Chris Wellington “The Recruiting Guy”, President, The Wellington Group

“Chris, this is the 15^th email this week along with 22 from last week, multiple LinkedIn messages, 12 voicemails, mailed in my resume…and by the way I applied to all the open jobs on your website…”

Ok that might be extreme but I hope you get the jest, either you are showing signs of being desperate for a job or have no other resources to help in your job search. Either way, don’t become one of “those people” as many individuals don’t have the same patience in Human Resources or Recruiting and Hiring Manager rarely follow EEOC or OFCCP guidelines or employment law so they just throw you away per-se.

Now I am not advocating for just sending your resume and not following up nor the “spray and pray” method of sending out resume to every job on a prayer that it gets looked at. Direct contact to a recruiter or HR is great, providing they 1. Are accessible  2. Want to truly hear from job seekers. That’s right, many “don’t have time” unless you are the ideal match which is one of my pet-peeves to lazy HR or Recruiters in my PROFESSION! But you still can gently nudge them for some feedback.

The best way to approach applying for a job is as follows:

1. Only send your customized resume to jobs you are qualified for or have a strong interested in DON’T apply to all jobs a company has open
2. Select a read receipt option if sending via email so you know if it is opened and reviewed
3. If sending to a “black hole” HR tool or even ATS, put in the job code in your subject line. Review my previous blog “Job Seekers – Put That Job Code in Your Subject Line”
4. Look for other resources. For instance at The Wellington Group I am a Senior Partner to a much larger group of recruiters giving you access to thousands of open jobs and other recruiters. You can check it out here, and let me know if you see something of interest so we can work it the right way!
5. Leave one or two voicemails and one follow-up email per week. We recruiters and HR get busy sure, so follow-up is great but excess not so much!

While the competition is tougher these days or companies are hiring slower, don’t become one of “those people” but rather have a strategy in your job search. If needed, seek out other resources to find that right job or additional opportunities. You want to make a strong impression, not an annoying one.

Good luck with your job search!

Chris

For questions or help on this and many other ideas on how to make your career search more effective contact the staff at The Wellington Group @ info@twgrecruiters.com  or visit The Career Store.

Chris Wellington “The Recruiting Guy”, President, The Wellington Group

OK job seekers…this one is for you! Here is a quick tip to help you stop some bad habits we are seeing in the World of Work or avoid them and put yourself ahead of the competition when it comes to applying to a job either with a professional recruiter, staffing company and even the Human Resources department.

Here is the scenario…

Jane sets out this weekend to apply to all the jobs that she has been finding on-line or through some sort of job alert strategy she has in place. She amasses all the individual email addresses and even the “apply to” or “hr@” and attaches her resume, ready to send. Jane hits send, with all 50+ contacts copied, CCed. See, she has put some very valuable time into perfecting her resume or has perhaps hired a professional to write her resume. So she is very proud of it and is sure that when all these people see Jane’s email, her week will be full of calls. Right?

Wrong! Here is the problem. While she did all the right actions to find a new job; set up alerts, targeted her niche and areas she wants to work, gathered contact email information or apply to email address, etc. She did not put in the extra effort to send an individual email to each contact or job opportunity. Instead, she mass emailed the entire group, hoping it would be seen.

Unfortunately when you do this, the recruiter seeing it hits delete as they feel you are just reaching out for anything OR that you applied to competing recruiters, the hiring company, etc. The ATS system, HRIS tool or even Outlook on the receiver’s end sees this as spam and tucks it away into a neat little folder or completely abandons the email message into the black hole of the internet. Jane’s resume is never really looked at by anyone, and she never does actually “apply to” a job for it won’t go through the system with this approach. Ouch right? Below are some tricks to avoid this from happening.

How should you send out your resume?

1. Send to one contact, recruiter or job opportunity at a time
2. Take the time to make sure your resume summary, bio or intro talks to the job and company you are applying
3. In your email, write a brief summary of why you for that job; skills, experience, education, etc. Bullet point out the critical areas is most ideal
4. Select the “read receipt” option before you send, at the least you know if someone did view your resume
5. Follow-up with a call within 24 hours to ensure your resume was able to be seen, many times it may get bumped out of the tool, dumped into spam, over-looked, or even deleted without review

Take the few extra minutes and put some thought and time into each resume you send out or job you apply to, put yourself ahead of the competing job seekers. After all, you have done this much work and a couple minutes more here and there to better your chances can’t hurt.

Good luck with your job search!

Chris

For questions or help on this and many other ideas on how to make your career search more effective contact the staff at The Wellington Group at info@twgrecruiters.com  or visit The Career Store.