Networking is more effective as a means for securing that elusive job opportunity. Here’s how to maximise the opportunities provided by professional networks.
As a job seeker, you have just come across an interesting job advertisement. You read through the job advertisement time and time again, and convinced that you are qualified for the job, you went in search of your resume, polished and updated it. As part of the requirement for the job, you wrote a beautiful cover letter and together with your resume applied for the job. You waited for days, weeks and months for an opportunity to attend interviews, but none came. The employer never contacted you, so you never got the opportunity to prove yourself. It is indeed possible to solve this problem through networking.
A large number of employed people have had this experience at some point in their working careers. One former applicant recently told me that he went through this process at least 100 times in his working career. Guess how many responses he got? None. If you are thinking that this former applicant is less qualified, or perhaps incompetent, you are missing the point. Indeed, many applicants who fail to get contacted by hiring managers are often more qualified than those who get hired eventually.
Why Some Applicants never get Interview Opportunities
Every year, Human Resources’ exclusionist policy called “job advertisement”, frustrates many job seekers out of the job market. This may not be entirely surprising. Human resources’ managers receive thousands of responses for every single job opportunity advertised. As their primary responsibility, they must go through the lot and fill up the vacancies within a limited time frame. HR professionals have now indicated that no matter how good your resume is, it may never get read by hiring managers for two reasons.
1. Hiring Managers are very Busy People
First, hiring managers are very busy people and rarely have the time to read through all the resumes they receive for every job opening. As a result, they usually delegate this responsibility to recruiters. Again, it is impracticable for recruiters to look through all the resumes and applications dumped on them by their hiring managers. The recruiters would usually review a few of the applications, select some for further processing, and discard the rest. According to one HR professional, this constitutes two-third of the reason why many applicants don’t get an interview opportunity.
2. The Application Tracking System (ATS) is Programmed to Reject many Applications
The use of the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) tends to lessen the burden of recruiters because it has the capacity to screen large number of applications faster than the manual sorting system. However, the ATS is programmed to select only applications created in a format readable by the ATS. Hence, no matter how good your application may be, the ATS will reject it unless it meets the specified text criteria. This is the second reason why lots of applicants never get an interview opportunity.
In the last ten years, I have interviewed a large number of former job applicants on how they obtained their present jobs. About two-third of the answers I got were the same, networking. My conclusion from interacting with these former job seekers is that networking remains the best approach for bypassing HR’s recruitment trap. Thus, networking, in my opinion, is the most effective way to obtain that job or career changing opportunity.
Hiring Managers Require Job Applicants to Tell Their Stories
To be considered eligible for a job opening, hiring managers often require that job applicants tell their stories. What constitutes an applicant’s story may vary depending on circumstances. However, hiring managers usually want to know more about the applicant’s personality, skills, experience, and past record of performance. They also expect to know how you will apply your skills and experience towards improving the business of their organizations. Hiring managers expect to know why they should hire you instead of other applicants seeking for the same job.
Getting the job depends on the extent you can convince the hiring managers with your story. Claims about yourself and your capabilities are usually more believable if corroborated by a trusted and reliable third party. Hiring managers are therefore more likely to give better consideration to candidates referred to them by reliable third parties.
Do Corporates Prefer Internal Job Sourcing?
Many organizations now resort to some form of internal arrangements for employee sourcing. These organizations carry out job adverts only to fulfil statutory requirements. Internal employee sourcing has become a popular means by which many organizations now fill their vacant key positions. These organizations rarely advertise such key positions in the open job market. Internal employee sourcing simply means getting the right person for the job through contacts or professional networks.
The reason why some corporates fill their vacancies through contacts and networks is usually economic in nature. Large corporate organizations budget for employment processes as part of their financial management strategy. Small and medium sized organizations do not always have the leverage to commit such expenditure in conducting bogus employment exercises. They simply resort to internal sources to fill their job vacancies. This is where networking becomes very effective.
Professional Networking to the Rescue
Rather than dropping your resumes and applications into HR’s dark holes, job applicants should seek out their professional networks. Professional networks may include friends, school mates, former work colleagues, customers. It also includes those who know and have followed your career progression and can confirm your skills and competences. Let your professional networks tell or corroborate your story. To enable your professional networks give you a good referral, provide them with up-to-date information about yourself, your skills and experiences, and your achievements. This will enable your connections make informed judgment about how to assist if and when the opportunities arise.
You may also like to read other interesting articles such as:
2. Still on Managing your Boss
3. How Corporate Environment Shapes Your Post-Employment Behaviour
4. Managing Time: The Dilemma of being a Last-Minute Manager
Please check-out my new book:
From Paid Employment to Start-up: How to Navigate the Transition.
The book shows how you can leverage on your skills, experiences and contacts while employed, to set up a sustainable entrepreneurial career of your desire post-employment.
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