Dear Job Seeker, A Few Tips! Sincerely, A Recruiter

Part 1 of a 4-part series

I once had a candidate tell me they put a lot of keywords matching their expertise in white on the bottom of their resume so that it would come up in more searches by Recruiters. I was flabbergasted, in a good way ??. As a Talent Sourcer, who spends hours of my day conducting Keyword/Boolean searches to find my ideal prospect pool, I thought this was a brilliant idea??for a job seeker and it got me thinking, what if a job seeker searched for their dream gig like a Talent Sourcer would search for their dream candidate?

Talent Sourcers frequently think both inside and outside of the box, using varying tactics to find specific talent. From the Job Boards and Social Media to Networking and Marketing, there are many avenues utilized to source talent. Similarly, dedicated Job Seekers can use these same avenues to land their dream job, here's how!

"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door" - Milton Berle ??

 Now, let's build that door by finding your dream role and perfecting your Resume…??

Part 1: Job Boards & Boolean

Job Boards are constantly improving, coming up with new ways for talent to meet opportunity. Talent Sourcers and Recruiters love to put Boolean searches to use on boards to find active job seekers by combining keywords with operators such as AND, NOT and OR to reveal an ideal talent pool. As a job seeker, you can do the same to find a list of careers that come close, if not perfect to, what you are looking for on job boards. For example, your Boolean, may look something like this within a geographical location and/or company:

Example 1??: You are an embedded software engineer: "software engineer" AND ("real time" OR "embedded" OR "RTOS"). You can also try adding "SW engineer" OR "embedded engineer".

Example 2??: You are an aircraft mechanic, looking where you can put your A&P license to use: "mechanic" AND ("A&P" OR "airframe & powerplant" OR "airframe and powerplant")

?? Sourcer Tip! Talent Sourcers love to be lean where possible, setting up automated searches. Do you like a search you recently did? Save it! E.g. ("Program Manager" AND "PMP" in Fort Worth, TX") will then yield new opportunities to you in real-time. You can do this on a job board, and many times, on a company's careers page. Get ahead of the applicant pool by saving some searches, getting notified right as new opportunities become available.