TheLadders Blog

Anyone who has ever looked for a job knows the drill: find job online, send resume, wait, and never hear back. If you’re sending out dozens of resumes, like most job seekers do, you’re likely familiar with this broken process — and frustrated when you don’t get a response. In the careers industry, this broken loop even has a notorious name: “The Black Hole.”

Recently, TheLadders conducted a study on job-seeker behavior using “eye-tracking” technology to determine how we could help close The Black Hole while leading job seekers to their perfect job. We analyzed how job seekers view job postings, what they actually saw, what they concentrated on, and what they totally missed.

If you’re unfamiliar with eye tracking, it’s a way to record and analyze where someone focuses on a page, and in what order they do it (see cool visualizations above).

So, what did we find out?

Job seekers assume The Black Hole exists because employers do not take the time to respond, which is only partially true. What we found from our behavioral analysis was that job seekers also played their part in The Black Hole, which can be statistically proven through our eye-tracking study.

The fundamental conclusion of our study relies on sensitivity and specificity, two really important statistics terms. Sensitivity, in this study, was the ability of job seekers to correctly determine a good job “fit” for them, while specificity was the same job seeker’s ability to determine a job “not a fit.” Basically, we were on a mission to find out if job seekers were applying to the right jobs, and avoiding applying for jobs that were not right for them.

Surprisingly, the results of those two pieces of analysis showed us that job seekers were unable to determine good jobs, only picking good fits at a rate of 38%, but were able to tell bad fits at a rate nearly twice that. For further clarification, this means that out of every 10 jobs an average job seeker applies to, six of them will be bad fits. Additionally, this means that out of every 10 job postings viewed, the job seeker overlooks at least two that are good fits.

Our primary assumption for why this happens is due to the time spent reading and assessing the positions. Sixty-five percent of our study participants self-reported spending up to ten minutes reading job postings before applying; however, our study findings show that, on average, job seekers spend less than a minute per job posting – even less when they determine it’s not a fit.

What can TheLadders do to help job seekers make better decisions in the job sourcing and application process? We have to make the application process more precise, so that job seekers can better identify the right opportunities and avoid getting stuck in The Black Hole. This is why we recently introduced TheLadders Scout, a competitive-analysis tool that provides job seekers with an anonymous overview of who else applied for that same role.

To determine the effectiveness of TheLadders Scout, the second part of our study tested how participants viewed the competitive data provided, and whether it influenced their ability to identify good fits.

The results were equally surprising, in that job seekers eyes were heavily drawn to the new feature on the page, and spent on average 12 incremental seconds viewing the competitive data.

Additionally, participants viewing job descriptions with TheLadders Scout were able to determine good fits at a 35% higher rate than job descriptions without Scout. With 12 seconds of viewing time being devoted to TheLadders Scout, we expected the overall viewing time of postings with TheLadders Scout to increase, but we were proven wrong. Job seekers spent 24% less time finding fits with TheLadders Scout.

Looking at these “heat maps,” you can see that job postings without Scout data on them (pictured on the left) drew job-seeker attention primarily to the title, company description at the top, and then the first line of the first couple of paragraphs. The majority of information (such as job requirements) was skimmed, or went completely unnoticed. In the Scout version, not only was more information read, but 12 seconds were spent reviewing the competitive information and determining based on other applicants if the position was truly a fit.

For us at TheLadders, the study provided valuable information, not only on why The Black Hole exists, and why employers and job seekers have equal roles in contributing to it, but also on how we can provide features and tools to help close The Black Hole.

Download the full research study. 

 Daniel Cronyn is the director of consumer marketing at TheLadders. Besides a passion for creative direct-response campaigns and analysis, he spends his time tracking down obscure music events and even more obscure food choices across New York City.

As a Certified Professional Résumé Writer, I speak on the phone with job seekers every day. I work with clients from places as far-flung as South Korea, to those based right here in New York City. Often, the only way for me to determine my client’s personality type is to assess how he or she behaves over the phone. A thorough conversation usually tells me whether my client is professional, prepared, confident and composed.

For those preparing to launch a job search, or who are in the midst of one right now, here are some tips to improve your chances of clearing the phone interview.

Record a Voicemail

Make sure to update your voicemail before prospective employers and recruiters reach out to you. Include your full name and a promise to respond within 24 hours. Ringback tones must be in good taste.

Answer the Phone

Hello? doesn’t cut it when you’re in the middle of a job search. Instead, answer the phone with authority and competence. Identify yourself by saying, “Hi, this is Joe” or “Hello, Joe speaking.”

