The Executive Resume Rescue Reporter: Company Research

Showing posts with label Company Research. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Internet-Only Job Searches Take 3 Times Longer

Most job seekers I speak with are astounded to learn that only 4% of job seekers who use the Net actually find jobs that way. They'd be even more astounded, then to read the results of a recent job search study by MilitaryJobHunts.

MJH analyzed the results of 600 job searches and found:

In a group of about 400 military job hunters who solely used the Internet as their job search method, the average job hunt was 7.5 months. In a group of about 200 job hunters who used the Internet along with job networking, personal referrals, and job fairs, the average time in a career transition was 2.5 months.

Interesting, right? Now if you're thinking that these results apply to veterans only, think again - all evidence points to agreement with MJH's findings. Those job seekers most likely to find a job online are those seeking technical occupations (computer programmers, LAN/WAN networkers and the like). If you are not seeking such a job, you are better off using the Internet to:

Source new employers to contact
Research companies
Get bio information on key contacts in targeted companies
Expand your network in new directions
Do your own salary research
Pinpoint new key words to use in your self-marketing materials
Update your career brand

Internet job searching is seductive, no doubt about it. Use it strategically, but be careful to avoid allowing the Net to sabotage your search.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Hidden Job Market Penetration Tactics

I read an interesting column on the Californina Jobs Journal website this morning by David Perry, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters. Perry offers some search engine-optimized tactics for penetrating the Hidden Job Market that are well worth mentioning.

As you (hopefully) know, it is absolutely critical to tap into the Hidden Job Market for maximal job search success. Surely it's old news to you that 85% of all jobs are never advertised in print or online and that only 4% of job seekers who use online search methods actually find jobs through the Internet. Today the savvy job searcher makes sure they implement strategies to get their resume directly into the hands of hiring managers rather than relying on shotgun resume dissemination to produce results.

How can you do that? Perry suggests leveraging the power of Google to source leads and background information. In short, he recommends that you:

Pinpoint the type of job you want and the location where you want to work.
Use a search string like [advertising + "new york" + directory OR conference] - with your terms inserted, of course - to source company names in your preferred geographic location. The terms "directory" and "conference" will help you to tap into online directories in your target industry or online listings of industry conference attendees.
Repeat this process until you have exhausted your list of industries/job functions and preferred geographic locations.
Now identify the company websites associated with each employer your search turns up and peruse each site to pinpoint the names/job titles of people you can send your resume and cover letter to. You're not looking for names of HR Directors. Instead, you are searching for executives and department heads who ultimately hire in the part of the company you want to join.
If this doesn't produce the names you need, go back to Google's advanced search box and look for the targeted job title at your targeted company [company name in the first box and job title, i.e., Vice President of Sales & Marketing, in the third box].
Use the results of this last search to identify all the people who have ever held senior sales/marketing positions in your targeted company and to source other current/past employees of that company with whom you can network.
Once you pinpoint the name and title of the best person for you to send your resume to, go back to Google's advanced search box and insert the person's name in the first box and the company name in the third box to generate a list of press releases, articles, conferences, and the like involving the executive you are targeting.
Read a few of these and identify a snippet of information you can quote in your cover letter to that person. Use your cover letter to demonstrate a positive connection between this snippet and your experience or qualifications for the job.

Cool, huh?

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

ZoomInfo

Have you heard of ZoomInfo.com yet? Similar to LinkedIn.com and Rize.com, ZoomInfo allows you to build a personal/professional profile and link your network to those of others. ZoomInfo also enables you to connect with people you may have lost touch with (35+ million folks are already profiled) as well as seek jobs and new companies to contact (3+ million are already listed).

Do social networking sites such as these really help job seekers? The jury is still out on that question, but for now this much is evident: Such sites certainly won't help you if you're not listed on them. If you're not into face-to-face networking, why not give virtual networking a try? You've got nothing to lose and potentially millions of ways to gain.