6 Reasons You Won’t Get a Better Job in 2012

by Dana Schwartz on January 11, 2012

Looking for a better job? You’re not alone. Year after year, “Get a Better Job” is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. To start your job search off on the right foot for 2012, stop and recognize what you are doing wrong. What’s stopping you from getting a job? Brazen Careerist recently featured an article called “6 Reasons You Won’t Get a Better Job in 2012”. If you can overcome these issues, 2012 might just be the year you hit your stride.

Do any of these sound familiar?

1. You are only applying online. Submitting your resume online can be like sending it into a black hole. Companies get hundreds of online applications and sometimes don’t even bother looking at them. Your strategy for the job search must include more than one route. Try networking, setting up informational interviews and utilizing social media. Branch out and it will improve your chances of getting noticed.

2. No one knows you’re looking for a job. Let at least a few people know you’re looking for a new job. You don’t need to broadcast it to the world (unless you want to!), but the more people in your network that know you’re looking, the more people you have looking out for you.

3. You’re looking for the wrong job. If you’ve been struggling with your job search for a while, perhaps it’s time to look into a different field. Take time to study trends and growing fields where there might be a hidden abundance of opportunities.

4. Your resume is boring. Update your resume with your most recent experience, but also jazz it up! For more help, check out this infographic on creating the perfect modern resume.

5. You have no social media presence or a horrible one. 91 percent of employers check social media. At the very least you should be making sure that you don’t have offensive pictures, language or comments on any of your profiles. Not sure where to start? Here are some social recruiting tips from a COO.

6. You don’t know how to use an informational interview to your advantage. Never heard of an informational interview? The purpose of these interviews is not to find a job, but rather to connect with someone in the field you want to be in and learn more about what they do. Although you should never ask for a job at an informational interview, these interviews allow employers to get to know you without the pressure. So when a job opens up, you’ll be at the top of their list.

Do you recognize any of these faults as your own?

You might also enjoy:

  1. 5 Job Search Tips for 2012
  2. Give Your Resume Some Pizzazz
  3. Perfecting the Digital Resume
  4. 5 Reasons You Should Invest in Career Coaching
  5. 10 Reasons Why You Should Get a LinkedIn Profile

Tagged as: better job, Candidate Advice & Job Market News, job search, job seeker, new year

Article by Dana Schwartz

Dana Schwartz is a senior studying public relations and management at Syracuse University. She has previous internship experience with a small New York City public relations firm, as a communications intern for the Special Olympics in London, and in healthcare marketing. She is looking forward to starting a career in public relations upon her graduation in May.

  • John Parikhal

    Dana, 

    You might want to double check the statement ’91 percent of employers check social media.’ when you apply it universally. I think you referred to a study from a very specific kind of recruiting agency.  Latest stats are starting to debunk the ‘everyone checks’ message. There’s a number of studies that say it’s around 50% and some that say it’s lower than 30%.  Even though your message is still valid,  one of the curses of the internet is that stats are thrown around as ‘facts’ without proper context or checking for self-interest on the part of the company who put them out. Management genius Peter Drucker had a great line on this. He said, ‘Never trust a number unless you made it up yourself.’

  • Dana Schwartz

    Thanks for your feedback, John. I should have been more specific about where the statistic came from. I linked to a previous blog post that stated the statistic came from a survey of 300 hiring professionals conducted by Reppler, a social media monitoring service for managing online presence. I apologize for not being more clear. Thanks for the advice– and I like the quote!

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