You’re not going crazy! If your job hunt is stagnating, it might be because you’re spending way too much time applying via online job boards. Why?
Hiring managers and recruiters are just as exasperated by the ineffectiveness of job boards as you are. The boards deliver way too big a haystack of candidates, making it darn near impossible for in-house recruiters to find you–even if you are the perfect needle.
According to a recent study, 70% of respondents said that job boards deliver too many candidates per post and 59% of indicated that they don’t have enough resources to review all applications when they do come in.
So what’s a smart Gun supposed to do? Use the job boards to figure out who’s hiring, and instead of applying into the black hole, hustle to figure out if you can find another way into the company through your personal contacts. Remember: 80% of all jobs are still landed through old-fashioned networking vs. 11% on the job boards. Networking is a learned skill; while it may be time-consuming at first, the ROI overdelivers every time.