Communicate Concisely

Don’t let your answers exceed the scope of the questions. Your response time should be one minute or less. Get a list together of common interview questions and formulate concise responses. Read them aloud, time yourself, never rush, and speak confidently.

If you follow these guidelines, your chances of making a positive impression will improve greatly and will set you apart from the competition.

Dylan Houle is a CPRW and has written over 600 executive-level resumes and cover letters. Originally from San Francisco, Dylan now resides in Brooklyn.

As director of consumer marketing at TheLadders, I receive daily exposure to the world of job seekers. Industry data suggests that, while not everyone is actively looking for jobs, the majority of us would be open to new and interesting opportunities. Basically, between wintry economic times and passive job seekers, it has never been harder to conduct a competent job search.

A typical job seeker may wonder, “Who is my competition, and how do I stack up against them?” or simply, “Should I even bother applying for this job?” While that decision is ultimately up to the job seeker, it is fundamental enough to our customers’ satisfaction that we attempt to help them do so. In a post-web 2.0 world, it is not enough to provide the ability to apply to great jobs; a superior experience will bring its community together (with all the data it creates) to add value for everyone.

This is why we’re kicking off 2013 with our newest product, “Scout.” For the first time, we are giving job seekers a behind-the-scenes look at the other candidates who have applied for the same position. Based on your profile, you can see how you compare to other applicants in five categories: years of experience, education level, areas of expertise, current title, and current salary. All this information is anonymously aggregated and displayed in Scout, providing instant insight into the competition.

Take a look:

This is a powerful for three main reasons: competition, differentiation, and communication. For the job above, you can see that competition is on the high side, with 50 applicants, but how do you fair against the bulk of them? Take a look at their backgrounds, current jobs, and areas of expertise to determine how you differ from the competition, which will help you identify unique skills to showcase. Additionally, Scout alerts you when others apply, and when recruiters provide feedback.

Does Scout stop working when you are not at your desk? Of course not! We’ve designed Scout to give our Premium users on-the-go information in a slick mobile-responsive interface, as well. Savvy online marketers know that across the web, people are accessing the Internet from mobile devices outside of typical work hours more frequently and making Scout even timelier.

The job search has become much more cluttered over the past few years. As a job seeker, you should be utilizing tools that save you time and stress, and give you a more targeted approach to your search. Scout is one of these tools.

All Premium members of TheLadders will have access to Scout by summer 2013.

Daniel Cronyn is the director of consumer marketing at TheLadders. Besides a passion for creative direct-response campaigns and analysis, he spends his time tracking down obscure music events and even more obscure food choices across New York City.

Job Central, presented by TheLadders, on January 10th was quite the event! Hundreds of professionals made their way to New York City’s Grand Central Terminal to hear from a lineup of guest speakers and meet with dozens of recruiters to help them with their job search.

I enjoyed my opportunity to share my 15 + years of corporate recruiting leadership experience, including my past 3 years with Hewlett-Packard.  My goal was to share real-life stories and examples to help candidates identify their brand, leverage their experiences, and improve their interview skills.  If attendees took one thing away from my presentation, I hope it was the importance of preparation. Prepare to articulate your brand.  Prepare for the interview.  Prepare for the post-interview.  Being fully prepared brings you one step closer to being hired.

After my presentation, I had an opportunity to spend a couple of hours meeting with potential candidates to provide one-on-one guidance. It is my hope that I helped at least one job seeker get closer to his or her next career goal.

If you weren’t able to make it to Job Central but want to learn how to improve your job search, check out the speaker presentations and videos at www.TheLadders.com/JobCentral.

Mitch Schwartz, Global Talent Acquisition Leader, Hewlett-Packard

TheLadders has predominantly operated with the goal to make the job hunt shorter, less painful, and more efficient for job seekers and recruiters. We’ve had our successes, but of course we’re always trying to get better.

One of our initiatives was to partner with professors from seven leading universities to research and understand various aspects of the job search and recruitment process. We conducted an in-depth study of job-search challenges, in partnership with Connie Wanberg, from the University of Minnesota, an internationally recognized expert on the topic. The study,  “Navigating the black hole: Explicating layers of job search context and adaptational responses,” has been published in the Personnel Psychology journal.

For this particular study, we had semi-structured phone interviews with more than 70 job seekers that lasted anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes. These calls were transcribed and analyzed to identify common challenges across all job seekers.

