The Most Effective Strategies for Landing Your Next Job

Transcription

1 The Most Effective Strategies for Landing Your Next Job The facts and figures that prove which approaches work best (and which are a waste of time) Plus: The latest research showing how long your job search should take

2 The facts about the facts used this report Many job-hunters waste days, weeks and months struggling to make the most of ineffective job-search strategies. But it s difficult to convince them that there are better methods and approaches. This report uses the latest facts and figures to make the case. Every year for the past 10, the employment consulting company CareerXroads surveys employers across the country (excluding non-profits, government entities and hospitals) about their success using different mediums to hire employees. The surveys, titled CareerXroads Source of Hire Study, are the only surveys of their kind. They re highly regarded. And they re widely quoted in leading newspapers and magazines (the Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Smart Money, the New York Times, etc.). However, never before have the results from multiple years of those studies been compiled, combined with other job-hunt strategy research and presented as they are below. (For a complete listing of all the sources used, see the index at the end of this document.) A key consideration You ll soon see that the top three job-search strategies listed below all require focusing your efforts on specific companies; getting to know them, and letting them get to know you. However, most job-seekers make the mistake of applying for job after job with no regard for who the employer is, what the company typically looks for in a new employee, and how it typically hires. That s the job-seeker who quickly becomes frustrated. No matter how many résumés they submit (and they tend to submit many), they don t get invited for many interviews. The #1 most-effective strategy: Take another job with the company According to the latest CareerXroads survey, 50.3% of all jobs are filled by promotions and internal transfers of current employees. This is a key finding for two reasons: Once you realize that more than half of all jobs advertised will be awarded to internal candidates, it makes it easier to understand why landing the job you want is so difficult: You re not only competing against other external candidates; you re also up against internal candidates and they hold a significant advantage over you. On the flip side, now that you know internal candidates usually win out, a new job-search strategy materializes: research the best employers in your target industry, take a less-than-ideal job with one of those companies, then wait for an opportunity to advance or transfer. A review of the survey data dating back to 2005 shows that this trend is only growing stronger. In 2005, just 38% of jobs were filled by internal candidates (compared to 50.3% today). For younger job-seekers and those making career changes internships are one of the most effective avenues for getting your foot in an employer s door. A 2011 study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers revealed that a whopping 58% of interns were offered full-time jobs once their internship ended.

3 The #2 most-effective strategy: Get a referral from someone connected to the company According to the latest research from CareerXroads and Right Management, employers find 27% to 42% of their new-hires (people hired from outside the company) via referrals. Even better, the CareerXroads study reveals who these primary referral sources tend to be: Friends of the job-hunter who also have friends working at the company. Alumni from the job-hunter s college who work at the company (or know employees there). Vendors who do business with the company (and know the job-hunter). Customers of the company who know the job-hunter. Employees at the company who know the job-hunter. It s important to note that this strategy is even more effective when you don t have a specific job lead. Why? Because, according to the Boston-based executive coaching / outplacement firm ClearRock, some 70% of jobs are not advertised, which means you need to know someone at the company just to learn about the opportunities. While LinkedIn offers an easy way to find and establish relationships with these potential referral sources, you should know that, in a 2009 Harvard Business Review survey of 2,207 executives, 95% said inperson meetings were key to building strong, long-term relationships. Sadly, according to a new study by economists at the Columbia Business School, most job-hunters only spend 9% of their time pursuing this job-search strategy which explains why so many have a tough time finding work. Yes, asking family, friends, casual acquaintances and strangers for referrals can be painfully uncomfortable, but, as the researchers at CareerXroads put it, Job seekers will never get better odds! A review of the CareerXroads survey data dating back to 2005 shows that this strategy has always been effective: the percentage of hires made through referrals has remained remarkably consistent over the last five years. Going back even further (to one of the toughest periods of unemployment ever), a University of Pennsylvania history professor has discovered that, during the Great Depression, the majority (almost 55%) of manufacturing workers in Philadelphia found jobs using this same strategy. The #3 most-effective strategy: Visit the company s careers / jobs Web page According to CareerXroads, 22.3% of the job-hunters hired from outside a company are people who used the company s website to find and /or apply for open positions. While the researchers at CareerXroads are the first to note that this figure has a major flaw (many of the job-seekers who end up on a company s career page are routed there via other sources, such as jobboard postings, referrals, etc.), it s still a job-search strategy worth pursuing primarily, because it s so easy to implement. Smart job-seekers will take this finding to heart and start regularly visiting the career / job pages at the companies where they want to work.

