Don’t Apply to Jobs
We all apply to jobs through a job portal. But that doesn’t work. Why?
You might have just graduated from college, or looking for a change in your career, or you are about to graduate in the upcoming months. What is common among these ideas is that you need to find a new job, a job that you are going to like, quick to find, and also gets you the paycheck you wish. Now, if you go on to apply to jobs, that is not going to work, at least not with a high percentage of success. You are most likely to fail, and you are lucky if you get one or two interviews, let alone getting an offer.
In this age we are living right now that is almost everything is entirely digitalized, applying to jobs became %100 digital, as well. It is not like it was used to be where we would just go into an office building and drop our CV. Instead, we drop it in a LinkedIn job application. And we never know if it is being looked at or not. That is why applying to jobs on a portal never works. There are better ways to do so, more efficient and faster. What are those ways and how can you do it the best way possible?
When a position opens in a company, the first question, that is always being asked is “do you know anyone?”
Before the company gets to the phase where they open up an ad on a job portal, a lot of people within the company are asked the same question. Whether they know someone or not that would qualify for the position. %70 of the time, the position does not even go into the job portals because it is filled through those referrals. When that %30 of chance happens and the ad is put on a portal, the company generally gets more than 50 or 100 resumes in total. You are one of those 100 resumes and what chance do you think you have to stand out from the crowd and get selected for an interview? Pretty low, right? That is why, you have to know people, network, or at least do stuff that not many people do and it is actually pretty easy to get a CEO’s or a recruiter’s attention with simple tricks.
We all know networking is a key thing to finding a job but how do you even network, especially during COVID times where every kind of event is canceled? Simple, digital! For example, let’s say you are looking for a position in marketing. The simplest thing would be to go into LinkedIn and look at every marketing manager around the region where you want to work. Go into their profiles, identify the company they are working at, find their company e-mail (this is crucial, if they did not state their personal e-mails on any kind of social media, do not send an e-mail to their personal e-mail), and look at their socials for some time to identify something in common or some kind of achievement they have made.
Once you do these steps, compose a personalized e-mail about that person and the company he/she is working at. Do not mention the vacancy, try to connect with them, learn from their expertise, and everything. Create the connection and do not lose the connection after a few meetings, continue to ask them about their company, if there are any hardships they are facing, etc. Come up with a solution to their problems, and once you do that, they will know that you are capable enough to solve problems within the company and most probably talk about a vacancy at the company to you.
However, this process takes time as making connections is not an easy thing. But these connections will last forever if you play your cards right. This is not only a way to find a job, but also a way to know people, make connections, and so forth.
“One right person can change your life.”
Another thing that you can do if you do not have that much time or you really liked a job and you want to get in on it before anyone else is taken in, is that instead of applying for the job on the portal, research the company, look at what they do, find people within the company (if it is a startup, CEO or founder would be the best bet, if not the manager of that department) and send them personalized e-mails talking about you, the company, and the job. Make it as personal as it gets and try to attract the attention of that person. Remember, they probably get e-mails like that all the time. Do not just say that you are interested in the job, make it plain and simple, what you can add to the company, department, your experiences, and so on. And follow-up if you do not get an answer. All. The. Time.
As you can see, there are some ways that you can attract the attention of the people within that company, network, and meet with people for the job rather than applying to it on a job portal. You can always come up with other creative methods to attract the attention of a specific person, but the most important thing is to do things that many do not, go beyond the line, make effort, people will realize that.
