Online Job Search - Success Story!

Well, last night I met the person who embodies successful online job search. At my golf league wrap-up dinner, I chatted with a young woman who, in March, posted her resume on a couple of sites as her first "toe in the water" of a fairly passive job search. By April 1, she was employed by her new company, in a new location. They paid for the move, gave her a nice bump in salary, and put her to work doing stuff she loves.

"Why isn't that happening to me?" you might be wondering? Although it's not scientific, here are a couple of things we analyzed might have led to her rapid success:

• She's a computer engineer in the hot field of environmental engineering and has a couple of highly desirable certifications.
• She most recently worked for IBM (big, respected name).
• She was targeting the Boston area, which has a large number of high-tech employers.
• She's smart, sharp, articulate, and accomplished.

In other words, she had every favorable factor you can think of to draw a lot of interest to her resume and then succeed in an interview.

But - and it's a big but - she was as surprised as I was about her success with this method! When hired, she was in the midst of planning a much more aggressive and targeted strategy to connect with people and companies of interest. Even for the ideal candidate, it doesn't make sense to pursue one avenue and then sit back and wait. Sometimes it pays off, but much more often (as much as 97% of the time, according to some surveys) it delivers no result whatsoever.

The lesson? Pursue a variety of strategies... and be prepared for opportunities that come your way no matter how they find you (or you find them).