In this article (Why Networking is Overrated), Marty Nemko advises job hunters to focus on creating a winning “application” rather than networking for a gig.
“If you don’t have a great network and dislike schmoozing, you’ll land a job faster if you devote most of your job search time to writing top-of-the-pile applications for well-suited job openings.” (Kiplinger)
It’s as if he had never heard of Applicant Tracking Systems (which tend to strip out cover letters) or EEO Regulations. Nemko advises the development of a cover letter. The idea is nice but ineffective in today’s market.
Then, he suggests:
“If you make a good first impression and can think on your feet, in addition to answering ads, contact employers who are not advertising a job opening. Make a list of 25 employers you’d like to work for, and phone or send each an email…” (Kiplingers)
Or, what we commonly think of as , um, networking.
Job hunters are routinely fed a constant stream of this sort of contradictory crap. Imagine…an article called “Why Networking Is Overrated” that recommends a half-a$$ed form of networking.
People rarely get jobs from job boards. A job board is a lead generation engine for job hunters, not a magic slot machine. Information submitted to a job board ends up in Resume Databases around the globe. The decision to investigate a resume is made after there are enough responses to ensure apples to apples comparisons.
The best strategy for finding a job is:
- Figure out what you want to do
- Figure out where you want to work
- Find out who works there
- Figure out how to get to know them
- Get to know them
- Understand what will make them successful
- Propose things to help them be successful
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm
It’s funny. I read what you’re saying, nod my head in agreement, and yet…. I got what was probably the second most-important job of my career off a job board, and had a couple offers from that experience that were better than anything I found through TPRs or networking, and I had a half-decent network. More recently, I’ve hired my entire client service team off Craigslist, and have been very happy with the results, and even got a C-level hire out of a job board resume database, the sort of person for whom I’d have happily paid a TPR a hefty fee.
Now maybe I’m just the guy who survived the car crash because I *wasn’t* wearing the seatbelt–the proper term for which is “dumb luck.” But I also get to see thousands of recruiters hire candidates from job boards all the time. I’ve also spent $300 to post a really exciting, creative job description on an uber-targeted super-popular special-interest site, and got absolutely atrocious results. Do I wish I posted it on Monster or Dice instead? Well, the results couldn’t have been much worse, though I suppose a hundred bad candidates are less useful than absolutely none. This was after networking had produced not enough results.
Of course, the seven steps you propose are excellent, and probably triply valid for someone trying to ascend within an organization. I do think 6 and 7 though will be opaque to a lot of people. It’s sort of like when a chronically-single person asks a friend for advice on how to improve their dating life, and the friend says, “just be yourself!”
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Oh, and I _love_ cover letters. I actually read them before reading the resume, and we built our ATS to preserve what the candidate sent in for that reason.