Making your Job Search Sexy?

Online job search can be just as challenging for Recruiters as it can be for Jobseekers. They will get hundreds of resumes for certain jobs and not a drop in the bucket for others. If they get many, they'll have to quickly whittle down the candidates for the best of the pack. How do they do that? By looking at your resume.

Think about when you go to buy a car. Most people do their homework. Perhaps compare models online, buy a couple of magazines, look up Kelly Blue Book and Consumer Report reviews on specific models. Then they go to the dealer and what do they do? They look at the car. They sit in the car. And they test drive the car.

Your goal, as a Jobseeker, is to get the Recruiter (if you are a Recruiter reading this, you'll agree) is to want to "test-drive" you, i.e. have a phone or an in-person interview. But online job searching makes you just one of many and for the Recruiter, a well-educated guess based on just how good a job you did on marketing yourself through your resume.

The Recruiter's goal, is two-fold.

1. To fill the jobs quickly within a measurable and reasonable amount of time, and
2. To hire the right candidates who will stay with the company long term (i.e. lower turnover.)

If you have joined us as a member at Gen Plus, you are either posting your resume for potential Recruiters, OR you are a Recruiter looking for great candidates. In either case, we want to make the job easier for you. We created the online interview (take a look at the sample interview to see how it creates a romance between the Recruiter and the Jobseeker) with two goals in mind.

1. Help the Recruiter target good candidates for phone interviews. Our online interview gives wonderful insight into our candidates and reduces initial phone interview time, i.e. the Recruiter can more easily suss out who is and who isn't the right fit with greater accuracy and less time wasted.
2. Help the Jobseeker get a foot through the Recruiter's cyber-door.

Normally a Jobseeker must wait for the phone call in order to make a personal impression. With the online interview, the Jobseeker has the opportunity to thoughtfully answer the types of questions a Recruiter wants answered in a first phone interview. Don't kid yourself. If you are older than 50, then your self-presentation, your personal branding and self-promotion has to be top notch. You are not competing with other 50-plussers. You are competing with 20 and 30-somethings and it is a challenging job market out there.

If your resume is full of relevant information, that equates to the research that you'd put into your car search. But the online interview...well that is the Recruiter walking into the dealership, seeing the car, and opening the door to get in the driver's seat. Do a good job with your online interview and they'll take you for a test drive.

We'll talk about resume building and personal branding in the next few days.