Found this great article at HeraldNet. I agree with Eve’s strategies. This takes some effort, but there is less traffic when you go the extra mile! Read on…
Despite the crowded job market, many professionals are landing new, rewarding positions. How do they do it? By taking a strategic approach to job hunting, keeping up a positive, confident attitude and using competition to bolster their efforts.
This last point is important in recent months and years, since job competition is relatively high. The thing is, most job hunters cower in the face of opposition. They feel disheartened by statistics and intimidated by the sheer number of people looking for employment. They don’t realize they can use competition to their advantage.
If this idea is foreign to you, it might be time to change your job-search tactics. Start by evaluating your competition. How do most people seek out new employment? How do they contact new companies? Figure it out. Then, run your job hunt another way.
Every week, I talk to people who post their resumes on Internet job boards and then sit back and wait for their lives to change. You can do this too, if you don’t mind falling in line with thousands, or tens of thousands, of job candidates. This is an easy, passive method of job seeking. It doesn’t take much effort, so everyone does it. Competition is steep.
This is good news for savvy job seekers. With so many candidates pooled in one place, other opportunities fly open. For instance, there is no competition — zero — when you contact a company before they announce new positions to the public. You immediately stand out from the competition by sending your initial correspondence through U.S. mail (capture the employer’s attention with a crisp, nicely printed copy of your resume, and then follow up by e-mail). You will blow away other candidates by researching the company and then providing a point-by-point explanation of how you will benefit the business.
The rest of the article can be found here: http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100421/BIZ/100429968/1005
This was written by Eve Nicholas a Herald Columnist.