10 Big Mistakes Job Seekers Make

When you work in the recruiting industry you are quite aware of the many mistakes job seekers tend to make when trying to secure new employment. Job seekers do not go to school to become a job seeker or have on-the-job job seeker training, so they should be given a little break, I think. Being a really good job seeker takes thought and effort, something many inexplicably do not want to give. Most job seekers think they are job seeking by logging on to their favorite job board for an hour or two each day. What a mistake. What they do not realize is that there are literally millions of companies and open jobs right now, but they have to do the right things to find them. There are many quality possibilities for the distinction of the biggest mistake unemployed job seekers make, but one takes the cake. Some notable picks include the following.

1. Looking forward to an unemployment check.

2. Spending more time on Facebook (not a good use of time) than job searching.

3. Investing only a couple of hours per day job searching, Monday through Wednesday.

4. Replaying in their head that they're unemployed and looking for someone to blame or complain to.

5. Spending all of their job search time on job boards and not diversifying their prospecting.

6. Not preparing very well to be a high quality, sharp, and professional interviewee.

7. Thinking the falsehood that there are no jobs, companies aren't hiring, and the economy is bad.

8. Not utilizing recruiters, headhunters, and staffing agencies to find jobs when appropriate.

9. Doing the easy simple tasks to find a job instead of the hard ones like networking.

10. The granddaddy of all job seeker mistakes is going with the DIY resume candidates attemp to duplicate from resume templates or samples they scraped off the Internet, or found in a MS Word file. Candidates need to internalize that this is a business document, a marketing brochure, an advertisement, and a direct representation of them. Companies, potential employers who pay people money for a service, do not want a recycled document they found and pieced together. 99% of all resume look like this is exactly what they did. Whether people choose to believe it or not, the likelyhood is high that their resume is not good. Their present level of awareness on the subject is preventing them from really knowing what good is.

The perception of a candidate as a result of the resume they use makes them look unprofessional, sloppy, lazy, and like they really don't care. I have seen tens of thousands of resumes, probably more in the hundreds of thousands, so this is not a guess on my part. Hiring managers and employers are directly judging you on this document, and if you could get their opinion, you would not like what you hear. You need to influence them and sell them. You need to market your services to them. You need to exude polish and professionalism, whether you are a garbageman or a CFO.