The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job hunter, but also presents several possible challenges. It also adds many complexities, and a lot more matters to consider…and be mindful of.

Job search needs to be thought of as a personal, highly directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of colleagues is your source for information.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on Craigslist and got more than 650 applications in a calendar week. For a single job. That’s increased job hunting competition.

Had a strong person called us before we placed the ad, they could have landed the position before having all that competition. How? By knowing someone at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 12 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your cover letter and resume carefully! When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily eliminated with a swift triage process. How? The same way any HR professional would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By eliminating prospects whose cover letters gave us causes not to hire 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 rejecting prospects who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the great news is that job boards give you a sense of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, if you have a well thought out 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 issue to be aware of is how quickly and easily you can be looked up on the internet. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some pictures and comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing illegal, but enough to sway our thinking about who to employ.

AA-Careers provides a broad 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!