What Job are you calling about?

Author Byline: CareerAlley
Author Website: http://careeralley.com

Have you ever gotten a phone call from a recruiter or a company HR representative saying “I’m calling about the job you applied for online” and you can’t remember the specifics of the job? If you’ve been looking for a job for any length of time then you’ve probably applied to 15 or 20 (or more) jobs online. After awhile, the job descriptions all start to sound alike and you hit the “apply now” button knowing that you qualify but otherwise not paying much attention to the details. The good news is that many Job Boards and Company Career sites track and store jobs you’ve applied for in your profile. The difficult part is remembering which Job Board you used.

In addition to the basic tools you should have in your Job Marketing Campaign (Resume, Cover Letters, Thank You Letters, Elevator Speech, etc.), you should also have a Job Search Plan and ways to track your progress. Today’s article will provide some ideas and links to help you plan and track.

• Copy that Job Description - Once you’ve decided to apply to a job online, you should print a copy to a pdf file (let’s think green) or cut and past the text to a Word file. Save the file with a descriptive name and save it in a dedicated folder (like “Applied for”). This makes it fairly easy to find the job description when you need it.
• Make a Job Search Plan - You should have a plan or process as to how you will approach your job search. You should treat it as a project and track and measure as you go. One of my favorites is Spin Strategy’s job search ToolSet™. Click the ToolSet link or you can download it from the Spin Strategy™ website.
• Track Your Progress - You need to track your progress on several fronts - recruiters, job applications, interviews, contacts, etc. There are several tracking tools available on the Web.
  • Quintcareers.com has a free follow-up log - Sample Job Lead Follow-up Log and their article “Follow Up All Job Leads: Don’t Wait by the Phone (or Computer)” is definitely worth a read.
  • The University of North Dakota’s Career Site has an article and tracking tool - Job Search Tracking as well.

On the lighter side . . .

• 10 dumbest resume blunders - From Fortune Magazine’s “Ask Annie” column.

Good luck in your search.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Tags: calling, entervista, free, human, interview, interviews, job, jobsearch, online, recruiter, recruiting, resources, tracking, video, web, webcam

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Entervista Team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.