must be spreading on social media.

How is your message getting out on social media? Do you have a robust LinkedIn profile? Are you connected on Google+ – we hear this is becoming LinkedIn’s biggest professional-jobs-oriented social media competitor. And do not forget Twitter – a lot of information, a lot of resources, and a lot of connections with which to network. What we learned about these companies helps us in our business. What you may learn about companies where you may want to work, and finding out what’s going on in your profession, is available to you.

Here are some suggestions:

Use social media to find out what is going on in your arena, connected to your brand. LinkedIn for sure, maybe look at Google+ and Twitter, too.

Build a social media footprint by connecting with others who have similar professional interests.

Learn a little bit more about your industry every week. How can these sites connect you with opportunities?

Share an opinion – make it helpful – when you have one. Opinions get followed on social media.

Use it to set appointments. Face-to-face, or as I recently heard, belly-button to belly-button, is still the best way to find your next gig.

Are you using Social Media to your advantage? Fifteen minutes a day; that’s all. Gain the knowledge, and learn some very current facts you can use in your search or in your business.