For me, hearing our job seekers’ personal stories was insightful. Frustrations with the current economic climate, the lack of human touch or feedback, the technology-driven application processes – all came to the forefront in the form of real stories. Day-to-day challenges of managing the time and effort needed to find and apply to the right jobs, as well as the discouragement one often faces in the process, compound the stress related to finances and life-changing decisions that a job search can bring about. While it can be a learning opportunity, most people viewed the job search experience negatively and understandably so.

Our research here at TheLadders allows us the luxury to be curious. We strive to know more about the job search and how it works, and predict events and human behavior that drive job seekers and recruiters. Teaming up with world-class experts, we’ve been able to look at our customers’ pain points through a new lens, and we look forward to continuously improving our offerings to alleviate these struggles for our customers.

A white paper, commissioned by TheLadders, can be downloaded here, and a video interview with lead author Connie Wanberg can be viewed here.

Archana Agrawal is the Vice President of Strategy at TheLadders. In this role, Archana is responsible for managing the planning and analytics function, including product utilization, marketing analytics, and financial planning and analysis.

As a talent manager, the job search is something that I take very seriously. I spend lots of time researching companies, verifying medium salaries based on the economy and market trends, and preparing for candidate interviews. The fact that 7% of our job seekers “do not send thank you notes” is extremely surprising and begs the question, how important is the job search to you?

In the time I’ve spent interviewing candidates, working with hiring managers, and being a job seeker myself, I’ve found that sending thank you notes is always beneficial. For me, the job-search process has multiple steps, all which require critical attention. I try to truly understand the role I am applying for, confirm that it’s the best fit for my background, prepare for my interview, and send a timely and thoughtful follow-up.

Personally, I have always sent thank you notes to everyone I’ve interviewed with. It requires time and effort out a person’s day to bring you in for an interview, why not be appreciative of that? As a recruiter, I don’t expect a long-winded, detailed description of why you want the role; it needs to re-emphasize your ability to fill the role and show gratitude to the interviewers who spent time with you. I know hiring managers who have passed on hiring candidates strictly because they failed to follow up.

Long story short, sending a thank you note goes a long way and impacts your potential of getting hired, both now, and in the future. Send them!

Download TheLadders’ Giving Thanks Infographic

Mike Deissig is the Talent and Technology Development Manager at TheLadders.  Mike is constantly trying to improve the recruiting process and evolve technology integration with recruiting. In his spare time he enjoys watching football, being with friends, and trying all of the food this world has to offer! 

TheLadders is happy to announce a new partnership with eQuest, the world’s most utilized job posting distribution solution which enables companies to automatically post their open positions on TheLadders. Effective this week, eQuest clients can automatically post ALL of their professional positions on TheLadders, with no additional effort or cost.

This partnership is a true win-win for both parties. eQuest is able to offer their clients ease of use and free advertisement, and TheLadders can now showcase open positions to its members that historically wouldn’t be published on its site. In the coming weeks, TheLadders will see an increase of more than 50,000 jobs due to this new partnership.

The hard work between TheLadders’ and eQuests’ development teams over the past few months has brought this partnership to fruition. We’re thrilled to bring more job opportunities to our members and give recruiters more tools to create meaningful connections with potential candidates.

Thomas Murphy is the manager of recruiter experience at TheLadders. Tom works with his team to understand how recruiters use technology to help them find the best candidates. When not talking shop about HR, he is trying to get back in shape so he does not embarrass himself at the team triathlon next year.

As Alex Douzet, COO & co-founder of TheLadders, shared with all of our job seekers last week, our headquarters is located in lower Manhattan, which was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Without power, the office was shut down for 10 days. That said, TheLadders did not falter once!  Besides our site being fully operational for our Job Seekers, we also reached our highest number of jobs on our site EVER – more than 235,000!

In addition, our Job Search Support Team set up remote offices — at home, friends’ houses, Starbucks, or local libraries — to help support our members. In fact, preparation started even before the hurricane; we went old school and compiled a phone tree, just in case there were critical updates and customer service reps couldn’t access their email. Even with the office closed on Monday, the team hit the ground running that morning. TheLadders’ Job Search Support Team began responding to our members’ emails at our normal 9 a.m. start time on Monday, October 29. Because Mondays are one of the highest-volume days, we wanted to make sure we were ready for our Job Seekers’ questions.

By noon on Monday, we had updated our Voicemail, and Help and FAQ sections on TheLadders.com, to provide our Job Seekers with timely instructions for getting support during the hurricane. By Friday, we were up-and-running on Chat and providing live support to our Job Seekers, even though we were all still working from our make-shift offices.

We believe our support plan worked for four reasons:

1. It clearly and quickly answered the most frequently asked questions from job seekers;
2. The message was consistent across all channels: FAQ, Help, Facebook, Twitter and emails;
3. There was consistent internal communication, which allowed us to update our members in real time;
4. Last, but definitely not least, we have amazingly supportive members!

