Remember the days when you walked into a business in your neighborhood looking for a job and got hired on the spot? Well, hope you took a picture of that scene, because it is long gone. You may still have some luck if you know a manager or an owner but their hands may be tied by corporate. You may have to go home and apply online. If you have been through this, you already know the frustration of having a thousand resumes out there that you have not had a response to. There are ways around this though and they have proven quite effective. As with any new system there are new ways to beat them.
Follow up
If you are applying to a company that is local for you and they have told you to apply online then be sure you ask them what the store location number is in case they don’t volunteer that information. Also, get the hiring manager’s name. Companies see many candidates looking for a job, so after you fill out the online application, you should go back and follow-up with them – letting them know with a smile that you filled out all the necessary information. You may want to come with a hard-copy of the resume in hand so that you look interested enough.
Career Job Boards
Job boards like Monster and Career Builder do their very best to screen employers who place openings on their system for people looking for a job. Unfortunately, the way they scan resumes using keywords may get you more empty responses that don’t apply to what you are looking for. The jobs boards are full of scams and bad work-from-home jobs that never pan out to anything more than surveys and thousands of offers you will have to fill out to make two bucks. In this case, help yourself and the rest of us out and report them to the job board.
What you can do
You can rectify this situation by having your resume professionally done. Make sure the company you use can create scannable resumes so that you are using the correct keywords and buzzwords for the industry or industries you are looking to work for. In addition, make sure the cover letters have those elements and address the appropriate person hiring for the job you want.
Contact Companies Yourself
You can actually use a job board to contact companies that are listed on those boards yourself. Most of the time, they are temp agencies that hire temporary to permanent. Call them and tell them that you are looking for a job, just applied for a position, and you would appreciate it if you could come in and register. This saves them the energy of seeking you out and they will grab your information from the job board which puts you ahead of everyone else.
Good luck in your job search. As with everything in life, if at first you don’t succeed – try, try, try again!