3% to an 8% Chance Of Landing An interview By Applying To An Online Job
Some experts say that you have just a 3% to an 8% chance of landing an interview by applying to an online job ad if you are not known to the hiring manager
Yet dozens of our clients come to us after applying to a hundred or more online jobs with no success. The practice is left over from the days when people used to apply to ads in the newspaper. The world has changed from those days and still, thousands of people around the world keep using this unhelpful approach to landing an interview.
Long ago, when firms advertised in a newspaper, it reached those who subscribed or purchased the newspaper and so the ad would attract 20 to 100 applications. Now, when employers post online it goes worldwide and it is not uncommon for employers to receive hundreds applications.
Employers No Longer Have Time To Review All Of The Applications Online In Detail
Some experts say your chances at landing an interview from an online ad are about as good as winning the grand prize in a national lottery.
Your odds are completely different if you are known to the hiring manager and she or he asks to have your application included in the ones received for review.
How do you land interviews?
You need to get ahead of the posting. In this way you can have a conversation with the hiring manager at the stage when they are considering the idea of posting for the position. This takes inside knowledge and means building a team of 15 to 40 lookouts who will let you know about positions they hear about before they are posted.
Once a position is posted, most hiring managers feel very uncomfortable talking with anyone about it but before it is posted, they are sometimes interested in such conversations because it might inform what they ask for in the job description.
And… Sometimes the position never gets posted because our clients get invited to an interview directly from such a conversation. The company gets who they need without the encumbrances of posting and interviewing.
Another Way of Looking At Networking
You have probably been told to network but we prefer to use a term used by Mark Franklin from Career Cycles, called Field Research. Networking often brings to mind social events where you meet someone. shake their hand and exchange business cards. It is often a very uncomfortable process.
Field research is not like this at all. In field research you get to:
Learn in depth about the person’s career path, knowledge of the industry, their role and their company ( especially its culture)
Focus on getting to know and be known by as many people as possible who are actually doing the roles you are curious about doing,
Help those you meet to see the strengths that you would bring to their line of work so that they would feel comfortable introducing you to others in the field
In field research, your overall goal is to establish a trusting relationship with each person you meet to recruit them as a lookout for jobs that are not yet posted and engage them in your search by asking them to suggest 2-3 other people that they think would be helpful to your search.
The best part of this stage is that these interviews often build the platform for a future mentorship or collaborative relationshipx that will help you when you do land your new position.
7 Steps To Create An Effective Team Of Lookouts
Step 1 Establish the job title you want, the strengths you want to use in your next role, your core values that drive these strengths, kind of culture and working conditions and the location you prefer.
Step 2 Identify 20 people doing the kind of work that you think you would like to do. Put their name, and contact information in a spreadsheet. You can create this list through your personal contacts and through research on LinkedIn and Google. Don’t spend any time reading about their role or background just build the list
Step 3 Research each person and rate how closely their work matches the desires you came up with in Step 1
Step 4 Reboot your resume and LinkedIn to reflect your accomplishments
Step 5 Prepare a very short template email explaining that you are planning your career transition. You are particularly interested in something you discovered about them or their work in your research. State how you would like to learn from their experience. Give your pitch. Ask for 15 to 20 minutes of their time. Ask to speak with them before you will have completed this stage of your search. Never ask for a job.
Step 6 Prepare a set of questions to ask in your field research interviews
Step7 Send your emails and follow the initial email every three days with 4 enthusiastic phone calls alternating with email messages encouraging them to reply
Are you in a career Transition Or A Job Search? Please share in the comments section below, your questions you would like us to answer in future posts or podcasts
Sinead Mellett PhD, MSc, BA is Chief Executive Officer, Career Aviators – Ireland. Sinead Mellett, holds a doctorate in Philosophy, a Masters in Technology Management, a Specialist Diploma in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship and a Degree in Marketing. She brings international industry experience working in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Europe in diverse sectors, including academia, banking, research, the public sector, retail, manufacturing, training and media. Sinead has many publications in the area of e-learning, practice-based learning, green innovation, micro-business and small and medium enterprise. In 2019 Sinead completed a year of training and supervised practice in the Career Aviators methodology, helping clients to find positions in which they will excel, value highly and love to do
Wayne Greenway is the Chief Executive Officer for Career Aviators - Canada. a Certified B Corporation® helps professionals, managers, and executives find positions in which they will excel, value highly, and love to do. The profits from our work support programs to help vulnerable youth flourish in the face of highly stressful life situations.
