2012

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Introduction to Push and Pull Approaches While Seeking Employment

INTRODUCTION TO PUSH & PULL APPROACH WHILE SEEKING EMPLOYMENT

Discusses the commonly used push and pull concept applied to seeking employment.

Introduction to Pull & Push Approach While Seeking Employment Published 12/18/2012 by TheProfessionalWebsite

Introduction
The traditional way of seeking employment, where you find a job posting, submit your resume and cover letter, and wait for a response is highly inefficient even with rapid adoption of web services that support this method, such as MonsterJobs and CareerBuilder. Think about how much extra time and resources must go into hiring a candidate through the traditional process, an employer must: post a position on various job boards, wait weeks until satisfied with a pool of candidates, and review plenty of one-dimensional resumes. With a properly built search mechanism, on both an external and internal platform, an employer can have a targeted list of candidates in a manner of hours using a pull approach. And in theory, if every individual has a professional website (like they have a resume), and it is properly indexed by a search engine, an employer never worries they did not get an ideal pool of candidates. Another inefficiency of the traditional process is employers may not get the most talented candidates because the candidates never found the job listing. However, we are years away before having this type of search engine in place; so you should make finding employment the traditional way a priority. The other major advantage of a pull approach is potential employers are drawn to much more functional platform to make employment evaluations. A professional website has digital media, communication and searching interactivity, use of skill sets, and many other features why I sometime refer to it as a multi-dimensional resume. Although this can be mitigated by linking to your professional website when you apply to jobs through traditional ways,

Pull Approach
Companies are increasingly using web services to find talent for employment opportunities; for example, drawing from my own personal experience, I have recently been contacted by hiring personnel from three companies based on my LinkedIn profile. Having potential employers find you can take some of the onus off of you to search (and apply) through the many job listing directories and perhaps avoid missing out an opportunity just because you did not find the listing. We call this a pull approach to employment seeking, where you pull potential employers to your professional website an ideal landing platform. With a professional website, there are many advantages in having a pull approach. Pulling a potential employer can be accomplished by using SEO (search engine optimization) or getting found in search engines, setting up your professional website to be a landing page in social media, and sending invitations to hiring professionals. As mentioned earlier, it is unfortunate when you miss out on an employment opportunity because you did not find the listing in the right job listing directory even when you are fully qualified. There are so many different places to find job listings, like MonsterJob, Career Builder, your local newspaper, Craigs List and most companies may list their employment opportunities in a couple of them, but never all of them. It is difficult finding opportunities with all these different job directories. Moreover, it is difficult applying to them in various job search platforms because you have to manage a profile in each of them. Using a pull approach with your employment seeking will increase your exposure to opportunities you missed in a job listing directory and you can pull potential employers to your professional Copyright 2012 TheProfessionalWebsite Page 1

Introduction to Pull & Push Approach While Seeking Employment Published 12/18/2012 by TheProfessionalWebsite
website your professional online identity. In other words, once a potential employer visits your website you have applied (no need to send a resume or fill out a profile). In addition, with a pull approach, you may hear about an employment opportunity that you would have never thought about applying to. For example, consider you have a skill set in writing business proposals; you are currently applying to positions with corporations when all of a sudden a non-profit company contacts you about writing grants after searching for someone with your skills in Google. Both positions require the same skill set, however might be different in the type of work you would be doing. A pull approach widens the spectrum of your employment possibilities. Casual employment seeking is easier with a pull approach. There are times in your career when you are employed in a transitional position, not necessarily a long term position; this is something usually understood between employee and employer. With a professional website and a pull approach, you can make your professional website accessible and respond to incoming employment inquiries that may improve your career and you may not have to actively search for employment through job search directories. The idea is not to think of employment as transient, but rather, make it easier to find a more long-term position and the happiness it could bring you. There are benefits once you have successfully pulled a potential employer to your website. 1. A professional website has much more content than a standard resume or professional profile. You can provide more context related to your experiences. 2. A professional website has a skills based approach and a search mechanism to pinpoint precisely what an employer needs; this makes it much easier to quickly digest a professional website than a resume. 3. With the richer content and communication features, a professional website is a more efficient platform for evaluation purposes. It also might help avoid some of the early probing by a potential employer. 4. It is very easy to share a link to a professional website; it is simply a web address. Personnel evaluating your professional website can easily share a link to your website between them and avoid repeatedly asking you for your resume. There are two points worth further explanation: The effectiveness of this pull approach depends on whether hiring personnel conduct searches for potential employees. I believe this tendency is becoming more common, especially for finding more talented professionals. However, the traditional application process (what we refer to as a push approach) remains integral in finding employment. A professional website has built-in functionality for this approach as well. And there can be a combination of both, where a traditional resume is sent but has a URL to get the employer to view a professional website. A professional website interface is not meant to replace the value of interpersonal interactions, but to smooth the process in getting there. Much of the introductory interplay between a potential employer and employee is inefficient and can be improved upon. A professional website has communication and rich content features to help move the process to an interviewing stage.

