As Executive Search Consultants, we are tasked by our client companies to provide talent for positions that they are having difficulty in filling. Our job entails a great deal of research and consultative effort to find the right match for our clients.
We’re also frequently contacted by job seekers looking for opportunities, and while we’re always happy to hear from talented people, by necessity our time and energy is primarily focused on our clients’ needs. In an effort to help job seekers, we’ve come up with a short list of (hopefully helpful) tips that may assist maximize their own efforts to find a great role.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting these tips on our blog as part of an ongoing series. Here now are parts 5 and 6…
#5 – Be ‘findable’
Having some sort of digital footprint of your work and experience is extremely important, especially if you are seeking opportunities in technology or digitally focused companies (obviously). Perhaps the easiest, most recognizable way to create a digital footprint is to put up a profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an excellent tool that has become a valuable asset to both job seekers and employers alike. While it’s not perfect and not a complete solution it does allow the opportunity for job seekers to directly contact and be contacted by potential employers. There’s a wealth of information about how to maximize your LI profile, so we won’t restate it, but will say that the rule of specifics applies here as well. While your Linked In profile isn’t a substitute for a resume, the more detail you provide as to your experience the more likely you are to be found be someone looking for that experience. And LI allows you to attach your resume as well as other data files that can help put you best foot forward to a potential hiring manager or opportunity. One LI tip: regardless of whether you are an active job seeker or a passive one, including a personal email address where you can be reached outside of the Linked In community can pay very real dividends in terms of contacts.
There are additional ways of being found online as well. Facebook can be potentially helpful depending on your level of experience (although it skews more towards the personal rather than professional) and Twitter has its benefits as well; having an active Twitter account is extremely important for anyone seeking a position where social media and/or marketing play a significant role in the job. Another option is to create an about.me profile. While relatively finite in terms of content, it allows you to place links to all of your online profiles as well as peripheral content (press releases where you are mentioned or articles you have published, etc.).
One of the best ways to be found online is to blog about your area of expertise or your thoughts on your industry. This will enable you to comment at length about your views regarding current events, new technologies, etc. and will further enhance your online presence as well as give prospective employers a deeper understanding of your thought process as it pertains to your subject matter. This can be of tremendous value beyond a simple resume or online profile, and of course you can link between profiles and your blog to make the most of SEO technology and make you more ‘findable’.
But most definitely…
#6 – Put yourself in the shoes of the hiring manager/recruiter
Hiring managers and recruiters/executive search consultants and all the rest of the team members who are involved in the hiring decision are people just like you. The open role might be a result of new growth or a replacement for another talent; it may represent a challenge or an opportunity to the company. Whatever the reason for the opening, those team members want that role filled so their company can move forward. As much as you may be frustrated being on the outside, there are frustrations internally as well. The most frequent complaint that we hear from clients when they can’t fill a role is that the people who are applying lack some or most of the basic fundamental requirements for the open position (more on that below).
Hiring is most definitely a two-way street – the opportunity you are seeking has to make sense for the job seeker as much as it makes sense for the prospective employer. So the suggestion to put yourself in the place of the hiring manager/recruiter/first contact is about how you present yourself best foot forward for consideration.
So ask yourself: Why are you a good match for the open position? (Explain it). What in your career path/experience provides their company with a crucial acuity they lacked in the past? (Demonstrate it). Can you directly align your experience to what the employer is seeking? (Show them). Would you hire you for this position? (Tell them why). If you can’t succinctly and definitively answer those questions, it may be that the role you are interested in isn’t quite the match you were hoping. And while there’s always a chance that you’ll get a response, more often than not you’ll be setting yourself up for frustration.