Welcome to fourth of five in my series of: Finding a job in today’s Job Market – How to market yourself in any economy II – Become the hunted

If you’d like to read the first in my series click here

If you’d like to read the second in my series click here

If you’d like to read my third in my series click here

In my first article we discussed making yourself marketable.

And my second article we discussed marketing yourself.

In my third article, we discussed using the online job sites so that you can become the hunted.

In this article, my fourth in the series, we will discuss how to stay ahead of all the competition within the job search sites.

To stand out and been more that your competition, you’ll need just a couple of little tips and tricks that I will discuss here in detail.

But you first have to understand how the job sites such as:

• www.monster.com
• www.dice.com
• www.careerbuilder.com
• Indeed.com
• and a Linkedin profile

as previously mentioned.

Companies will pay to list their jobs on these sites, and they will pay for the ability to do searches of the resume’s residing on these sites. Folks like you and me get to put our resume on these sites for free. And as I stated in my last article, make sure you leave your profile as searchable.

Job Agencies, or more affectionately known as “headhunters”, pay for the ability search for your resume on these sites. They also search for available job listings on the sites posted by actual Corporations so that they can match your resume with a specific job.

Often times, headhunters have job openings from companies that did not list on a job site, but these companies contacted the agency directly to list their job opening(s). That is why you want to ensure that your profile is searchable, because otherwise available job openings may not be found on these job sites. Some are exclusive to specific agencies.

Many times the calls or the emails you get will be from some headhunter in India with a US number through a tie-line. That’s fine. We just want to get the interviews – and these are legitimate offers.

These headhunters will scour all the job sites for available jobs and then match for specific resumes and send out the offer emails. Or they will get an exclusive job opening from a specific company, and again, scour the job sites for qualified applicants. When they find an applicant that they believe is a good fit for the job, they will send an email or call.

Here are my important tips or tricks to keep a head of the millions of resumes on the job sites.

1) Use multiple spellings –

Often times there are multiple spellings for specific skills. For instance, for a specific computer operating system (and this is just a simple example) such as Windows 10, this can also be referred to as Win 10. Typically the headhunter has no idea of the technical specifications and if the company included in the specs that the applicant must be proficient in Windows 10 if you (as the Tech Guru that you are), list your skills as being proficient with Win 10, the headhunter will never find your resume since they are searching for Windows 10 and you listed it as Win 10.

The reason for this is that they take the specs of the position and then do a keyword search. If they are looking for and exact match of Windows 10 Your Win 10 will not show up in their search. Therefore it is important that within your resume “Skills Section” you list multiple spellings. But to make your posted resume on the job site look pretty, don’t list both spellings right next to each other. Rather, use the multiple spelling of it in different sections of your resume.
a. For instance, here is Windows 10 listed in 2 separate locations with multiple spellings:
i. Upgraded all desktops from Windows 10 SP1 to SP2 with push.
ii. Certified in Win 10 server facilities.

2) Typically, headhunters will do a search on active resumes –

For instance, their first search may include resumes that have been updated within the last 7 days. This search will obviously pull up a small subset of resumes. If they did a search of all resumes updated within the last 6 months, it will retrieve a tremendous number of resumes; some of which those folks a no longer on the job market.

By pulling up resumes of folks that may no longer be on the job market, the headhunters realize they will have to go through a ton of rejection before finding an eager candidate. By searching resumes updated within the last 7 days or even 30 days, they know they are looking at candidates that are freshly looking for a job.

So it is important for you to update your resume weekly or at most, every 2 weeks. The more the better. Here’s how I recommend keeping your profile fresh. Simply add an extra space between any word within your resume and then save and exit. Then the next week, remove that extra space, and save it and exit again. Something as simple as that keeps your resume fresh.

I also believe that logging into the site keeps your profile fresh, but why not do everything in your favor to help your job search

3) Finally, buzz words count.

For example, don’t say “you do a good job with…”. Instead say “you follow best practices with…”. As “best practices” is a buzz word (or buzz term) of good standards. This is just one example of buzz words to use. There are many more that would be specific for your industry. Be sure to learn them and use them (see my first article of my Job Search series for keeping up with these terms).

Well I am confident that if you follow my series of how to find a job in any economy, that you will be successful in getting appointments for interviews. Not every interview will turn into a job offer. But the more interviews you get, the higher the chance of finding your dream job.

Click here to read part 5 of 5:  Finding a job in Today’s Job Market. Series 5 of 5 – Write your own resume.

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