Finding More Quality Job Openings

By Nick D’Ambrosio

Almost every job seeker we speak with does the same things as they enter the job market. They call recruiters, post on job boards and tap their network. Most are frustrated by the results. While these tactics need to be done as part of your overall search strategy, by themselves they typically produce weak results.

What else can you do? We teach our clients how to significantly increase the number of interviews they secure by adding one additional tactic to the methods described above. They learn how to build a list of 100+ potential hiring companies that they won’t find through traditional methods. By doing this, they have doubled and even tripled the number of interviews they secured.

To see the best possible results you need to target companies where your skills will be seen as valuable. While the old saying, “it’s a numbers game” may be true, you waste valuable time blindly sending resumes to companies who don’t hire people with your particular set of skills.

Assuming your background is in storage, take an industry leader (we use EMC for our example) and do the following:

1. Visit their partner page and you will find many “storage related" vendors. This is a great starting point. Do this with other large storage vendors ( NetApp, Hitachi Data, Sun etc.) While not all of the partners you view will be appropriate, many will. This should result in at least 40+ targets.

2. Pick an industry trade show, go online and view the exhibitor list. You can view 100’s of potential targets by using this method. Visit the following link and look you will find many companies to put on our list. VMworld @ http://www.vmworld.com/registration.jspa

3. Look for companies that may not be directly in storage but would hire someone with skills in storage (i.e. disaster recovery, cloud computing, virtualization and networking). You can find these types of companies by typing in key words like “cloud computing” and visiting industry publications. The key is to understand which skills are transferable and find companies who will recognize this.

4.Are you interested in early stage companies? Venture Capital firms  list the companies they have invested in. Many show actual job openings within these companies. See the top VC’s in the technology space.

While the above will require effort on your part, it is a great way to separate yourself from the thousands of others who are waiting for companies to find them. Try this approach over the next sixty days and let us know what happens. We are confident you will be impressed with the results.

What Next?

Once you have built your list, it’s time to learn the most effective ways to approach these companies. To read more visit our blog and read “The best ways to approach hiring managers”.  http://firstroundcareeradvisoryservices.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-approach-hiring-managers.html