Okay so you decide you want a new job or fate decides you need to get a job. No problem, there are plenty of papers and online job sites with great job search engines so it shouldn’t be hard to find a good job should it?
The facts are if you stick to looking through the papers and filling out online job applications you are seriously limiting your chances to find a good job.
The truth is around 80% of jobs are advertised in house or through a company website. So what is the best way to find a good job? This article offers valuable tips that might help you conduct a successful job search and find a good job.
You Can’t Find a Good Job Because the Best Ones Are Hidden?
Here’s How to Find Them
By Michael E. Meisner
With unemployment rates skyrocketing, more and more people turn to the online job boards to look for their next position. Both candidates and recruiters know how hard it can be to find the right job at precisely the right moment.
But how effective is it to simply post a resume and search through jobs, especially when you’re up against a world of other candidates doing the same? As more companies turn to online job boards and networking, so do more candidates, and your job prospecting field becomes quite crowded and competitive.
While posting your resume on Careerbuilder or Monster is surely a good idea, you can also use other techniques to find those “hidden” jobs – before your competition.
A Simple Approach To Find A Good Job
Google alerts offer a simple way of notifying you of events that you define using keywords.
For example, if you’re looking for a marketing and communications job, you might set up an alert using some keywords such as “marketing communications job opening Massachusetts”.
That’s a good start, but Google Alerts tend to deliver very broad results, and it’s tough to sift through them to find an actionable event. Thus, you may spend too much time trying to identify and qualify potential leads. Even a broad phrase like “job Chicago” may return many unrelated results, and when you do finally find a real job posting, chances are it’s not exactly “hidden” anymore. Here’s a hint: use the Google search syntax to target your results – i.e. search for “marketing coordinator” + (your town name here).
Let’s Take it Further
How does one go about finding “hidden” jobs with less effort? Several companies offer systems that provide exactly this sort of information. Some companies have developed innovative technology that pulls “trigger alerts” to identify actionable events within an industry that may indicate a hiring need within a company.
Trigger alerts notify you of events within an industry of your choice, target specific indicators and offer insight that you might not get elsewhere. This type of software pairs quite well with normal outplacement services; by allowing you to set up very customized profiles, and provide tools to locate, manage, you can find and follow up on these “hidden” job opportunities.
Sample job triggers might include: – Company revenue up 10% (signals positive performance growth, possible hiring) – Mergers and acquisitions (another growth signal, possible new mgmt needs) – Management changes (a new manager comes in and needs more resources).
Candidates and recruiters benefit from these indicators because they are recent and relevant to their needs. For example, someone looking for an editorial position may receive a trigger alert describing how the New York Times plans to expand their online communications department; that’s a great indicator that they probably need to expand their current staff.
Your account integrates with LinkedIn, so if you happen to have a connection at a company, you can reach out to that person and warm up your approach. The combination of hidden job indicators with social networking seems to be a no-brainer.
Setting up alerts via Google costs nothing, and can be an effective way to filter hidden jobs, but the amount of time you spend deleting irrelevant notifications that pass through your inbox will likely outweigh any benefits.
Still, there’s something to be taken away from the general idea of capturing leads and indicators, and by using a tailored platform, prospective job seekers can really maximize the effectiveness of their job search.
Check out Career Advantage for more useful insights into finding hidden jobs.
This ‘Find A Good Job’ article has been reproduced with permission from:
https://EzineArticles.com
This article talked about using Google alerts. We would go further. The growth of social media sites such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Talent.me etc. have had a huge impact on job searching. We highly recommend that you read building a network of contacts using social media on The Personal Development Cafe blog if you would like to know how you can find a good job.
One of the best ways to stay motivated in a job search is to build a network of contacts. Not only does this help you reduce job search stress, it can significantly improve your chances of finding the job you deserve.
Do you have any useful job search tips you would like to share or job search questions that you would like answered? Then visit our forums or use the comments form below.