4 The #4 most-effective strategy: Apply for openings listed on job boards According to five years of CareerXroads surveys, employers typically find about 13% of their new-hires (people hired from outside the company) via job listings posted on job boards (which also shows this strategy is far less effective than the top three). What s more, in the latest CareerXroads survey, employers reported a huge increase, with 25% of their new-hires coming via job boards (most likely because so many unemployed job-seekers are now flooding job boards in search of work). However, 24% of companies plan to decrease their usage of job boards, because, they say, the tools generate mostly unqualified leads, according to a 2011 Corporate Executive Board survey. The largest job boards (CareerBuilder, Monster, HotJobs, Craigs List and Job Central) typically account for 57.3% of these hires. However, the small, industry-focused job boards account for 26.6% of the action and may work better for highly targeted or technical positions. According to the Wall St. Journal, there are now more than 60,000 online job boards. The #5 most-effective strategy: Market yourself to employers According to CareerXroads, employers find 5% to 9% of their new-hires (people hired from outside the company) by proactively searching for them on social networks (primarily LinkedIn), using other online resources (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), going through old résumés on file, mining external databases and other outreach efforts. The reason CareerXroads combined these disparate methods into one category is because none of them have proven very effective for employers (and, therefore, job-hunters). LinkedIn and other social media resources, for example, only account for less than 1% of new-hires. That said, employers surveyed by CareerXroads and Workforce Management say they see the value of social media recruiting and plan to increase their usage of it in the near future. Job-hunters who want to be found by employers using these tools and techniques should proactively submit their résumé to the targeted companies, make sure their LinkedIn profile is complete and loaded with keywords, follow and comment on the social media postings of employees, and find other ways to make themselves visible to internal recruiters who are proactively searching. The other strategies According to the latest CareerXroads survey, none of the following job-hunt strategies account for more than 2.4% of hiring activity: Take a temporary job in hopes it will lead to a permanent position (not including internships) = 2.4% of new-hires. Work with a headhunter or employment agency = 2.3% of new-hires. Apply to job-wanted listings in print (e.g., printed newspapers) = 2% of new-hires. Attend career fairs = 1.8% of new-hires.

5 Walk in to a business and leave your résumé = 0.7% of new-hires. How long it should take to land your next job There are multiple factors that can affect the length of your job-search (the current state of the economy, your experience and skills, the type of job you re looking for, your age, the quality of your résumé, the jobsearch strategies you employ, the amount of time you devote to the effort each day, your interviewing skills and more). But for estimating purposes, you can figure on the following: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job-hunters spent an average of five weeks looking for work when the economy was doing so well in Just one year later during the recession the average time it took to find a job jumped to 4.4 months (or 5.8 months for those older than 55), according to a survey from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In 2010, According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it typically took job-hunters 10 weeks to find work. According to a Lee Hecht Harrison study, most job-hunters who use a career coach find work 15% to 46% faster than those who don t. However, according to the Wall St. Journal, a career coach can cost $50 to $300 per hour (with hefty minimum fees). Of course, the overall effort expended by the job-hunter is what makes the biggest difference, and that s something many struggle with. According to a 2010 article in the Wall St. Journal, On average, surveys find, the unemployed in the U.S. spend 40 minutes a day looking for work and three hours and 20 minutes a day watching TV. What s more, the longer the search drags on, the harder it becomes. According to a study by economists at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, someone unemployed for six months is much less likely to find a job in the next month than someone unemployed for one month.

