It pays to be found: Get the job of your dreams to find you!

Things have changed significantly in the way people look for jobs, and how jobs are now looking for people. You know the drill, you need to have a profile online on one of the job sites, and if you are into a specific profession (chances suggest you more than likely are) you go on the job boards which cater to that industry, look up jobs and start applying! That should be enough right? …..wrong!!

Let me explain why.

‘I’m back on the market’, exclaimed a friend, referring to her renewed job search which initiated mainly from fears of expected layoffs at her present employer. I asked what her job hunting strategy was and she mentioned she had been mainly looking online at the job boards. However, she said, she never heard back from almost anywhere she applied. ‘I mostly get these automated thank you responses…..those which say that your resume has been submitted and will be reviewed, and I never hear back again!’.
She mentioned that it was mainly the recruiters who found her on the job boards, or in their databases which landed her with interviews.


The more I thought about it, the more sense it made, but just to be sure, I called up a friend who works for a major finance and recruiting firm. ‘We get a lot of junk mail’ he said. ‘It’s tough to go through thousands of resume’s and search for a particular skill, years ago we bought a software to include candidate’s skill sets, experience and other information, but what the software does not tell us is whether the applicant is still looking for a job!’. ‘So’, he continued ‘we’d rather go online or on campus, see who is really looking for a job actively and reach out to those candidates’.


We have had these job boards for a little over a decade now. Jobsite giants like Monster and Hotjobs have millions of profiles, often more than one for the same person. People often don’t update their profiles after finding the job, or access the job boards. These users are classified as ‘inactive’ in the system, based on the last log-in date. It is obvious that the inactive records are piling up.


Recruiters know that, so when they go looking for that perfect candidate, they want to make sure that the person in still active. How do they determine that? Often by looking at the last login and or profile update date. It’s important to be noticed to get an interview, but more importantly the recruiters need to know that you exist! So if you are looking for a job, or just feeling the market, go and update your profile, you will be surprised on how many new hits your resume will get.


You don’t even have to change much in your profile, while updating your work experience, certifications and skills makes sense, even if you just click on the update link with no changes, you will still show up as an ‘active’ user.


Years ago, while in graduate school, we once had a guest speaker come in for a talk. He was a partner at Accenture, ‘the irrefutable secret to finding a job is the number of new connections you make on a daily basis’, he said ‘you need to let the whole world know that you are looking, sooner or later your dream job will find you!’

Good luck with your search. May the best job find you.