Looking for the right jobs? With the current economic situation and unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, things certainly not look hopeful. Countless job seekers have been employing the traditional job search methods which are yielding poor outcomes. As a matter of fact, New York Post reported a woman has applied for over a thousand jobs over 99 weeks, receiving only a handful of interviews. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) has increased by 361,000 to 6.2 million and the average job seeker giving up after five months of search.
Why not take a shot at the following methods?
1. Leveraging Your Connections
Online job portals may be an efficient method in searching through vast amounts of jobs, but having connections with existing employees of companies you are interested in may help seal the deal.
LinkedIn gives you access to professional connections through your close connections. Create your profile and upload all your email contacts to build the base foundation. As you search for a company or open position, you will be able to see if anyone of your close connection can introduce you to a hiring manager. In addition, this provides you an opportunity to research on the company and employees before interviews.
InTheDoor.com
InTheDoor.com connects your Facebook social graph with Indeed.com’s aggregated job board database, showing you your connections for specific job openings. You can search for jobs at your friend’s companies, search for jobs in various cities and by company and job titles.
BranchOut.com
BranchOut.com is very much similar to InTheDoor.com in utilizing your Facebook social graph, but you access BranchOut directly from your Facebook profile. With a recent $18 million venture capital by Redpoint Ventures, over three million job listings and some 20,000 internships in listings, this means business. Similar to LinkedIn in getting recommendations on your page, and like Foursquare you get to earn badges.
2. Use Job Search Apps
With the prevalence of smartphones, people are beginning to use mobile applications to locate job openings with a few swipes of the iPhone, Android and Nokia.
Layar (Free) shows you all the companies in your current location and their current job openings.
CareerBliss provides company reviews, salary information, and some three million job listings.
Real-Time Jobs (Free) attaches your social network profile and video to Twitter job postings.
BusyBee (Free) provides contract opportunities nearby for freelancers.
Good Job ($4.99) organizes your job search by listing jobs from various sites, contacts, resumes and more.
3. Building Your Online Influence
In the past, having the right hard and soft skills is all it took for you to get hired. But things have changed, and your online influence has become one of the key factors to differentiate you from competition.
Online influence is determined by your number of connections, the type of people in your connections (how influential they are), number of people sharing your content and backlinking to your website and more. Klout is one such site that helps measure your online influence with a “Klout score”, and gaining popularity with employers. The higher you score, the better your chances. Employers can simply determine if you have the right online influence and target audience with these scores, allowing them to leverage on your assets to build their businesses.
4. Use Multimedia instead of a Paper Resume
Everybody sends a copy of their resume during job applications, but how do you stand out? Why not combine creative ideas with work experiences to market yourself? Having seen dedicated Facebook pages, blogs saying “hire me” and SlideShare.net presentations, these promotional tactics have definitely left an impression in me. And such impressions may just be able to land you a few dream jobs.
SlideShare.net allows you to upload your PowerPoint presentation and promote it through your networks as well as on your website. Think of it as another means of packaging your resume.
QR codes for your resume? All you need to do is share a QR code on your social networks and it can redirect potential employers back to your website.
Personal Website using your name as the url (yourfullname.com)? This is bound to turn some heads.
5. Advertise Yourself, Literally
The most common means of advertising yourself are Facebook social ads, LinkedIn ads, and blog advertisements. Take for instance Alec Brownstein: he advertised himself by targeting specific executives at companies he wanted a shot at. Since people tend to Google themselves, these executives saw his advertisement and called him for interviews. With all these creative tools at your disposal, be sure to create a catchy & specific advertisement and link it back to your website. It’s only a matter of time before it catches the recruiter’s attention.
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