One of the most important aspects of Job Hacking is to stop wasting time on approaches that are ineffective. If people spent less time on what doesn’t work, they can spend more time on what does work. So, let’s start by calling out the biggest time suck of the job search: Applying to job boards.
In the minds of the vast majority of job seekers, applying to job boards is actually the only way they know of to get a job. There are hundreds of online job boards out there, Indeed and Glassdoor being among the most famous, and each job board posts thousands upon thousands of job postings. While thousands of job postings would seem like a good thing, there’s one major flaw with the entire job board system, and that is competition.
For each job posting you submit your resume to, there are likely hundreds of other people who are also submitting their resumes for the same role. You must believe me that this is not an exaggeration! Recent studies show that white-collar job postings often receive 500 or more resumes who are competing for the gig. So each time you submit a resume, it’s essentially playing a mini-lottery. I’ve worked with numerous job seekers who have applied to literally hundreds of job postings without landing even a single job interview. Think about how soul-crushing that can be.
Additionally, most online job boards utilize an Applicant Tracking System, or ATS. This is software that automatically reads people’s resumes and eliminates many of them based on certain arbitrary factors, such as the lack of a particular keyword it was looking for. That means that there’s a good chance that your resume will never be seen by human being in the first place!
Finally, even if you do get lucky enough to land an interview because of applying to an online job posting, odds are that the hiring manager will interview a bunch of other candidates as well. The most common number of candidates brought in for a particular position is 5. So, even if you’ve been lucky enough to get an interview, there’s still only a 20% chance that you’ll get the job.
Are job boards completely worthless, then? Not necessarily. In future posts, we’ll explain how you can leverage job boards to your advantage. However, let’s make it very clear: Applying to online job boards should never be your primary approach to searching for a job. The tricks we’ll teach you all make for decent secondary approaches, but the primary approach for getting a job has nothing to do with job boards.
What, then, is the recommended primary approach? For that, you’ll have to read on.