Executive job boards have a purpose, but the chances of you landing your dream job from them are very low. Spending a significant amount of time on your executive profile is great, but the best way to display it isn’t necessarily on an online job board. Hundreds and thousands of jobs are posted on job boards every day. So when you look at the success rate of even landing an interview, you will quickly see your time and resources can be spent better elsewhere. Here are some of the top reasons why you should avoid job boards for your executive job search.
The Job May Already Be Filled
Sometimes HR managers forget to take down a job posting once the position has been filled. It’s natural to assume a job posting is active, but that’s simply not the case. If you’ve spent a lot of time on your executive profile, spending time searching and applying for non-existent jobs doesn’t make sense.
Job Descriptions Could Be Inaccurate
When a company posts a job opening on a job board, they sometimes use the same posting as they did previously, even if job duties have changed. As a result, you could take your resume to a professional resume writing service to optimize the keywords and language, but it won’t even matter. The best way to know the exact job description of a position is to actually speak to someone.
Your Executive Resume Could Be Lost
Any given executive job posting could get more than a hundred applicants. You may be the most qualified executive, but if your executive profile doesn’t have the exact keywords the company is looking for, you won’t even be considered. It’s much easier for your resume to get lost in the shuffle when you apply for a position on a job board. The better option is to hand your resume to a recruiter at a networking event.
Success Rate of Landing A Job is Low
When you look at the amount of applicants applying for any given position, you can clearly see your chances of getting the job is low. You have a better chance of getting a job if you spend the time on your LinkedIn profile development and connecting with HR managers or recruiters via the LinkedIn platform. Time is critical, so spending it wisely when searching for an executive job will benefit you in more than one way. Professional Resume Services can help you optimize your executive profile, no matter what avenue you choose to use for your job search. While executive job boards aren’t necessarily the best option, we will support you and help you as much as possible if you choose to use them. Feel free to contact us at any time if you need a professional resume writing service to help you land your next job.
“While not new, predictive analytics is an important factor in assessing a candidate’s fit and potential. What is new is its accelerating use in corporate America as a means to filter candidates in and out of consideration long before any personal assessment is made.” — Lou Adler
Lou Adler is a regular contributor to LinkedIn and has so much experience and authority in his perspective on the hiring process that it is worth taking the time to understand what he says about the way Big Brother is Now Determining Your Hirability. Today, a person seeking a position is filtered by all that is in their resume, and all that is in their online brand as well. There’s a list of characteristics that fit into a pattern; the pattern of the Achiever.
Here is what the “Achiever Pattern” that many companies look for consists of:
lower turnover with growing responsibility
quality of the years of experience rather than number of years
quickly being assigned (or volunteering) for important projects and/or teams
demonstrating same patterns of initiative & responsibility in every position
rehiring and being rehired by past co-workers
participation in expanding cross-functional teams
Why Are Certain Qualities Desirable?
If you look at the Achiever Pattern’s overall impression, you see someone who is willing and able to work within any setting and maximize the potential. They are good to work with, as evidenced by the fact they hire past co-workers and are hired by people who have worked with them in the past. There’s a pattern there of more than a self-centered trampling on the way to a shinier inflated ego — the achievement they consistently reach is an achievement that is good for everyone.
If you don’t have these qualities, you may be filtered out of the running before you ever get to the interview. It may be a good idea to carefully look at your resume and online presence and see how accurately they are portraying your own achievements. LinkedIn profile development has never been more important than it is today because it reveals a pattern that your next employer uses to predict your hirability.
If your goal is to get a new job this year, here are seven things you need to do to prepare yourself for your job search.
1. Update your résumé. While ideally your résumé is customized for a specific job, having an up-to-date résumé targeted for a specific “type” of position is the next best thing. So if you’ve taken on additional responsibilities in your current job, or you’ve changed your job target, or you’ve added new training or educational credentials, now is the time to talk with your résumé writer about updating your résumé. (And if you don’t have a résumé at all, now is definitely the time to put one together! A professional résumé writer can help!)
2. Develop — or update — your LinkedIn profile. A LinkedIn profile doesn’t replace the résumé…it complements it. Someone looking for a candidate with your skills and experience might conduct a search on LinkedIn and find your profile. Or, someone in your network might be interested in recommending you, and forward your LinkedIn profile URL. So make sure you have a LinkedIn profile — and make sure that it’s updated. (Yes, this is something your résumé writer can help you with.)