6 Information sources The information sources used to write this report are included below and organized by section. For more job-hunt facts and figures, see: The note While surveys show that personal connections are a primary source of hires, today's job seekers devote little time to their networks: Only 9% of their job search is spent contacting friends and relatives to find work, while 51% is devoted to finding ads and sending out applications, (research by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and Andreas Mueller of the Columbia Business School; Wall St. Journal, 8/22/11). The #1 most-effective strategy In 2011, 58% of interns were offered full-time jobs with their temporary employers up from about 35% in The vast majority of those interns (61%) were in paid internships, while only 38% of the unpaid interns were offered full-time employment (National Association of Colleges and Employers 2011 student/employer surveys; Workforce Management magazine, 8/11). The #2 most-effective strategy The vast majority of jobs (70%) are not advertised which means the only way of uncovering them is via networking (Ali Chambers, a vice president of ClearRock, an executive coaching and outplacement firm in Boston; Wall St. Journal, 1/20/09). Almost 95% of executives agree that in-person meetings are key to building strong, long-term relationships (Harvard Business Review survey of 2,207 executives who read the periodical, 6/09). While surveys show that personal connections are a primary source of hires, today's job seekers devote little time to their networks: Only 9% of their job search is spent contacting friends and relatives to find work, while 51% is devoted to finding ads and sending out applications, (research by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and Andreas Mueller of the Columbia Business School; Wall St. Journal, 8/22/11). During the Depression in Philadelphia, almost 55% of manufacturing workers found jobs through personal connections and another 35% simply by personal initiative, such as knocking on doors (analysis of interviews with 1930s-era job-seekers by University of Pennsylvania history professor Walter Licht; Wall St. Journal, 8/22/11). The #3 most-effective strategy

7 The #4 most-effective strategy There are more than 60,000 job boards on the Web (Wall St. Journal, 2/17/09). According to a December survey from the Corporate Executive Board, about 24% of companies plan to decrease their usage of third-party employment websites and job boards this year, because, they say, the tools generate mostly unqualified leads. In place of job boards, nearly 80% of the survey respondents said they plan to increase their use of alternative hiring methods, such as employee referrals and social media websites (Wall St. Journal, 1/18/11). The #5 most-effective strategy Although 63% of recruiters and recruiting supervisors say their organizations use social media to search for job candidates, the success rate is relatively low. Almost 53% of those organizations said 10% or fewer of their hires came through social networking. That said, more than half of senior recruiting executives say they expect their companies to increase the use of social networking to attract talent in the next 12 to 18 months (December 2010 Workforce Management survey; Workforce Management magazine, 2/11). The other strategies The time it takes to find a job Job-seekers who landed jobs in 2007 (just before the Great Recession) spent an average of five weeks looking for work. In 2010, it typically took job-seekers twice as long (10 weeks) to land a job (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, 5/11). The average job search in the third quarter of 2008 took nearly 4.4 months (Challenger, Gray & Christmas survey; Wall St. Journal, 12/18/08). People who use a career coach find jobs 15% to 46% faster than those who don t (study by talent management firm Lee Hecht Harrison; Wall St. Journal, 1/27/09). Most career coaches charge $50 to $300 per hour, with some requiring a minimum number of hours. On average, coach-client relationships last from six months to a year (Wall St. Journal, 8/10/08).

8 On average, surveys find, the unemployed in the U.S. spend 40 minutes a day looking for work and three hours and 20 minutes a day watching TV (Wall St. Journal, 5/6/10). The probability that a laid-off worker will find a job grows smaller the longer people have been out of work. Someone unemployed for six months is much less likely to find a job in the next month than someone unemployed for one month (according to studies in the 1980s by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago; Wall St. Journal, 9/25/09).