New Rules For Job Hunting Online

New federal guidelines came into effect on Feb. 6th that make finding a job online a little trickier than before. The guidelines are meant to help standardize how an employer tracks data about the diversity of the applicant pool and they come into effect for federal contractors now and all U.S. companies with 50+ employees later on in the year. Basically, the rules now state that companies have to keep track of all applicants with “express interest” in the position and record diversity statistics. This gives companies an incentive to keep the pool small and as random as possible to give the impression they are diverse. I don’t really see how this helps but whenever you are talking federal government, you’re talking more red tape.

Here are tips from CNNMoney:
Follow the instructions exactly.
If they tell you to jump on one foot, double click the mouse on their website logo, and sing Happy Birthday – do it or they might exclude you as someone who is “not interested.”

Fine tune your resume
If you have skills that match those on the job listing, make sure the wording you use matches theirs. Their example is if they required two years of experience in basket weaving and you have it or more, write it down explicitely. Five years of experience in basket weaving and not Basket weaving (2000-2005) should appear on your resume.

Keep it as current as your underwear
And if you’re a little on the slothier side, I’d suggest keep it more current then. The time stamp of your resume might mean inclusion or exclusion from a list if a company decides to pull all resumes of accountants on Monster that have been updated in the last two weeks.

Visit their website and do it often
This is solid advice – go to the website because a company will list their jobs there first because it’s cheaper. If they get a smaller set of qualified applicants then they’ll be happy, they don’t need to sift through a thousand resumes.

Get the hook-up and get it correctly
A third of new hires are employee-referrals so if you have a buddy who can hook you up, make sure you follow the rules. Sometimes there are even referral bonuses that you may be eligible for so it pays to pay attention.

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