A modern job search campaign is by nature fairly Byzantine. While the net has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and possible challenges for job hunters.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personal, highly aimed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network is your inside source for information and job leads.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job board and got over 600 responses in a calendar week. For a single opening. That’s increased job hunting competition.

Had a strong person contacted us before we ran the ad, they could have landed the position prior to having all that competition. How? By finding someone who knows an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 11 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your application matierials carefully! When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily taken out with a fast triage process. How? The same way any HR professional would. By passing over resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us grounds not to employ them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating job hunters whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by passing over candidates who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the good news is that job sites give you a sense of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, if you have a well thought out resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another potential problem to be aware of is how quickly you can be looked up on the internet. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing illegal, but enough to rock our thoughts about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a encompassing set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!