Why Job Boards Are A Waste of Your Time

Friday, January 16, 2015

Lea McLeod, GoLocalPDX Careers Expert

It all starts here: Prospective clients usually tell me that they are applying to jobs but “not hearing anything back.”

That’s a sign that they probably don’t have a good job search strategy in place. Many people think applying to jobs online IS a job search strategy. But alas, it’s not. Online applications are simply transactions with very little return on the investment.

Here’s why.

According to research by InterviewSuccessFormula.com, there were 3.6 million job openings at the end of 2012. But only about 20% of those available jobs were actually posted somewhere.

So if your strategy is “apply to jobs” you have 2 problems:

1. You are missing 80% of the potential market and,
2. You are bottom feeding with everyone else whose job search activity is limited to “applying for jobs” that are posted.

Worse, when you DO apply on line, the odds are terrible.

According to the Aberdeen Group big job boards deliver too many candidates to employers.

59% of employers don’t have the manpower or time to sort through all the applications that job boards serve up.

And the hire rate is not impressive. Monster accounted for just 1.3% of all hires among employers polled in the 2012 and employers find only 1.2% of their hires via CareerBuilder.

What you NEED is a more comprehensive strategy that makes sense and ups the chances of finding a job you will actually like.

Instead of “applying on line,” apply yourself to these 3 strategies and change things up.

1.   Develop your self-marketing profile.
2.   Target companies and organizations you’d like to work for.
3.   Begin reaching out to your network.

1. Develop Your Self- Marketing Profile

This is an assessment of your qualities, strengths, and employer-desirable skills. What are you good at? What evidence do you have about how you have demonstrated those capabilities?

Your job-finding campaign is based on your ability to help that employer solve his or her business problems. To position yourself as a competent candidate, you need to understand, and have strong messages about how you will help them do so.

If you’re not sure what skills and strengths you really have, start with the StrengthsFinder tool. You can get the assessment here.

I have all my clients complete this assessment. It usually enlightens them and gives them wording to connect to their value statements.

2. Target Companies and Organizations You Believe Are a Good Fit

Richard Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute asserts the most effective way to find a job is to have a complete inventory of your skills, strengths, and then target organizations that do work that is interesting to you, and, to which you can contribute. Boo-yah!

When 80% of the jobs truly aren’t publicized, this wisdom is more applicable than ever.

So how do you find organizations to target?

Talk to people you believe are doing interesting work.
Using LinkedIn or Facebook, look at people in your network, who are connected to other people in your network, ask to meet with them.
Google companies in your area, in industries that interest you, with products or services that interest you.
Go on LinkedIn, search jobs using keywords that interest you. Look at the jobs, the descriptions, and the skills/experience they require. Start getting a picture of the things that are interesting to you.
Look on Facebook company pages.
Look on company specific websites and pages.

Go into the niche job boards, and just do some research. See what’s out there with regard to jobs that are already posted.

Then, develop a target list of 15 – 20 employers or industries that you want to focus on. Get started. Then, this list may morph and change as you meet new people and gather more information. So it’s a “living list,” but start with a foundation and go from there.

All your strategies will be focused on expanding your ability to penetrate this list!

3. Start Reaching Out to Your Network

One simple way to start reaching out to your network, and learning more about the organizations you’d like to work for, is to schedule informational interviews.

Informational interviews are not job interviews. They are investigative opportunities for you to derive information about a job, company, industry, career space, or person.

Target people in your desired organization/industry. Do the research as if it was a job interview and have 5 to 7 good questions to discuss. Not questions you can find on Google, but good thought-provoking questions to pose to your expert.

Once you have a good marketing message, you can begin to target your ideal employers and build relationships with the people in them. The you’re out of the online black hole and well on your way to your dream job.

You can download this entire report here. Lea McLeod created The Resume Coloring Book E-course to help you craft a step-by-step, color-coded resume in 6 simple sections that is proven to pass the “7 second recruiter scan.” Her career insights have been featured in Forbes, Mashable, LifeHacker, Daily Muse and Business Insider. Connect with her on LinkedIn.