"How to avoid job boards and apply directly to employers"

Job boards! Don’t we all just love job boards (not really). There is no feeling more daunting than finding a job on your favorite job board, only to get that automated message that thanks for you for applying for the job but they decided to pursue other candidates. The worst part is that you don’t know why you were denied, you fail to get any feedback from the employer, they fail to tell you what was wrong with your resume (if anything), they fail to let you know why you weren’t chosen and they fail to tell you if you were even considered. These are just some of

Did you know this!

Once I tell you this, you will probably do your best utter best to never apply for a job board again.

A recent study was done in which 5 people applied for their OWN position at a company they

WORKED FOR.

There was an Analyst, Secretary, Accountant, Engineer and Chief Financial Officer. Each one of them applied for their own job using a job board. Can you guess how many of their resumes were actually referred via that job board? ZERO! Yes, zero!

Now let me ask you a question, if someone who works at a company cant get referred/hired for their own position, what makes you think that you can applying for a job via a job board and actually get referred? Now keep in mind, job boards does serve a purpose and for the most part, they do work BUT just because they work (kind of), it doesn’t meant that job boards are the most effective means of applying for a job.

Here is how to avoid job boards and to apply directly to employers :

The best thing to do when applying for a job is going directly to the source, directly to the person that’s making the hiring decision. Think about the chances of you getting called in for a job interview if your resume actually reached the person that’s making the hiring decision? It would increase dramatically (given that you’re qualified).

Now I know you’re probably asking, how do I reach the person that’s making the hiring decision? The answer is LinkedIN. It’s a shame to say this but LinkedIN is a very under utilized social platform for the majority of job seekers. What a lot of job seekers don’t know is that over 90% of recruiters and hiring manager are actually on LinkedIN searching for candidates like yourself.

What do I need to do on Linkedin?

I wanted to make this process as seamless as possible for you so I included the step by step on what you need to do ( with pictures). Lets take this actual example below:

Example:

I did my search on Indeed.com and I searched for “Finance Analyst” positions and everything

related. Here are the quick details of one of the jobs on my list:

 Position Name: Financial Analyst

  Company Name: Mercer

  Location: New York City Ok, not that we have this information, lets go to LinkedIn and find out who’s behind these jobs that we can contact.

Step 1:

The first thing you want to do is go over to LinkedIN and hit the “Advanced” tab:

Once you log into your LinkedIN profile, you will see the little tiny “advanced” link near the

microscope search button. Click that link.

Step 2:

Once you clink that link you will land on the advanced page. On this page you will see a bunch of advanced search features. You will notice that you can search for people and groups by country,state, languages, schools, etc. What we want to do first is search by “Current Company”. Be sure it is “Current” and not “Past”.

The “Current Company” should be on you’re the left hand side of the page. Once you locate that section, click the “+Add” at the very bottom of that list:

Step 3:

Once you click on the “+Add” tab, you will see a text field pop up. In that field, type in the name of the company. You will instantly see your companies name pop up. In my case, my company name was “Mercer”.

Step 4:

After you insert the company name, you will notice that the right hand side of your screen (where you can view your connections) will begin to populate with what you’re searching for. The next thing you want to do is go to the location column right ABOVE the “current company” section.

Go in there and repeat the same process you did in step 2. So go in, and type in the location in which your position is located. Don’t know where the position is located? Go back to where you found the job on Indeed and grab it from there.

Step 5:

Once you finish step 3 and you did populated your “advanced” fields, you instantly see a list of professionals that are associated with the company you chose and location. You will see in my list, all of these professionals are current employees of Mercer (the company I aspire to work for).

But in better news, I found the Finance Director! How valuable is this? Remember, I am applying for the “Finance Analyst” position and who better to send my resume to than the Finance Director?

So, be sure to send your resume to someone associated with the field you have interest in. Often times you will find that you cannot find anyone related to the field you have interest in that is just fine. For instance, I would still reach out to the sales director even though I’m applying for a finance job. Reason being, employees within companies look out for each other.

If those sales professional knows that the Finance Director is seeking a Finance Analyst, why

wouldn’t they refer their resume over to that person? You can use this feature with just about any job that is out there. All you have to do is connect with them and direct message then with your resume. This way, your resume is going directly to the source rather than getting caught up in job boards.