A modern job search campaign is by nature pretty intricate. While the web has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and possible challenges for job hunters.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personal, extremely directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of colleagues is your source for job leads.

So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job site and got 600+ responses in a week. For a single job. That’s increased competition for jobs.

Had the right person gotten ahold of us before we ran the posting, they could have landed the job before having all that competition. How? By knowing an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 13 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be careful how you submit your application as well. When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily taken out with a swift triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By passing over prospects whose cover letters gave us grounds not to engage them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating job hunters whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by eliminating prospects who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the great news is that job sites give you a feel of who is hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, if you have a well written resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another thing to be aware of is how quickly and easily you can be checked out on the net. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing insane, but enough to swing our thoughts about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a comprehensive set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!