1000 things you don’t want in your job hunt

GOING ONLY FOR BRANDING

Do you stick only to the top name job boards or portals? If yes, you are denying your chances of getting into specialized positions. Specialized groups or non-enterprise companies often steer clear of top names. Choose your resume posting based on the kind of recruiters that visit a given job boards.

OUTSOURCING YOUR JOB HUNT

If you are getting a peer or a consultant to do your job hunt to the level of making contact with a prospective employer - stop doing this now. You can get help to the level of someone gathering job order description or information for you. You make connect - use the opportunity to create an impression.

RESUME BLASTING

Do you treat your resume like a promotional mailer? Distribute it all over the place or get a group email ID and broadcast? This means (1) Your cover letter or your resume is not customized for the job order in hand - Resume customization in lieu of arranging the skill sets for the given job order. (2) You do not follow up; there are employers who seek to measure your interest with the follow up method that you adopt. Plus your prospective employer or their job consultant knows that you are hunting around, which will reduce your market value.

Another aspect of mindless blasting is clicking the APPLY FOR THIS JOB button wherever you see it. When you submit your resume to a job where you do not have minimum qualifications - and you have a reason to doing so - make an offline connect.

75% of email traffic received by a generic ID such as careers@bestemployer.com is junk. If you rely only on email to get your next job - forget it. Your resume is probably in the junk folder.

PRIVACY

Do not write a tell tale resume with private information. We’ve heard enough and more about misuse of private information. Another aspect of privacy - using Internet at work to coordinate your job hunt. Wake up - Even a mom & pop street corner store can afford a network and a firewall in it.

INTERNET JOB HUNT BALANCE

You do not want to rely entirely on the internet for your job search. You do not want to deny the abundance of information that is available on the internet either. Depending on your skills and where you want to be working next, see if your target employers and their head hunters are hanging out in Print Classifieds or Job boards.

BEING COOL

Email is new age - it has been for over 15 years now :), but an email ID such as kewldude800@xyz.com is not a great identification. Also see what your social networking page is saying about you - from the eyes of a headhunter, hiring manager or recruiter. Please blogpost here about ‘Big Brother is watching‘. Also your resume or your job hunt webpage is a business document; it is not your platform to express political views.

Balance 994 things you do not want in your job hunt come under ‘common sense application’. We do not want to question your CSA quotient by putting down all of those 994. (Actually, 6 things as a title did not sound grandiose enough to attract your attention)