Are you going to take some time over the holidays to begin your job search? Your first inclination is probably going to be to hop online to a giant job board and see what’s available in your field, right? A recent survey by CareerXroads revealed that only 15 percent of positions were filled through job boards. Sifting through hundreds of jobs online might make it feel like you’re making progress, but what this statistic tells us is that people are still hiring people they know, and not just collecting online resumes.
So where else should you be conducting your search? If you have a previous manager that you clicked with, ask them out to coffee, they may have a spot on their team for you or know someone who is hiring. There are industry-specific recruiting agencies like ours that you can meet with, and you might try attending a professional association meeting to talk with other professionals like you. Lastly, if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to start volunteering, you may find your next opportunity while giving back to the community. While this probably sounds like you’re going to allocate a lot of time and energy to finding the next career opportunity, over 70 percent of people cite networking as the source of their new job.
Let’s just say that you did find your “dream job” on a job board, is there any value in networking at the company posting the job? Yes. Oftentimes if you don’t have a contact inside the company, this is the only way you’d know it was available. While the job may have been listed internally, and candidates within the company have been able to apply, it’s possible that the postion is one that doesn’t have a match within the current pool of employees. If you know someone within the company that you could take out to lunch, or could pass along a note about you to the hiring manager, that is time well spent. In addition, if you are working with a recruiter inside your industry, they may have more insight into what is happening with in the company, the status of the job, and could help get your resume to the right person, not just a generic email inbox.
If you are just getting started, try to identify where you want to work and start networking with the people you know at each organization. Even if you don’t know anyone at your ideal companies, you probably “know someone who knows someone,” and you’ll be able to activate your network from there. We’ll be posting ideas for companies with open positions and candidates looking for their next opportunity, so visit us often for the latest hiring tips and search strategies.