When it comes time to find a new job, you may feel overwhelmed. If you’ve been out of the workforce for a while or you’ve been with the same company for years, you might have some catching up to do. It’s not always easy to find the right position for your qualifications, make your resume stand out, and nail the interview. If you need help finding a new job, you’re certainly not alone. But you’ll have a much better shot of getting noticed for the right reasons if you avoid these job search mistakes.
- Sending Out Unsolicited Resumes: At best, blindly sending out resumes is a waste of your time. At worst, it could even make a business consider you to be a nuisance. You might think that this tactic could work in your favor, since you may not be competing with countless other applicants. But unless you’re submitting your resume for an open position, it’s likely that it’ll be rejected by an organization’s applicant tracking system. In the end, that means you’ll be spending valuable resources for no return. If your aim is to find your dream job, you’ve got to use your time more wisely.
- Focusing Only on Open Positions: Although it might seem more efficient to concentrate only on the positions for which a given company has advertised, you shouldn’t sell yourself short. Sometimes, limiting yourself to only one opportunity could cause you to miss out. In many cases, positions are actually created for a given applicant. A business owner might be so impressed with a candidate that they find a spot within the company for them even if they aren’t the best fit for the original job posting. After all, 57% of organizations view employee retention as a problem — so you might be considered for a position that’s just opened up or could become vacant in the near future. That’s why it’s a good idea to focus on the company itself, rather than getting tunnel vision about a particular job placement. If you can impress the hiring manager in your interview and show what you could bring to the table, they might be inclined to make a place for you at their organization anyway.
- Not Perfecting Your Cover Letter and Resume: When you’re in need of job search help, you can’t afford to ignore the state of your cover letter or resume. Both of these documents need to be tailored to fit the position and the organization for which you hope to interview. Having too much information in either one can be detrimental to your application, as no hiring manager wants to read through multiple paragraphs about why the job would be wonderful for you or several pages of work experience from 20 years ago. Make sure both highlight the correlation between your skills and the job in question, are free of typos and unrelated information, and contain everything you’ve been asked to include. Otherwise, you could end up in the “no” pile from the very start.
- Failing to Get Job Search Help: Your recruitment agency is your most valuable resource for job application and interview information. They’re there to connect you with the highly rated companies that have ideal job openings for someone just like you. They’ll help refine your resume and promote you as the incredible candidate that you are. Plus, they’ll have access to the information you’ll need to truly impress during the interview process. If you’ve faced facts that you need job search help, staffing companies will have your back.
We’ve made providing job search help an integral part of our business. To find out more about how we can assist you during this process and open employment doors you never dreamed possible, please contact us today.