Push Approach
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Introduction to Pull & Push Approach While Seeking Employment Published 12/18/2012 by TheProfessionalWebsite
The traditional approach for seeking employment is to find a job listing and apply to it by email or filling out an online form. We call this a push approach, where you push a resume to a potential employer. Within this approach, there are two different strategies: applying to a few positions with unique resumes and cover letters or applying to many positions with a generic resume and cover letter. For example, someone applying for a judge clerkship would take the first strategy and someone applying for a database administrator would take the latter strategy. A professional website has functionality for a push approach with both of these strategies. Most of the content collected for a professional website can be used to generate a standard resume. You can also include sections not commonly shown on a resume such as a portfolio. You have complete control over which sections appear on your resume and, within the section, what content appears (each line-item has on and off switches). A professional website also has functionality to build a list of contacts that you are sending your employment applications to. Also, you can track applications you sent and update their statuses. You can create as many cover letters as necessary. It is possible to create a generic cover letter when you apply to similar positions; it is also possible to create unique cover letters for each position you apply to. Applying to a position by email with a PDF resume and an optional PDF cover letter is extremely easy with a professional website; simply follow these steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. Create a main contact record for the person you are going to send the application to. Decide if you want to use a previously created resume or build a new one. If a cover letter is necessary, decide if you want use a generic one or build a unique one. Navigate to the Application By Email. Use the drag and drop features to select contacts and cover letters. Select a resume. Enter the body of the email. 5. Click Send Application You can use this same interface and approach to send out many applications at once. Follow the same instructions above, however, for the first step add all of the contacts you want to send applications to and when you get to the fourth step, select a generic cover letter and each of the contacts you just added. In a highly competitive employment market, you increase your chances of finding employment by applying to as many opportunities as possible. There are many times when you will have to carefully mold a resume and cover letter for a specific employment opportunity (usually positions that require a high degree of skill). For these applications, you may want to get some support in writing your cover letter using the GroupShare feature called Cover Letter Review. Your first impression is so important and a well written cover letter maybe what separates you from your peers.

Evidence a Pull Approach Is Effective

The effectiveness of a pull approach hinges on whether potential employers seek employees. For many reasons, I think this is where the landscape of finding employment is going and there is evidence that it has already gained traction.

