Job hunting needs to be thought of as a highly personal, extremely targeted marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of associates is your source for job information.

So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on Craigslist and got hundreds and hundreds applications in a week. For a single job. That’s increased job hunting competition.

Had a strong person gotten ahold of us before we placed the ad, they could have gotten the position before getting all that competition. How? By knowing someone at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew about of the job for at least 11 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your cover letter and resume carefully! When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily removed with a quick triage process. How? The same way any manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By eliminating candidates whose cover letters gave us reasons not to engage them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating candidates whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by rejecting prospects who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the good news is that job sites give you a sense of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, if you have a well thought out resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another downside to be aware of is how easily you can be checked out on the net. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing illegal, but enough to rock our thinking about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a comprehensive set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!