Tired of Applying for Jobs Online? Step Back and Explore

Mining the Internet for jobs is a great strategy… for NOT getting a job. It is like going on a diving trip and spending it on a boat. There is a far better approach.

One of the guests at my Wednesday sessions is an accomplished expert in one domain of the healthcare industry. A Ph.D., she has privileged business over academia and has enjoyed a number of impressive achievements. She has never had to apply for jobs: her career path in her home country has been a chain of serendipitous encounters and successful collaborations. With her recent move to Singapore as a “trailing spouse”, that dense and comfortable web of industry connections in the home country suddenly became less relevant and needed a local revamp. It was very surprising for me that the main search strategy my guest pursued was to apply for online job postings. There were a few applications she submitted - without getting any feedback. Frustration and fatigue started to build up.

My guest is not alone. In fact, mining the Internet for jobs is often the main or even the only job search strategy for many. Almost invariably, it leads to frustration and fatigue. Why do we still do it? Why does it rarely lead to success? What is a better strategy and how to implement it?

Why do we mine the Internet for jobs?

Because it seems easy. The process is clear. You do not need to leave your desk. You get your CV and LinkedIn profile ready, you do some basic search. Platforms are aplenty. And then you see what pops up and you react. You tweak your CV and cover letter based on your assumptions about the company and the role, and spice both documents up with some keywords from the job description. Then you hit the “apply” button. And start waiting. And almost never get a reply. If you get one, most likely it’s a standard rejection message. Day in day out, your confidence shrinks, and frustration mounts. You dive in for more online advice on how to improve your CV and application letter. And here we go again, for another round of frustration and insecurity.

I like to think about our job search/career change strategies in the hunter vs gatherer paradigm. Mining the Internet for jobs is a classic, passive gatherer approach. It does work occasionally. A passive approach can work wonders for people with great visibility and solid career capital. You’re so good that you do not need to do ANY search. You may just sit back and pick the best offer among those that don’t stop coming your way. If you are in that category, I have no idea why you’re reading this article :) All others, we need to switch: from being passive gatherers to being active hunters.

Why mining the Internet for jobs does not work?

Look back at the cover image of this article. Mining the Internet for jobs is like going on a diving trip and spending it on a boat. You might see some interesting stuff but you would have missed all the underwater richness and beauty.

When I think of a job search/career change strategy, I like seeing it somewhat like a sales funnel: Aspiration > Exploration > Application > Interview > Negotiation > New Job.

When you mine the Internet for jobs, you plug straight into the Application stage. You “stay on the boat”. You are a “passive gatherer”. Why is it not a good strategy?

The published offers you see are just a meager and imperfect subset of the job market. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. You miss on all the “hidden” job market that exists.
As the online job postings are visible and public, everyone jumps in. You are in a rude competition.
You have more chances of being screened out by an algorithm than being noticed by a living breathing human being. And even if your CV passes the filters and a recruiter/hiring manager sees your letter, will they get your story and why you are good? Have you seen a lot of great motivation letters? I haven’t. The typical ones will never get me an idea of who a person really is, what’s her story. All my volunteering work is about getting people to realize & tell their stories in a relevant and memorable way, feel proud of what they’ve done, and be excited about what lies ahead. So I know really well it takes an effort to build this narrative. Instead, when you’re applying to online job ads, you’re too busy tweaking your CV to please an imaginary recruiter…
Most importantly, psychologically you put yourself in an inferior position. You feel needy. Maybe even desperate, if you have been playing this game long enough. And as you feel this way, you behave this way and it shows. You try to match the role & JD without giving proper thinking if a role & company are a good match for you.

What can we do instead? We can step back from Application to Exploration mode. We can switch from being passive gatherers to active explorers. The image below captures the key differences between the Gatherer and the Hunter job search strategies:

The Gatherer and the Hunter Job Search Strategies © Arina Divo - Better Career Transitions Blog

3 things to do to switch from the Gatherer to the Hunter strategy

There are three things we need to do for this switch.

Reframe your mindset

Changing your beliefs about job search is the key here. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the authors of the book “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” call to reframe some dysfunctional beliefs.

The first belief we need to reframe is about your dream job sitting there waiting for you.

Dysfunctional belief: My dream job is out there waiting.
Reframe: You design your dream job through the process of actively seeking and co-creating.

They add:

How can you break into the hidden job market? Well, you can’t. No one can. There is no such thing as breaking into the hidden job market. The hidden job market is the job market that’s only open to people who are already connected into the web of professional relationships in which this job resides. This is an insider’s game and it’s almost impossible to get into that web as a job seeker. But it’s quite possible to crack into that network as a sincerely interested inquirer - someone just looking for the story (not looking for the job).