3. Know what you’re worth: conduct salary research. One of the most often-cited reasons to consider a job search is to increase your salary. But how do you know what you’re worth? There is more salary research data available than ever before. Websites like Glassdoor.com and Salary.com can help you see how your current salary and benefits package stacks up.
4. Build your network. It’s estimated that 70-80% of jobs are found through networking. Networking effectiveness is not just about quality — although that’s important. It’s also about quantity. It’s not just about who you know. It’s about who your contacts know. Many times, it’s the friend-of-a-friend who can help you land your dream job. Grow your network both professionally and personally. You never know who will be the one to introduce you to your next job opportunity.
5. Manage your online reputation. More and more hiring managers are checking you out online before they interview you. What will they find when they type your name into Google? How about if they check out your Twitter profile? Or find you on Facebook? Now is the time to conduct a social media assessment and clean up your online profiles.
6. Define your ideal job. “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” That line, from Alice in Wonderland, is important to remember in your job search. If you don’t know what your dream job looks like, how will you know how to find it? What job title and responsibilities are you interested in? Do you want to work independently, as part of a team, or both? Do you like short-term projects or long-term projects? Who would you report to? Who would report to you? Answering these questions can help you define your ideal position.
7. Create a target list of companies you’d like to work for. Like your ideal job, you probably have a preference for the type of organization you want as your employer. Things to consider include: company size, industry, culture, location, and structure (public, private, family-owned, franchise, nonprofit, etc.). Once you’ve made your list, look for companies that fit your criteria.
Networking is one of those activities that gets shelved because you are busy. Unfortunately, it’s also one of those activities that needs to be consistent in order to do any good to your career. This is because the nature of networking is relationships, and if you only connect with people when you need them, you are viewed in a negative light. You also miss out on a lot of positive things when you don’t connect, so it’s a good idea to put it on your schedule.
If LinkedIn Is A Garden, It Has Weeds
One of the most productive professional networking sites available today is LinkedIn, but that success means that there’s spam — the weeds of the web. It gets overwhelming if you don’t do a little maintenance every day. Since the average professional on the site gets far more stuff sent to them than they want, your contact attempts can get lost in the spam weeds.
Use the tools available to you and start with your profile. How do you rank? Who’s looking at your profile? Do you share any interests other than a career category? Think hobbies, non-profits you support, and anything that you share with those names and reach out on a personal level to turn the name into a person for both of you. This connection keeps you from being seen as one more weedy spam item choking their inbox.
Cultivate Connections For Growth
People are living things; they grow and change and need regular maintenance. Since networking is all about people, it makes sense that there’s a need for regular maintenance in this area. You don’t need to spend a lot of time on this, but even 10 or 15 minutes a day checking your LinkedIn page and deliberately reaching out to one person in your network on a personal level will keep that connection healthier.
As you develop these professional relationships by becoming acquainted personally, you lay the groundwork for a mutually beneficial networking experience.
This is the time of year when people suddenly realize the sun is shining and they are sick — sick of being inside. That doesn’t happen as severely if you have a few plans for time off to just regenerate yourself by doing nothing in particular, but if your life is planned down to the hour seven days a week, it will implode when a new thing is added to your script.
Plan For Margins
Every wise plan has margins. You can plan out a business goal, plan your job search, plan your vacation, etc., but you can’t plan what will happen when it hits real life. Now is a good time to look at your plans for the summer, when the vacation schedules collide with the work load, and decide how to make it fit together without making your life an unending series of urgent commitments.
I like to think of margins as the white space around the words on the page. If every spot on this page were filled with words, I’d have more information crammed into the space, but it would not be effective because nobody would read and retain it.
How To Plan Your Work Margins
That’s the way our plans work. We need margins around our careers and workdays in order to make them effective. We need to schedule a few days off where nothing is planned on a regular basis, particularly if we have lots of people in our lives. Kids are really good at interrupting plans with sudden illnesses, for instance, but they are not the only ones who interrupt a schedule.
Planning days to slow down helps the rest of your plans go together because it gives a margin for sudden illness.
Planning days to slow down helps the rest of your plans go together because it gives margin for contemplation.
