Guerrilla Marking for Job Hunters 2.0 - Jay Conrad Levinson [67]
The million-dollar question is, How can you make employers knock on your door and ask you to interview for a job? How can you make it easier for employers to find you?
British battlefield strategist Liddell Hart summed it up years ago when he coined the term the indirect approach. It means you don’t keep banging headfirst into the problem—that just makes it worse. Attacking the trenches head-on in World War I is a tragic example of the direct approach. Instead, you do something surprising that maneuvers around the blockage. In World War II, the Nazi army used an indirect approach when it attacked through the supposedly impassable Ardennes Forest and swept around the Maginot Line behind the French Army. Today, going around human resources (HR) and straight to the hiring managers also requires an indirect approach using the Web.
■ DIGITAL BREAD CRUMBS: THE MAGIC OF SEARCH ENGINE TECHNOLOGY
How do you apply the indirect approach to job hunting? You start by leveraging the changes in candidate recruiting to your benefit, and make it easier for people to find you. Reading the following brief history on the evolution of Internet recruiting will be worth your while.
Despite the softening of the economy in 2009, many employers reported they were finding it harder to find the right candidates. Many people reasoned—and the billion-dollar staffing industry heavily promoted the idea—that the best candidates were already employed. Right or wrong, passive job candidates became the most prized by employers. As profit margins were squeezed and sales dropped, the “war for talent” quickly morphed into the “war for the best talent.” Search engines and social media sites became the vehicle of choice for finding passive candidates.
Today, you are far more likely to be Googled by a recruiter than found on a job board. That, or recruiters will track you down through Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn. Keyword searches in “communities of interest” have replaced the tedious telephone spadework that recruiters have long used.
That’s great for you as a candidate because having your phone ring is much better and easier than trying to make someone else’s phone ring. One of the secrets to long-term full employment is constantly being on the radar of potential employers and headhunters.
■ BEING EASY TO FIND
In this section, we describe how to use Internet tools that recruiters rely on, and explain how to use the same tools to bypass gatekeepers and contact hiring managers.
You should manage your Web presence, or online identity, the same way you monitor and manage your financial credit statement. Make sure you can be found on the Internet and that what’s out there reflects you at your best. Consider the Internet as today’s venue for a first interview—it is where you make your first impression. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so make sure your Internet presence will get you to the second step.
Admit it, you’ve Googled yourself. Well, keep on doing it, and do it often, so that you can see what others see if they search for your name. On Google, you can buy your own name as a keyword, directing searchers to your blog or web site.
Go to sites like ZoomInfo at www.zoominfo.com where information about you is summarized and optimize your summary. Many of the top recruiting firms—including myself—and 100s of the Fortune 500 use ZoomInfo to search for candidates. On ZoomInfo you can actually go in and edit the information, adding missing information and correcting inaccuracies. STOP—do this now. If you are not “Zoomable,” you do not exist for 100s of thousands of recruiters who are looking for people like you every day. These are easy digital bread crumbs to leave that will bring job offers knocking.
➤ Beyond Job Boards and Networking—When Being Passive Can Be a Good Thing