The World of Online Applications
You know the story – you’ve found an amazing and diverse sounding position posted online, with a company which you admire and would love to work with. And then you see it, 500+ applicants!
“Why didn’t I see this sooner?”
“Applying is probably pointless by now”
A couple of thoughts that may have crossed your mind. Now, whilst applying at that moment is far from pointless, it does present a challenge. It can be frustrating when you’re applying for roles which are a great fit for your background and skills, you’ve revamped your resume multiple times and you still don’t even get a phone call. The ‘problem’ is, that when a company has that many resumes to review for multiple openings, you’ll be lucky if your resume receives 15 seconds of the reviewers’ time, and that’s if it even gets reviewed at all.
There is hope!
It’s going to take something which many still don’t utilize well enough (even in this day and age) and that is to network! You should be using all the tools at your disposal here - your trusted recruiting partner will often have a worthwhile connection with a hiring manager within a business you’re looking at, and can ensure that your resume isn’t lost in the black hole of an internal portal (as it too often is).
Alongside this, use LinkedIn to check your 1st and 2nd connections within a company – you’ll be surprised how much of a small world it becomes with the power of 2nd connections!
Last and very much least – hit apply. You’ve got to be in it to win it. But don’t stop there, try to identify who the most relevant person is to reach out to (again, utilize your recruiting partner) and drop them a short note making them aware of your application. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it could well be the difference between getting noticed or not.
Author: Alex Biddulph
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