Be Easy to Hire

Too many job seekers expect an employer or recruiter to carefully evaluate their LinkedIn Profile and figure out where the person might fit into the organization.

Most employers and recruiters have way too much to do to provide you with mind-reading and/or career coaching services, even if they could.

Unless you have extremely scarce, highly technical skills, that's not going to happen.

Applying for a job is not rocket science, but the process HAS changed substantially. This is what works today...

Know What Job You Want

Be clear about the job you want, and make that clear in your communications with the employer. "Oh, I could do anything in finance" is probably not true (really, anything in finance?!) and not communicating your value.

Being specific accomplishes two important things for job seekers:

1. The specifics trigger mental connections to opportunities in people's minds. "Oh, I know someone looking for help with that..." or "Ahhh, this person could fill the job for..." Vague or general responses don't often help make those connections.

2. The specifics provide the all-important keywords that lead to being visible in resume databases (like Indeed, CareerBuilder, etc.)

Networking contacts, no matter how well-intentioned, won't be able to connect you with a job without knowing what you want to do. They can't read your mind any better than an employer or recruiter. Make it easy for people to help you by helping them know what you want.

If you don't know what you want to do, spend some time figuring it out first. Buy or borrow a copy of the classic book, What Color Is Your Parachute? -- if there's only one "career book" in your library, this is the one. For a reason.

Clearly Align Your Experience With Their Requirements

When you are submitting your resume or application for a job, don't make the person reading it wonder why you applied for their job. Tell them why. You do that two ways:

1) Only apply for jobs for which you are a good fit.

Look at the job's requirements and the skills, experience, and education they they want in an applicant. Don't waste your time, or the recruiter's, applying for something that's not a good match.

When you apply for a job that's not a good match --

You're thinking: "Why not give it a try, just in case?"
They're thinking: "Can't this idiot read?"

Apply poorly often enough with the same recruiter or employer, and you'll be training them (and -- maybe - their applicant tracking system) to ignore you. Not a good thing...

2) Tell them how you are a good match in the cover letter, and show them in the resume.

In the cover letter, list the job's requirements and match those requirements specifically with the skills or experience you have that are appropriate. (See the "Catching the Recruiter's Eye" article on Job-Hunt for a great cover letter format).

Yes, many cover letters are ignored, but, for some recruiters, a resume submitted without a cover letter demonstrates a lack of true interest in the opportunity and/or a lack of professionalism. So, on the better-to-be-safe-than-sorry theory, include a carefully-written cover letter.

Customize your resume so that the relevant skills and experience are highlighted. Leave out the things that aren't relevant to this job, unless your resume is only one page long. If you haven't had much response to your resume, have a friend look at it, or get professional help. (For more help with your resume, read Job-Hunt's Guide to Effective Resumes by resume experts Martin Yate and Susan Ireland).

Follow the Directions

Duh! Who doesn't follow directions? You'd be amazed! Job seekers in a rush, apparently...

Recently, a recruiter put a sentence in a Monster job posting asking applicants to include a one-paragraph description of their most significant accomplishment of the past year.

Only 20 percent of the applicants included an accomplishment, and only 25 percent of those described an accomplishment that was relevant to the job they were seeking.

So, only one out of every 20 applicants got through the initial screening. By actually reading the entire posting, following the directions, and aligning their response to the needs of the job, they jumped over 95 percent of their competition!

Provide Good Contact Information

Be easy to contact. Create an email "signature" that provides the following information:

• Top line: your name, as it appears on your resume and LinkedIn Profile
• Next line: your private cell phone number with a professional voice mail message - NOT related to your work!
• Last line: a link to your LinkedIn Profile. Use the custom link specifically for you found in the edit profile screen - like http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname or http://www.linkedin.com/pub/yourname/123/ab/087...

This information should appear below your closing at the bottom of the message, and it should be easy to read.

Be sure that the information you have submitted agrees with what is visible on your LinkedIn Profile because it will be checked! By including your LinkedIn Profile's URL in your email signature, you've made it easy for the employer to find the right LinkedIn Profile, in case there are others who have the same name you have.

Polite Persistence Is Powerful

After you have had a job interview, ask for permission to stay in touch, and for the name and contact information of the person you should be in touch with. Then, when you have permission to stay in touch, DO stay in touch. Politely. When you said that you would, or when they told you you could.

Follow up. But NOT daily! And, for many employers, not weekly either. Find out what's happening with the job you want. Remember filling a job almost always takes longer, sometimes much longer, than the employer thinks it will. (Read After the Job Interview, 10 Reasons They Haven't Called You for why.)

Keep things in context -- tell them your name, the job you applied for (job title and requisition number, preferably), the dates of your job interviews, and who interviewed you in every contact. Don't expect them to remember you, although by the third or fourth phone call or email with the same person, they may.

If you liked the people and the place, ask them for other similar opportunities if this one falls through. (Read "The Biggest Mistake After a Job Rejection" for how and why.)

Bottom Line

It always seems to take too long to land a job, but it will happen. If you have a good network and LinkedIn Profile, you many not need to go through the job application and resume submission process again -- your next job may find you.

This article was first published on Job-Hunt.org.

Follow me on GooglePlus and Twitter (@JobHuntOrg) for more job search tips. Find additional help with your job search on LinkedIn in the Job-Hunt Help Group.

Susan P. Joyce is president of NETability, Inc. and the editor and chief technology writer for Job - Hunt.org and WorkCoachCafe.com. Susan also contributes to HuffingtonPost.com, YouTern.com, NextAvenue.org, and BrazenCareerist.

My Other LinkedIn Posts:

• Career Essentials: The Right Keywords to Bring You Opportunities
• Effective Job Search Email - Not as Easy as You Think
• The Simple LinkedIn Mistake That Kills Opportunity
• Choosing the Best LinkedIn Groups for Your Job Search
• 2 Minutes to More Successful Job Interviews
• The Mistake that Can Ruin Your Job Search
• Before You Quit That Job You Hate
• The Biggest Mistake After a Job Rejection
• Rejected? 10 Reasons You Didn't Get the Job
• Job Reference Mistakes That Kill Opportunities
• Don't Make These Deadly Job Interview Assumptions
• Income Self-Defense: How to Avoid Accepting a Job You'll Regret

About the author...

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management studying long-term unemployment for people over 50, Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm.