How to Break Through the Job Search Clutter in Today's Market Ep 006

Breaking Through the Job Search Clutter: Practical Tips for Today's Market

In today's episode, inspired by an email from a VIP email list subscriber, I discuss strategies to stand out in a competitive job market. The episode emphasizes the necessity of applying through job boards despite their limitations, suggests maintaining a job search spreadsheet for organization, and provides detailed advice on leveraging LinkedIn. Specific tips include following and engaging with company pages to increase visibility and using LinkedIn features to notify recruiters of your interest. I also underscore the importance of balancing job board applications with networking efforts for a more effective job search.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Inspiration

00:47 The Necessary Evil of Job Boards

01:20 Optimizing Your Resume for ATS

02:15 Balancing Job Boards and Networking

02:33 Tracking Your Job Applications

03:00 Leveraging LinkedIn for Job Search

03:12 Engaging with Company Pages on LinkedIn

04:17 Increasing Visibility as an Engaged Candidate

05:18 Notifying Recruiters of Your Interest

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Transcript

 Today's episode was inspired by an email I received from someone who recently joined my VIP email list, and the person says this, I'd love to know how to break through the job search clutter in this crazy market we're in right now. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And I want to thank the person for sending me the email to prompt today's podcast episode, because I know that there are many of you who are in career transition, who are listening in, who are trying to find, figure out what's that magic.

Bullet or the secret sauce or something just to differentiate you and to help you to find that dream job that much sooner. So today, let's talk about how to break through the job search clutter in today's market. And this advice really can be used. any time of the year in any type of market condition.

But first of all, I want you to think about the fact that when you are in career transition, there is a necessary evil, my friend, and you know what it is. It's applying to the job boards, right? So you do have to see what's out there and go through those systems. Many organizations, especially the large ones, do have policies about how candidates come into the organization and making sure that they are giving a fair evaluation and assessment to everyone who does apply for the position.

So you do need to go through the job boards, but it doesn't mean that the job board is going to get you the position. And in fact, many organizations, when they post for job openings, they receive hundreds of candidates and we're relying upon the ATS, the Applicant Tracking System, right? A computer's really scanning resumes and trying to pull those that are best qualified.

up to the top of the stack. And there can be a variety of issues that are happening with your resume that you may not even be aware of. For example, if you're putting keywords and different things on your resume in formatted text, the ATAs might see it as graphics. My advice is always to create your resume in a simple program like a Microsoft Word, and then once submitting it,  convert it to a PDF.

That way it keeps everything locked into place, but try not to go too crazy on the graphics. So it is a necessary evil, and I'm not a, an expert in ATS systems and whatnot. This is just information I've heard from others. But I think 50 percent of your job search needs to be applying through the job boards, and the other 50 percent needs to be warming up that VIP referral network and making yourself more visible as a candidate. 

So if it were me, and if I were doing a job search in today's market, here's what I would do. First I would start with tracking all of the positions I'm applying for in a job search spreadsheet. And I've done this in the past when I went through a career transition and, create your own format, but, a date column, last updated, the name of the position, the name of the company, where you heard about it, a link.

I always would save down a copy of the job posting because if it does go away and they bring you in for the job, you want to make sure you understand what you're applying for. Okay. And then just doing some tracking of that along the way. Now, in addition to that, I would actually go on LinkedIn and here's what I would do.

I would start by navigating to the company pages and. The first thing I would do is follow the company page. Following the company page will make you look like a highly engaged candidate. And there's actually a version of LinkedIn called LinkedIn recruiter, which is a paid, and it's a pretty expensive paid package that's used by people who are using LinkedIn for recruiting purposes.

Mainly large organizations, although you can purchase an individual license as well. So when you go to the company page and click on follow, and you're starting, if you also start to engage with some of the company page posts, which is another thing that I would recommend for you, LinkedIn starts to identify you as a highly engaged candidate.

So my understanding is when recruiters are looking at individuals who have applied for positions through LinkedIn, through their job postings, it puts them into different buckets, and I believe there's at least three. I think the one is like highly engaged candidates. The second is indicating people who are open to work and who are, actively ready to go right now.

And the third is all other candidates. That's my understanding. And I could be a bit wrong, but it makes sense categorically that LinkedIn would do this because they want recruiters to have success with their job postings. So by following the company page and then interacting with either liking or commenting on a recent post or two from the company page can bring you up.

Invisibility as an Engaged Candidate. The other thing is it does is, many company pages are not very active. And when they do post, they're not getting a lot of engagement. I'm looking at a page right now. They did a Thanksgiving day post. There were 11 people who liked it,  one repost, but nobody's commented on it.

So if I were to apply at a position with that company and I would add a thoughtful comment saying, hope your team all had a happy Thanksgiving, there's a chance that the person who is managing that page. That could be the marketing department. It could be the HR, the recruiting team. It gives me a chance that my name will be seen by them.

And they might think, gosh, Brenda Meller, where does that name sound familiar? Oh, that's right. She applied for our marketing director position. So it shows that you're engaged on the platform. It helps to bring visibility up for you. And also there's a way on a LinkedIn company page, some company pages will have this.

After you've clicked on follow, click on the about symbol, the about menu rather, and then scroll down, some company pages will have a button that says, Notify recruiters that you're interested in positions at this company. Not all pages have it, so again, the steps to find it, once you are on the company page, click on the about tab, which is like a little sub menu in the middle, and then scroll down to underneath that overview paragraph.

You might see inside there something that says, notify recruiters that you're open to positions at that company. I'm going to find one and I'm going to read off the exact text right now.