With today’s apps and websites making it easier and easier to apply for jobs, sometimes sight-unseen, it’s a volume-game, right?  One might assume this based on the ease to apply that the more you apply to, the more chances you have of getting a job.  I disagree!

More and more, companies use technology to organize their hiring efforts.  According to GetFive’s blog and citing Capterra – 75 percent of large companies use ATSs and according to the Jobscan blog, 491 out of 500 of the Fortune 500 use an ATS.  What does that mean for the job-seekers?  Every time they apply for a job, they can be tracked.  Not all companies track and parse the same, but let’s assume that most can easily view your application and user profile.  From this, they can tell how many of their jobs you’ve applied for.  In many cases, they track if you’ve ever been considered for any roles, and how far you’ve gotten.  Some have more detailed metrics that they observe and pull from, but we’re not looking to get too deep into the numbers/weeds here.

This first point is that when you apply to a company, do it early and often, and perhaps indiscriminately, it can, and often IS tracked.  In my personal experience, I’ve seen people that apply to over 1,000 jobs.  Ouch!  I’m sure you’re thinking wow, who does that?!  But it happens more than you think, and as companies track this data longer, and longer, the frequency of the 1k’ers (made that up on the fly, it’s tacky, I know) is growing.  Let’s think about that though.  I’m sure most people reading this would say “One thousand applications to the same company… that’s nuts!”.  I’m inclined to agree!  However, what number isn’t “nuts”?  500? 350?  200?  50?  9?  You could say “nuts” is in the eyes of the beholder.  Therein lies the problem.  How many applications do companies or their Talent Acquisition representatives feel are too many?  A wise person wants to stay below whatever the “nuts”-line is.

The next facet is the “Why facet”.  Why did you apply for the job?  Some people are very well-aligned for the role that they apply for and of course there’s no negative stigma toward that.  However, some people are too junior, some have a different set of technologies while working the same type of role, and lastly, some aren’t even close to a fit (for instance a salesperson applying for a DevOps role).  In these three areas, if the viewer sees a huge volume of applications by the candidate coupled with a mismatch, they are inclined to reject quickly, and possibly even remember names.  Uh oh.  Remember names?  Yes, even very busy recruiters and hiring managers will remember names from time-to-time of people who are complete mismatches or over-apply etc.  You never want to have them remember you for the wrong reasons – justifiably or not.

Finally, you should be thinking value.  I’ve written posts about creating a business plan instead of a resume before, and this advice isn’t far off.  Your thoughts on value are around what value you potentially bring to this prospective employer.  If you’re applying to their job on a job board, networking site or their careers page, you can safely assume that they don’t know your value (yet).  Because of this, you want to make sure what you’re sending in isn’t wasting their valuable time by having them read a mismatched application.  Instead, you want to restrict your applications to roles that you are a relative and relevant fit for.  This isn’t the lottery!  It’s your career, and investment.  Just like any financial advisor would tell you that lottery tickets are a waste of your money, this talent advisor is telling you that mass-submitting your resume regardless of fit for the role is a waste of your time.

So what now?  I’ll write another post on how to have a more targeted search, but for now, I hope you understand at least what NOT to do!

 

A little about me:  Currently, I’m a Principal Talent Advisor at Oracle.  I’ve been involved in Human Capital for over 20 years with the last 15+ in Talent Acquisition and advisement.  My quest is to expedite hiring processes, bring the best people to the best companies, and help people along the way.