Creative Job Search - How to Land an Interview

With unemployment surging and no end in sight, those who are looking for work need to use creative job search tactics in order to get noticed.  The first thing to do is put together an eye catching resume that a recruiter will want to read.  Studies have shown that you have only a few seconds to convince the reader that you have potential, so your resume must be written with this in mind.  For specific tips on writing the resume, you can visit Help with Resume Writing.

After you have your resume all ready to go, you will need to deliver it in a manner that will get you results.  You should definitely use the standard online channels, but in addition, you should find out who the hiring manager is and mail or deliver it to him/her directly.  The standard online channels typically go to the company's human resources department first, where the resumes are filtered before sending them on to the hiring manager.  The people in HR are usually not experts in your field, so they could easily filter your resume out even if the hiring manager would likely be interested in seeing it.  So it is important to reach out to the hiring manager directly.

So what are some of the ways to find out who is actually doing the hiring?  The first thing you can do is develop some contacts with people who work for the company.  You can do this by joining a professional networking site like LinkedIn.com and connecting with others inside the company.  Company employees often have access to internal/external job postings and can tell who is hiring for the position you are interested in.  Another way to approach this is to find out what other companies your target company interacts with.  You can use this information to contact some of these other companies to see if they can tell you who manages the hiring in the department that you are targeting.  You can also try visiting the company's work location to see if there are any clues in the lobby area like a building directory.  Once you identify the hiring supervisor, you can proceed to make direct contact with the person.

As mentioned earlier, you don't want to just send an email.  Emails are ordinary.  To stand out, you want to send your resume and cover letter in the mail or have it hand delivered.  Instead of using a standard cover letter, try researching some of the issues the hiring department might have or articles that the hiring supervisor has written and respond with your thoughts on these things.  If you have suggestions or potential solutions, offer them in your cover letter.  The key is to show that you can add value even before you are hired.

There are many more unconventional job search tactics that you can use to get results.  Visit Creative Job Search Resources to learn even more techniques for getting that new job.