Planning days to slow down helps the rest of your plans go together because it gives margin for regrouping and getting back on track.
If you are having a hard time planning wisely, maybe you should consider talking to a mentor or career coach to get a bigger perspective on your life. Without a plan, you can have a full calendar and be exhausted with nothing to show for your effort. With a plan, you are going to see the full days on your calendar move you to your goals. With margins built into your plan, you will see things more clearly and be ready to meet the challenges with a smile.
You know the story; someone you love is graduating and you want to give them a gift. But you don’t want it to be a gift that doesn’t really help get them on their feet with adulthood. You want your graduation gift to make a difference for the future. An Entry Level Resume is a great gift because it is a service that results in a customized, professional resume that displays a graduating student’s coursework, internships, early experiences, and skill sets. It includes an initial consultation and unlimited email support, which really can help that first job search and the entry-level resume, a cover letter, and a thank you letter in both ASCII and PDF versions for electronic submissions. That unlimited email support can come in handy for a newbie in the job market, and the benefit of a professional resume writer working with your graduate to clarify their skill sets and highlight what might be missed is worth more than you think.
Because a professional resume writer is tuned into what employers are looking for and does this all the time, a process that is painfully convoluted and prone to mistakes becomes a challenge skillfully met. They work with things like keywords and SEO and can write for the computer that screens the resumes as well as the human who reads the resumes that got through the initial filter.
If you don’t do that all the time, it’s tricky. Even an English major will have some trouble with writing a resume for today’s job search because it does take more than writing skills.
So consider this graduate gift suggestion: an Entry Level Resume from Professional Resume Services.
Sometimes, you find yourself in the unenviable category of “overqualified” candidates when applying for a job.If you are interested in a position that you overqualify for, take a proactive stance and answer some common interviewer’s questions before they are asked.
Answer “why are you applying for a job you overqualify for?” in your cover letter. Maybe you want to have a less demanding position because you have decided family time is more important than working 70 hours a week. Along with that, make sure you state that you highly appreciate being able to have a job that allows you to use your skills and work fewer hours. Another scenario is the person who has found they really enjoy the challenges of the lower level job and has decided they do not want to move up.
Answer “won’t you move on to another opening as soon as one shows up?” with a resume that has highlighted the skills and experience you bring to the job, how those skills meet the job requirements, and some questions of your own during the interview that show your interest will be ongoing.
Answer “how will you react to a younger supervisor and new technology?” by relating instances in your career where you worked successfully with all ages, and the technology trends you have kept up with or are currently learning how to use.
Answer “what if we can’t pay you what you were making before?” by being prepared to discuss salary and a firm grasp of what you will accept, even if it is less. You may very well be working for less than you made before, but if the job is one you enjoy, that is worth more than dollars.
The cover letter and resume for an “overqualified” job seeker need to be fine-tuned to answer some of the questions satisfactorily and get you the interview where you can discuss the rest. If you are not sure how to do this, perhaps our coaching services would be a good investment. A Certified Career Coach can work with you one-on-one to strategize your job search effectively, and transform being “overqualified” into an asset that gets you that interview.
It is very likely that your next job application will be done electronically.In some ways this makes the process easier, I think, since many find it laborious to fill out paper applications by hand. Still, there are some issues you can run into with an electronic application that could cause problems if you’re not paying attention.
Read the instructions. Don’t assume you know how this particular company’s software will work just because you have filed online in other places. There might be a nuance that makes a difference to the person (or computer) screening the applications. When hundreds of applications are being screened, little things can get you in the wrong category.
Load your resume in the right format. There’s a reason why Professional Resume Services offers both ASCII and PDF versions of your resume in our professional resume packages. We don’t know what your (hopefully) future employer will want. Having both versions gives you the best chance of having the right one.
Check all the information carefully! It happens all the time: the resume is attached and the little boxes of the electronic job application magically fill up. But those little boxes don’t have the information in the right place and, again, a little thing makes a big difference in getting your application passed through the initial filter. You need to look it over with the idea that you are proofreading, even though your resume was already proofread. Otherwise, you could end up verifying that your college degree was earned at your last job when you carelessly submit it. That scenario isn’t as farfetched as it sounds–so check to make sure the right information is in each box.
