The Challenge of Today’s Job Market
The job market is pretty tough right now. Over the last couple of years there have been people posting about having applied to hundreds of jobs and some even applying to a thousand or more without any luck. As a hiring manager, that’s not the best approach. If you’re a job seeker, instead of spending every waking hour applying to everything and anything, the five-step approach outlined here will give you the best chance of landing a job that you actually want in a shorter amount of time.
Step One: Get clear on what you want
Step one is get clear on what you want. Anytime someone is applying to hundreds of jobs, what that implies is that they are just applying to anything that is even remotely related to their qualifications. The main problem with that is that some job search platforms have made it incredibly easy to apply, which is a good thing because it is easy to apply, but that’s also a bad thing because since it is easy, everybody’s going to be doing it and you’re unfortunately going to be one of those hundreds or one of those thousands of résumés sitting in that pile. How likely is it that your resume is going to stand out? Not very likely.
The 3×3 Framework
First and foremost, you need to get clear on what it is that you want. A quick framework to recommend is the 3×3. First, identify your top three most interesting job roles or titles. Second, identify your top three most interesting industries where those job roles exist. Then your top three most interesting companies in those industries.
This gives you a good starting point to help narrow your focus down to just a handful of opportunities. This wouldn’t necessarily discourage applying to a high number of job postings online, especially if you have narrowed your focus. This can still be a way to land interviews and potentially earn a job — it’s just that you’ll waste a lot of time doing so, especially as you get to submitting over a hundred or even hundreds of applications.
Targeting Desirable Roles
The most likely outcome is you’ll just have a very low success rate when it comes to landing interviews, and if you do get the interview and you happen to get an offer, it might not actually be that desirable of a job. If it was truly a desirable job, then you’re going to have a lot of competition for it, and the people that end up getting those jobs tend to do the steps outlined here.
Step two is optimize your LinkedIn profile. If you have a clear direction on what your next one to three possible career moves are, this will be a place you want to focus your time and attention if you want to land the next opportunity.
LinkedIn as a Professional Brand
LinkedIn is the largest professional networking platform in the world, and when you think about the job search process you really have to think about it like a marketer or a salesperson. Your LinkedIn profile is your professional brand’s website and this is where you convey to the world what you’ve done, what kind of value you’ve brought to other organizations, and what you are interested in.
When you have a well thought out, well put together profile, it’s going to do a few things for you. First, you’re going to be more visible and interesting to recruiters that are looking for potential candidates for job roles they have open. Second, when you proactively reach out to recruiters or companies, you’ll be able to point to your LinkedIn profile so that they can learn a little bit more about you.
Optimizing Keywords and Experience
Two ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile are as follows. First, find ways to include keywords in your profile based on job descriptions that you see posted of roles you’re interested in. If you want to be a project manager, make sure to incorporate literally that term into your profile as an interest or as a past experience,
or even if you’ve never been a formal project manager by title but your prior roles had significant elements of project management, make sure to detail that out and use the term project manager or project management when describing that. The word significant is important here — meaning if you were asked about this experience in an interview, the experience should have been substantial enough that you could provide thorough details about it.
Ensuring a Complete Profile
The key is to draw out and emphasize specific experiences that are relevant to where you want to go while also being honest about it. The second point is to ensure that you have a complete profile, which means filling out with great detail all of your experiences, your education, awards if you have them, volunteer efforts, professional organizations, and a high-quality profile picture.
Step three is networking. This is the most important part of landing a new role, but it does take a lot of work. Quite frankly, it’s work that not a lot of people are willing to do, which gives an advantage to anyone willing to do it.
Building Relationships and Referrals
It’s going to be your network and the people that you’ve built relationships with over the years that are going to be the most likely path to getting your next job. So instead of dropping your resume into an application where it goes into a bucket full of hundreds of other applications, you have someone potentially in your network that would be able to pass off your resume directly to a hiring manager or recruiter.
And if you have a good relationship with that person, they’re much more likely to advocate for you, which gives you a much higher chance of actually getting the interview. Networking is fairly straightforward — if you know where you want to go and what you want to do, find people in your LinkedIn network whose jobs and experiences relate to what it is you want to do.
Connecting and Learning
Simply reach out to them and ask them if they’d be interested in meeting up for lunch or coffee, and if they’re unable to do that, then simply a virtual meeting or even a phone call would suffice. Express to them that you have an interest in the role that they’re in or that you have an interest in the company they’re at, and let them know you’d like to learn a little bit more about the role or more about the company, and specifically learn about the steps that you might need to take to help get you closer to those opportunities. Now if you end up having a good conversation with that person, one of the biggest mistakes people make is that they don’t follow up — so if everything went well and you liked what you heard and you liked what you learned.
The Importance of Consistent Follow-up
Make sure to follow up and suggest a recurring meeting. It can be either monthly or quarterly depending on the availability of the other person. The follow-up and the recurring meetings are the most important aspect of networking because it’s going to keep you top of mind. When opportunities come that person’s way, they’ll think — this person has met with me many times, they’ve expressed interest — they’re going to be much more likely to think of you when those opportunities come across their desk.
Step four is skill up. If you’re looking to make a career shift and you don’t have a lot of relevant work experience in the field that you want to go into, a good way to bridge that gap is through verifiable education.
Education and Certifications
For example, if you want to be a project manager but you don’t have any experience whatsoever, you may want to consider a certification that you can earn online. A PMP certification is one of the most recognizable in the industry, but it can be fairly expensive and time consuming to earn — though it’s certainly worth it. But if for whatever reason that’s not an option, checking out Coursera is recommended.
That’s one of the most useful platforms available and it has been for many years. They offer course tracks on just about everything, and for a small fee you can earn a verified certificate of completion, which you get after completing the course successfully, and this is something you can showcase to prospective employers.
Signalling Interest to Hiring Managers
It’s something you can include on your LinkedIn profile. This is not going to guarantee an interview or guarantee a job, but having a verified certificate serves as a signal to prospective hiring managers that you have a legitimate interest in this type of role — enough so that you would decide to pursue education on your own free time. This has actually helped in career advancement quite a bit, giving an advantage which in a very competitive job market you want every advantage you can get.
Once you’ve taken all these foundational steps, it’s time to apply for jobs in the interest areas that you are focused on.
Focused Application Strategy
You’ll obviously want to focus on the roles where you have the strongest interest and also the strongest network. This is going to be key to fast-tracking your application should an opportunity open up. But if you end up applying online without a referral, make sure to optimize your resume to include keywords and experiences that you might have already done for your LinkedIn profile.
You want to make sure all the information is consistent from LinkedIn to your resume so that there’s no confusion from the hiring manager. When you optimize your resume, once you hit apply and submit your resume, you’ll have a better chance of getting through some of the automated tools that HR uses.
The Advantage of Referrals
Preferably you wouldn’t have to even rely on that if you networked well enough and you can get referred to a particular role, which typically means that the resume bypasses all those filters, goes directly to the hiring manager, and gives you the best chance of landing an interview. And once you’ve received an invitation to interview, you have an opportunity to make the case as to why you are the best candidate.