Its amazing how, many companies and talents (job seekers) share a strategy that’s flawed.
“More the number of people I send my job ad/resume, greater the talent/jobs I get. This is NOT True”.
Now, just because you make me look at an ad forcefully, doesn’t mean that I actually see or respond to it. UNLESS, its something relevant.
Following my previous post on how to write a job ad startup style, I thought it could be interesting to extend the discussion to how to effectively market your skills or jobs.
The Warfare
Let’s take a step back and look at what’s happening here! From my eyes, it looks like a warfare. For every job ad you throw into the job seeker world, they get agitated and start to throw resumes at you.
But unfortunately none of this makes sense because they’re not relevant most of the time and that’s why Job seekers hate online applications that remain dead.
Now, lets talk about something interesting — RELEVANCE. How do we make sure that our message is relevant to a group?
Now before answering that question, what do you think are the most frequent channels in which startups and talents find each other? It seems most common ways are,
- Through a friend
- Through a facebook post
- Through an event
Isn’t that interesting? When 90% of the job seekers and companies are investing in multiple other commercial channels to spread their resumes and job ads, above three seem to be the most relevant. (at least in our startup world)!
Now that brings us to something that I call, “The law of overlapping social circles”.
The more overlapped your social circle and your target’s* social circle is, more relevant your message gets.
Target* can be your dream job or talent!
Now lets say you are a startup looking for a UX designer. Isn’t this something every one of us can imagine?
Instead of posting your job post in every “job site and FB groups” in your vicinity, try the following strategy next time.
- Take a list of different facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter groups or design school portals (like Hyperisland) which shares UX interest.
- Try to join them and take a minute to listen to the conversations happening in those groups to understand them.
- THEN rather than posting your job ad and asking them apply for your job, how about treating them with some respect and love. Ask for their expertise and help (with leads, suggestions, other channels, etc).
Because every person can help you in 100s of ways. But many-a-times we see them only as job-seekers who should just apply for the jobs we share.
If you’re a job seeker, I’d love to extend the same strategy. Instead of just sending resumes and submitting online applications, try to find online and offline ways of overlapping your social circle with your dream companies’ or dream positions’.
End of the day, its not your skills that matter, its the business value your skills are expected to add that matters.
How can you sell that if you don’t even know what your dream company is talking about.
Let’s love, respect and celebrate each others skills rather than fighting a battle where both parties lose.
