Companies are hiring–are you getting interviews? If not, you may be doing one of these things that will slow your job search down to a crawl:
1) Have a Boring Resume
You do not need a resume on pink paper or with fancy fonts or graphs…but you DO need a resume that markets you, with bullet points and quantification. If your resume is full of paragraphs with no numbers in sight except for the dates of your employment, then it needs a little spiffing up. Break up your accomplishments into bullet points and quantify them. Add numbers, dollars, and percentages that describe what you did to make something better in your last role.
A lot of people get bogged down in this, thinking they have no way to quantify if they weren’t in sales…but everyone can quantify. Nurses can talk about how many patients they saw. Teachers can talk about how many students they had and what percentage passed the state test. Accountants can mention what budgets or dollar amounts they managed. Everyone has something measurable they can talk about.
Read more about how to quantify a resume here.
2) Use a ‘Form’ Cover Letter
Who doesn’t hate writing cover letters? They’re hard to write and we’re not sure that employers read them, which is why too many of us grab a template online and fill in the details.
The problem is, this results in a letter that’s too generic, too long, and too hard to read–so it can absolutely keep you from getting an interview.
The solution? Use the same strategy you use with your resume…use bullet points and quantification in the body of your letter.
It’s worth taking the time to write a great letter. Employers do read them, and they will be positively influenced toward you before they see your resume.
3) Applying Online
Applying online is the biggest thing that will slow your job search down…those online applications go into company databases with thousands of other applications. The process screens out dozens of qualified candidates who may be a little older, may not have the exact experience (but could still do the job), or may just not have the correct verbiage on the resume. There are all kinds of reasons this happens.
What do you do instead? You contact the hiring manager directly and introduce yourself. Not only does this get your foot in the door, it uncovers hidden jobs and puts you in the front of the line for them. (Read about how to find hidden jobs.) People who do this get more interviews.
This does buck the system–but as I tell job seekers, the system isn’t getting you interviews. I personally know job seekers who applied to a company through an online application and got no response, but later got hired because they contacted the hiring manager. The hiring manager didn’t know they had applied before–yet they were thrilled to hire them. Others have uncovered jobs that no one else knew about yet, and still others have had jobs created for them. Great things can happen if you take the initiative to contact hiring managers directly.
I have a couple of webinars where I teach more about this process of contacting hiring managers. Watch one now: job search training webinar.