Tag: How To Job Hunt Like a Spy

Okay, not sure how much longer I will be on my Spy kick, but here is one more installment. (Smile)

As a job seeker, you are most likely unaware of the various tools that recruiters use. For example, there are several resume sourcing tools designed to automagically find resumes and make them manageable at the click of a mouse. I did a review of these various tools and if you are curious to read it, click here to download your free copy. But I digress, the reason why I bring this up is that these various tools pull resumes from various sources. Such being the case, if you add your resume to the websites where these tools pull from then… Yeah, you get it.

Now, do all of these tools list the websites they use to gather resumes? No, for competitive reasons they tend not to. However, there is one company that dares to do so – Infogist. Click here or on the screenshot below to see where they get the resumes that they send to Recruiters via their tool. (Wink)

See ya’ on the next post!

Jim

Okay, this is part 3 in my spy series. I guess I am on a roll.

Did you know that it costs money to post a job on a job board? You probably figured that, but I will wager that you don’t think about it much as a job seeker. (Am I right?) Well, since jobboards cost money, companies tend not to post all of their jobs there. Most likely, they post their most recent opportunities or the jobs that they are struggling to fill. That being said, it would behoove you to search the career sections of companies to find jobs not advertised on job boards. Make sense? Going with this rationale in mine, I developed a spying technique that is somewhat compelling. Let me share it with you.

I was musing about the past couple of posts and wondering how to leverage applicant tracking systems even further. I looked up popular ATS offerings and noticed that PeopleClick came up a lot. I did a search for sites that used PeopleClick and have the word “careers” or “jobs” or “opportunities” in the title and the word “programmer” because that was the kind of job I was looking for.

I noticed that some of the results were expired (Oh well) but, some were not. For example, WebLogic Administrator/Middleware Systems Programmer Principal

Does this mean that this job was not being advertised on job boards? No. However, there is a chance that this method will uncover jobs that are not being advertised. It also reveals the names of companies that looked for a particular role in the past and by virtue of that, maybe they will hire for that role in the future. So why not approach them? If you like the idea of this, here are a few more searches to get your mind going.

• site:careers.peopleclick.com programmer
• site:careers.peopleclick.com project manager
• site:careers.peopleclick.com administrative assistant

Happy hunting!

Jim

In part 1 of “How to job hunt like a spy” I shared with you careersite spying technique. In this post, I want to go a bit further. Cool? Okay, cool.

When I shared how to monitor where Prudential recruiters look for talent, one thing came to mind. Do all ATS (applicant tracking systems) function this way? Most likely, no. No two applicant tracking systems function exactly alike as a button my be on the left side and not the right or “how did you hear about us” may not be visible to the job seeker at all and blah, blah, blah… You get what I’m saying. So, this had me thinking. Since I know that I can do this with the ATS that Prudential is using, how many other companies are using the same ATS?

I went back to the Prudential career site and took a closer look. I noticed at the bottom of one of the pages was a “Powered by Taleo” link. Hmmm…

This made me wonder something, “Could I do a search for other companies that use the Taleo system? If so, could I segment that further by industry?”

The short answer is “yes.” My aim was to look for companies that use the Taleo system that had the term careers or jobs or opportunities in their title and also the word “banking” somewhere on the page as well. My thought process was that I would find investment firms and banks. Make sense? (Yeah, I thought so too.) Check out the screenshot below to see what came back. (http://bit.ly/cCbqDG)

So what can I do with this information?

1. You can see where certain finance institutions are recruiting and (if that’s your niche) begin seeding your resume in those places.
2. Review where multiple financial institutions are recruiting, evaluate the places that most of them recruit from and position your resume in those places.
3. And third… I don’t have a third idea. However, if you do, I would like to hear about it. (Smile)

Happy Hunting!

Jim Stroud

Hat tip to my pal Geoff Peterson for inspiring this idea! (Smile)

Is there a company that you really, really want to get into? Well, there is a way to increase your chances of being found and contacted without being a nuisance to the recruiter. Its called “Careersite Spying.” In a nutshell, you find out the pool of talent the company is recruiting from and then you make sure that your resume is there for them to “stumble across.” (wink) Its a pretty simple strategy that is easy to execute, depending on the ATS (applicant tracking system) that a company uses. Let me show you what I mean, step by step.

1. Okay, this is the website for the insurance company – Prudential. (Just in case that big blue company logo escapes your eye.)

2. Let’s go over to the Careers section of their site.

3. When I get to their Careers page, my inclination is to search for a job to use as an example. However, when I scroll down a bit, I see that they have links to their “Latest Openings” so I decide to click one of those instead. (No biggie, the strategy will still work.)

4. The job I saw was for a Business Analyst. Okay, whatever… I click the “Apply Online” button.

5. Since I am a new user, I have to go through a couple of hoops like signing up and agreeing to privacy policies, et cetera. Its a bit of a pain because I don’t feel like doing it. But oh well…

6. Okay, after I have registered on the site, the first thing I notice is “How did you hear about us?” in big red letters. (Big smile)

7. I have a various options here to choose from. Among them are: Campus Recruiting, Career Fair, Internet, et cetera. By using the scientific process of eenie-meenie-minee-moe, I pick “Career Fair”

8. When I choose “Career Fair” a second drop down menu appears and I am given more options to choose from. Among them, “100 Black Men of America,” “Al Dia Job Fair” and “Asian Diversity Career Fair.”

So… based on this method I can find out the following:

• All of the Career Fairs that Prudential Recruiters will attend.
• All of the colleges that Prudential Recruiters recruit from.
• All of the websites that Prudential is posting their jobs on (Internet option)
• All of the Print media Prudential is advertising in
• All of the Professional Associations that Prudential targets
• All of the Social Media channels that Prudential markets through (FYI, so far its only Linkedin and Facebook. No Twitter?)
• Et cetera…

So if I really, really want to get into Prudential, it would be in my best interest to position my resume to be found in most (if not all) of those places. Make Sense?

Happy Hunting!

Jim