One side of the Paradox: frustration of a Jobseeker and its anatomy

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Every Job seeker lives and contributes towards the creation  of a paradox where so many eligible jobseekers are  struggling to find a job they would love to do and on the other side a recruiter is dyeing to fill a position and unable to find a right candidate. Most of the times jobseekers blame recruiters for not replying on their applications and for not returning/answering calls. At the same time on the other side of this world recruiter would be fuming on jobsites for throwing up same search results and resumes they have interviewed and rejected earlier already, desperately getting on to social networks, changing keywords, checking with friends – having a bad day. Why on earth in this advanced technical savvy world connected through internet, a suitable candidate can’t reach the recruiter who needs him, why is it getting really difficult for a recruiter to find right candidate.

This paradox is a result of combined effort of candidate and recruiters/organizations. No one to blame for this alone, Organizations/recruiters would not have a slick recruitment management system, most of them won’t use it even if they have one. Candidates do not know techniques of job search and unfortunately most of the candidates apply for jobs they won’t suit, even worse things is jobseekers does not do a good job of updating their profile on jobsites, sometimes resumes looks shabby, unrelated to the expertise they have.

In India -there is not much information available for jobseekers to help them on how they can update their profiles, what enhances the possibility of their resume appearing on top of search results, unlike Europe, the USA, Indian job market is dominated by jobsites, social networks like LinkedIn are picking up but still not yet contributes to a significant percentage of hires in an year in an organizational context. Candidates need to know few facts to make their whole experience of job searching, fulfilling and smooth.

Do you understand the science of job search?

In order to understand the  art of job search first you need understand science behind candidate search, how recruiters search for suitable candidates?I have heard from so many people saying I " updated my resume 2 months back and did not get a single call so far". To find an answer to this  you need to understand candidate search works , you might be the best brain in your area but if your profile updated on jobsites does not tell that there is 100% chance that your resume will be ignored. It is the medium between you and recruiter plays key than your expertise. Most of the  jobseekers does not write their profile headline properly on Naukri.com, moster.com.They write summary of their experience which is wrong, you need to mention the key words around your technical expertise , if you are java developer just write that along with the technical skill set like, JSP,Servlets,Spring etc and avoid using words likes  “Technologist”, “Innovator” because they are not going get to anywhere, recruiters never use keywords like that.to summaries all you need remember is “How would a recruiter search for resumes” obviously they search for resumes just in the same way you search for information in Google. If you would to know about Tajmahal you will just type that name in Google, let us say if you use “Shajahan” as your keyword the information you wanted about Tajmahal will be somewhere lower on the search results. So keep the headline simple, accurate, very straight forward to cover all the areas you worked on.

Do you need to have a beautiful resume? 

Honestly not, after all you are not sending your resume for a beauty contest! On a serious note no recruiter in the world will fall in love with your resume by the look of it, or for the literary value , neither he/she has time to  read your resume so deeply. Of course it must be in a good shape neatly formatted, no grammatical errors etc. But the key area that catches the eye of a recruiter is “your area of expertise”, skill set summary and your project details – whether the skill set mentioned in summary reflects again in the projects you have worked on. Remember a recruiter takes a call whether to proceed or not in less than 2 minutes by having a glance at your resume. Have those details accurate; repeat your areas of expertise as keywords across your resume.

Curse your co-applicants! 

Not because they are competing with you for the same job but for the reason they applied even after knowing they are not suitable for the position. It is so unfortunate that applications from non-serious, not suitable candidates makes the chances for right candidate meager. Over last seven years, I and with help my team where I worked done an analysis on the response for job postings, we found out consistently that more than 95% of applications does not suit the job. Let me give you a recent example – I posted a job for software architect, we were looking for a person with more than 8 years of Java with distributed systems,multi-threading, strong design and architecture experience on developing highly available enterprise applications. You don’t believe we received application from call center executives, Admin, Finance and freshers in a good number. Now relate this with the life of a recruiter on a given day, he/she would be handling multiple positions and would be receiving resumes from Consultants, employees and direct applicants. Once the recruiter opens up the applications folder and finds a set of resumes not related at all, he get frustrated and move on to another source – he needs to fill the position quickly. So if you are expecting a reply from recruiters - apply for only those positions you suit, ask yourselves twice if you really fit the bill. Otherwise not only you won’t get anything out of it but also you will be killing an opportunity for another suitable candidate.

Where are you applying? 

The emergence social media pushed recruiters post jobs everywhere, the biggest weak link here is not many organizations have a strong recruitment management system which integrate all these and stores resumes at one place. As result recruiters get disorganized, always remember if you are applying on the website the chances of you getting call is really less because of reasons mentioned earlier.so whenever you are applying it on the website, it is a good idea to send a note to the recruiter clearly mentioning the job code you have applied for. Another reason for not getting a call would be “unfortunately most recruiters perceive direct applicants as desperate jobseekers who is struggling to find job, hence it becomes less valuable for them, recruiters should get rid of this notion”.

If you are allying on any other source please consider the below:

Lifetime of your application/email is maximum a day: 

If you are sending your application directly to the recruiters, please keep in mind you need to be precise and straight forward, you don’t have to please the recruiter. You need to understand and accept the fact that recruiter has no time to read your entire email to understand whether you are suitable or not. Write in a manner that recruiter will get to know your profile in first 2 lines. While applying on LinkedIn so not simply click apply button and send resume, customize your response in way that your expertise if mentioned there, that will make the recruiter to click the attachment you sent, otherwise it gets in to recycle bin. If you application cannot attract recruiter’s attention that moment or maximum on that day, you are out of scope. By next morning when he comes to office new set of resumes already piled up in his inbox. Grab the attention by what he is looking for – but only if you really have that expertise recruiter is looking for , DO NOT fake it ever.

Sometimes your subject line of the email disqualifies you! 

I am not exaggerating it, it is true – I have deleted so many applications from my inbox after looking at the subject line, and still see most of the recruiters doing it, let us take an example – a recruiter posted a job of “CFO” on LinkedIn or a Jobsite When you reply it changes the subject line as “Application for the role of CFO” all the hundred resumes recruiter receive will have the same subject line, Now let us say if you change the Subject line to “ Chetan_CA,ICWAI_PWC_ application for CFO”, I can guarantee no recruiter in the world will move on without looking in to the resume.

When madness has its own method why not Job search J , follow basics and help recruiters in helping you.