Remember this: In the Exploration mode, you are not looking for a job. An explorer is not needy, she’s curious. An explorer does not need to prove how good she is, she is genuinely curious about others how they made it, to see what’s on offer. Exploration is not about you, it’s about other people and their stories - and refining yours in consequence. I recognize it’s hard to think and behave this way when you are actually looking for a job and maybe even desperately need a job for financial reasons. But you have to try to. When you are exploring, you are here for a story, not for a job. You need to talk to REAL people, not to respond to online ads.

What stops us from going and talking to real people is another dysfunctional belief, this time, about networking. Back to Burnett & Evans:

Dysfunctional belief: Networking is just hustling people - it’s slimy.
Reframe: Networking is just asking for directions.

They add:

You may not know your way around the nanotechnology community in Hong Kong, or the craft beer crowd in Wichita, or the emergency-room nursing union in Seattle. What do you do? You ask a local for directions. Getting referrals to people whose stories would be useful to hear is just a professional equivalent of asking for directions. So go ahead - ask for directions. It’s. Not. A. Big. Deal.
“Network” is more noun than a verb. The point isn’t to “do” network-ing; the goal is to participate in the network.

2. Find people

You need to start where you are - with your immediate network, professional and/or personal. Burnett & Evans:

The most common way for people to be introduced across professional networks is by referrals from personal networks. This isn’t favouritism - it’s just communal behaviour. The use of personal or professional networks to initiate new people into a community’s conversation is a good thing. The network exists to sustain the community of people getting the work done - and is the only way to gain access to the hidden job market.

You won’t be just looking for anyone. You need some targeting to increase the chances to meet relevant people with the stories relevant to your exploration.

Your job search / career transition usually revolves around the following variables: Industry (domain) / Company / Role / Geography. The figure below summarizes those scenarios: the more certainty you have around those variables, the more you are on the job search spectrum vs career change.

@ Arina Divo, Better Career Transitions blog

So, let’s suppose you are, like the guest of my workshop, in Scenario I - clear about the industry and geography - Singapore, and willing to explore the companies and possible roles. The question you will ask your network will be very simple: do you know anyone working in the industry/domain X in Singapore? Remember - you just ask for directions.

The Internet - LinkedIn in particular - will be your best ally here. You will mine it not for job postings, but for people working in the industry/company you would like to explore & for their stories. Not all of them will reply, but some will, and you will take it from there.

What to write/say when you want to connect and invite a person for a conversation? Burnett & Evans propose something like this:

Hello Anna. I’m so glad to connect with you. John said you were just the person I need to speak with. I’m very impressed with what I know of your work, and I’d love to hear some of your story. Might you have thirty minutes to spare, at a time and place convenient to you, when I can buy you a cup of coffee and hear more about your experience."

A referral is always better than a cold call, however, there are tactics to increase the warmness of the cold calls - you will find those techniques in my other article “3 Steps to Boost Your Network”. If you want a solid system to track the outreach you initiate, you can use 3B7 routine suggested by Steve Dalton in “The 2-Hour Job Search”: every time you contact someone new, you set in your calendar reminders 3 and 7 business days later and adapt your actions depending on how your contacts respond.

Not everyone will respond to your solicitations, and that’s fine. You just need to start getting those conversations. Set yourself targets to have a certain number of these conversations every week. And each of those conversations will likely lead to more people to discuss with. Your exploration might take you dozens of conversations, so be it. Be ready for that, and start where you are.

3. Have Conversations

Burnett & Evans call it Life Design Interviews / Prototype Conversations, Steven Dalton in “2-Hour Job Search: Using Technology to Get the Right Job Faster” calls it Informational Interviews. Despite differences in terms, one thing is common - in this conversation, you are NOT after the job - you’re after the story. It is not a job interview.

Burnett & Evans:

A Life Design Interview is incredibly simple. It just means getting someone’s story. Not just anyone and not just any story, of course. You want to talk to someone who is either doing or living what you’re contemplating, or has real expertise and experience in a area in which you have questions. And the story you’re after is the personal story of how that person got to be doing that things he or she does, or got the expertise he has and what it’s really like to do what she does.
You want to hear what the person who does what you might someday want to do loves and hates about the job.
You want to know what her day looks like.
You find out how they got there - their career path.
All you’re looking for is to learn about a particular kind of work or role to help you find out if you want, at a later date, to try to get a job doing that kind of work yourself.

You can find some great advice on how to structure the informational interview in this article “How to Ace an Informational Interview”. And if you don’t want to get too complicated, remember to ask just 6 simple questions - great advice from one of the best career coaches out there, Daniel POROT:

How did you get this job?
What do you like best about it?
What do you like least? What are you missing?
What are the key tasks/issues/priorities/challenges one has to carry out in this job?
What skills/talents/traits/qualifications/degrees does one need to carry out these tasks?
Could you give me 3 names of people doing this job who like it?

And now what? How do all these conversations transform into job opportunities? It’s simple - you do not have to do anything.