The Job Search Support team would like to say THANK YOU for all of your kind words, prayers, and patience with us last week. We were thrilled to re-open our office on Monday morning and look forward to speaking, emailing, and chatting with more of you throughout the week!

Christina Kane is the Manager of Talent Specialists and our Job Search Support Center at TheLadders. Outside of work she is preparing for her Fantasy Football draft, raving about her adorable Godson and attending A LOT of weddings.

With the Presidential election closing in, many Americans are focused on what most of us would consider the biggest “interview” process for the title of “Leader of the Free World.” Our own job search, however, is no less important. Candidates can learn a lot from the Presidential candidates, in terms of what strategies to employ and what tactics to avoid.

If you’ve watched the debates (or have been within 100 miles of a computer), you know that the first debate went to the candidate who was better equipped and engaged. By asking questions during interviews, job seekers can show the hiring manager that they have done their research and are genuinely interested in the company. That said, it’s imperative to have the facts. Know the company’s strengths, and also the areas that can be improved, and make sure to call out personal strengths that will positively impact the company, overall.

Connections are key – both in politics and in the corporate world – so it’s not surprising that 82% of job seekers feel that knowing someone at a company gives them a leg up and that 73% said they landed an interview based on an employee referral.  Referrals are generally the hiring managers’ preferred method of finding candidates. If someone is willing to stake their professional reputation on you, then you must be worthy of consideration. Don’t be afraid to seek out referrals. Getting your foot in the door is often the hardest part, so use your connections to get the interview and THEN show the company why you deserve the role.

While Presidential candidates start campaigning heavily a year or so before the actual election, job seekers always should be networking. In fact, networking is one of the most important components of the job search, and establishing a strong network takes time. If you don’t network while employed, it’s likely that your network will be weak when you need it most. Leverage social networking, and be diligent  about noting the names and numbers of new contacts. You never know, they could end up being your swing vote.

Download TheLadders’ Election Day Infographic

David Levy is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC) for TheLadders. While he loves his job helping clients build their careers, he usually manages to sneak out of the office on weekends to play Lacrosse and make new friends on New York City’s friendly subway system.

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of being introduced to Dr. Debra Condren, the radio host of “Ambition is Not a Dirty Word” on WebTalk Radio.

In addition to her show, Dr. Condren is a business psychologist who specializes in assessment-based executive coaching, talent and leadership development, and career advising. She is the also author of “Ambition is Not a Dirty Word: A Woman’s Guide to Earning Her Worth & Achieving Her Dreams,” and is the founder of Manhattan Business Coaching LLC. And you thought you were busy, huh?

Dr. Condren invited me on her show to discuss making a career transition – what you need to do to prepare for this type of job search, and what you can expect along the way. We had a really great conversation that covered the job-search gamut, from identifying goals, to formatting cover letters, to keeping upbeat when things aren’t going your way.

Below are three of the career-transition tips I shared with Dr. Condren and her listeners:

1. Do your research

• Identify industries that are strong or emerging, and are similar to your previous experience.
• Once you’ve chosen your target industry, use social networking, online resources, professional associations and network connections to learn as much as you can about the industry, its hiring practices, and any open opportunities.

2. Focus on job requirements, your qualifications and results

• Your cover letter and elevator pitch should focus on your ability to deliver results.
• When applying to jobs, focus on demonstrating how you meet all the primary job requirements for the role.
• If you’ve worked in multiple industries, leverage this point to demonstrate that you have been successful in a variety of industries in the past, and can be so again with this organization.

3. Show passion…and patience

• Determine why you find a particular industry or company appealing and show that passion in your elevator pitch and interviews.
• Remember that transitioning to a new role can be a long process, especially in this saturated job market. The greater the gap between your job goals and most recent experience, the more challenging this transition can be.
• It may be necessary to compromise on compensation and job title in your next job in order to get you on the right track towards your dream job.

Click here to listen to the full radio segment.

Click here for more tips on making a career transition.

I’m always honest, and it’s true that making a transition can be tricky in this current market. But don’t give up on your dreams! It may take you longer than you expected, but it can be done. Stay positive, continue looking forward, and keep working hard!

Amanda Augustine is the Job Search Expert for TheLadders. She provides job search and career guidance for professionals looking to make their next career move. Have a question for Amanda? Submit your question here for a chance to have it answered in her weekly column, and be sure to follow @JobSearchAmanda on Twitter for up-to-the-minute job-search advice.