Websites & Classifieds
Fighting The Bits
People get jobs by filling out online forms and people win the lottery. In fact, you are more likely to get a job filling out impersonal job forms online, than you are to win the lottery each time you buy a ticket, but that doesn't make the odds exactly good. The fact is, most people get jobs through personal rerrals or introductions. Part of the reason may be unfair - it's hard to get in somewhere where you don't know people. But the main reason is just practical. People need a way to make decisions and the internet allows literally an infinite number of people to click online and submit a form. It's just way too much information to read. So a typical manager waits to be soon fed a resume from someone s/he trusts. This is not because this leads necessarily to the best choice, but it's just because this makes the process manageable. It's not uncommon to receive hundreds, even thousands of resumes to a job posting. It's simply impossible to read all this. So the long and short of it, is you have to stand out from the croud, find out how to be spoon fed. And don't fight the infinite bits.
The odds of actually achieving a job via a nameless entry in the Skills for Sale section of a jobs website or print classifieds are slim, but not unknown. However such listings do provide a great resource, noting areas of opportunity, companies that are hiring, and of business language to use in your own search materials. Scan the type of ads in each listing with a Goldilocks eye: nothing near your field is too cold; a million similar ads makes the competition too hot. On the fringe is just right.
Alas, there is no reigning job source the way there used to be. HR pros in Kansas no longer cull the New York Times trolling for top talent.
Good old fashion print classifieds do indeed work, but only if you place the add within the papers targeted readership. Increasingly, print is read mostly locally or by professional groups browsing their specific trade journals. There may not be a great demand for sales managers in your town, but a goodly percentage of folks read the local paper, and even find the classifieds intriguing.
Make the Pond Smaller
Websites open up everything to the entire planet and by that reason make focus impossible. Tis often a matter of too much information. Professional websites, at the state, regional and national often have classifieds. they certainly seem more targeted than putting your resume in a blottle and casting it adrift onto Monster.com.
Leverage your team
If the manager needs to be spoon fed you need help getting him the spoon with your name on it. Use your social networks.
