Instant Interviews_ 101 Ways to Get the Best Job of Your Life - Jeffrey G. Allen [33]
1. Search online for jobs that look like the one you want. Job web sites typically enable searching by location, job title, professional field, and so on. You don’t have to hit every possible job, just find a few representative ones.
2. On the job description page, pick out keywords and write them down. These words don’t necessarily fit other jobs.
3. Use the same words in your resume. (Similar words might work too, if the search engine is smart or if a business included them.) The keywords instantly transform you into a hot, heat-seeking torpedo. (Finding synonyms in a pocket or online thesaurus will geometrically increase your damage.)
4. If you’re using Microsoft Word, include the keywords in File Properties of the resume .doc file. (In many versions of Word, the path is: File > Properties > Summary > Keywords.)
Again, the whole auto-matching process is so arbitrary that you’re just helping it work—to generate interviews automatically. While you sleep!
Inputting Your Resume
The electronic resume is constructed differently from the rest-you-may (Do 5). In fact, it’s not a resume at all. It’s simply those keywords you input. The computer electronically matches them with the same words some business entered.
So you don’t have to be elaborate. Electronic resumes can be even more generic than traditional ones.
It’s all so silly because offerors don’t know what they want—especially as defined by a few keywords. But the job description was written by someone who thinks he knows—and will talk about it.
Many sites have online forms that permit you to attach and upload a resume file. Use the file format they request (.doc, .pdf, and .rtf are some examples). Others want you to paste the text (Ctrl-C to copy, then Ctrl-V to paste) into the form. Double-check the result because Word documents in particular don’t always paste cleanly into web pages. If your document contains special characters, you might have to retype them in the form. Even some punctuation, like quotation marks and apostrophes, may have to be retyped.
Benefits of Going Online
What does online job dating cost? Nothing. In fact, don’t use sites that charge a fee. That online call will turn into a date anyway.
Go belly-to-belly with the live bodies. But be just passin’ through electronically. Lookin’ for love in all the right places. It’s so easy.
You’ll be lookin’ even while you’re sleepin’. With your two “I.I.’s” wide open!
Do 16: Courting a Corporate Partner—Online
In the previous chapter, we checked out online job dating. Just you and millions of others. What an intimate little group.
Want to narrow your search?
Let’s do it.
Instant Internetting
Online matchmaking is even more fun when you have a specific business or industry in mind.
How many of the apps you’ve posted online received mass e-mailed or suspicious file attachments? From someone in a third-workingworld country who wants to pay less than minimum wage? Or from someone hyperventilating about investing your money in a pyramid scheme? Or perhaps someone trying to trick you with a get-rich-quick scheme?
These are computerized clues that you’re doing something wrong. Using employer database services is not hazardous to your health. Relying on them is!
Continue your face-to-face instant interviews. Just add these sites to automatically work for you ’round the clock.
Picking Corporate Partners
The corporate courting dance is a two-step:
1. Use the search engine. Input the name of a business you respect.
2. Do a search for your type of work. Some corporate sites will appear.
Treat these leads the way you’d treat any other legitimate job opportunity:
1. Research the web site. Find out all you can about the business and its needs.
2. Note the buzzwords (and buzzphrases) so you can buzz like a bumblebee.
3. Do another in-depth online search for the business name to see if you can dig up