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Introduction to Pull & Push Approach While Seeking Employment Published 12/18/2012 by TheProfessionalWebsite
One of the biggest reasons why employers are increasingly seeking employees is because the current approach where employees seek employers is so inefficient. Potential employers are required to post employment opportunities in many places, such as job boards, newspapers, on their corporate website, etc. This is expensive because of overhead, time, and the use of other resources. However, the biggest problem is that strong candidates who did not find the job posting will not be considered for the opportunity. Evidence that the current approach where employees seek employers is on a serious decline can seen by the precipitous loss of market value of the major players offering related services, for example, MonsterJobs has lost a staggering 81% of its value over the last 5 years1 . There is a faster pace in finding talent for immediate needs. Much of this comes from the velocity of information technology development in the service industry. The current process can take months to hire the right candidate; a posting is added, candidates submit their resume, resumes are evaluated, and interviews are setup and conducted. With a pull approach, the first three of these steps go away. Theoretically a potential employer can be at an interviewing stage within a few hours. Viewing a professional website is much faster and easier than a standard resume for evaluating a potential employee. A professional website is essentially a multi-dimensional resume with rich content (and multimedia), communication features, and an internal searching mechanism. Moreover, it is easier to evaluate among a team simply share a professional website URL among colleagues. With an effective search mechanism in place, a potential employer can quickly get a finely-tuned search result (or list) of talented professionals in a manner of minutes. A professional website, built on a skills-based foundation, has the necessary structure and keywords to be searched through. The evidence that potential employers are seeking employees can be found in the success of LinkedIn and their flagship product Recruiter. It is one of their biggest revenue generating services and can cost as much as $8,000 per user1. Clearly, companies are purchasing this service and using it to find employees. There are some issues in relying on a LinkedIn profile to represent you. First, you do not own all the content with your free profile, and LinkedIn can use the content to generate revenue with third party marketers. Second, it does not necessarily represent everything about you. Third, it currently does not support all multimedia content such as video, audio, etc.. Fourth, it does not have the stylistic appeal of a website. In summary, it is not necessarily setup as a way for you to project yourself in the best possible way. There is a place in your LinkedIn profile where you can share a link to a website I suggest using it to share your professional website. Finally, there is one subtle difference with the LinkedIn approach. The idea of a pull approach is to give you all of the functionality you need to best market yourself and effectively lure potential employers to your professional website. You are always in control. It does not mean just having your profile getting found in a search by an employer.

How to Implement a Pull Approach

1

July 2012 Forbes article: How LinkedIn Has Turned Your Resume into A Cash Machine. Page 4

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Introduction to Pull & Push Approach While Seeking Employment Published 12/18/2012 by TheProfessionalWebsite
I would like to discuss how you actually implement a pull approach, what do you need to do to get potential employers to visit your professional website. Many of the tactics mirror what businesses do to increase traffic to their websites, though there are some subtle differences; these tactics include: SEO (search engine optimization), social media and job board landing page, participation in blogs related to your field of interest, and presentation of a skill set. It is also worth mentioning that the idea of a pull approach is evolving, so there may become new tactics as web service companies develop technologies to work with a pull approach. A professional website is built with strong SEO fundamentals, including: the use of meta tags, content rendered as HTML text, and the structure and naming of pages. Meta tags can be used to lure potential employers when they search on keywords in a search engine; you can create meta tags that describe your field of interest, past employment or education, where you live, core-competencies, something you worked on, and any other keywords a potential employer might search on. You can and should use Google Analytics to monitor traffic to your professional website; keep an eye on how many hits you are getting, where the hits are coming from, and what search keywords are driving the traffic. Understand that it may take a few weeks before your website gets fully indexed by the major search engines. Wherever possible, you should add a link to your professional website in your social media and job board profiles; your professional website should be a landing page where a potential employer can learn more about you. As discussed earlier blog, LinkedIn has been successful in getting employers to seek employees through their huge professional network; put your best foot forward and add a link to your professional website from your LinkedIn profile. Similarly add a link to your professional website in MonsterJobs and CareerBuilder profiles, so when potential employers look for talent through their respective employer searches, they will be able to access your professional website. Think about the advantage in having everything pointing to one place your professional website. An advantage in having your own blog is that it gives you a voice. You can attract a larger audience to your professional website by getting more readers following your blog; these readers could include potential employers. In addition, you should read and participate in blogs related to your field of interest and leave links back to your professional website; the same strategy is used with business websites. Summarizing your professional background with a skill set is becoming increasingly more popular. According to a recent survey I conducted, most of the respondents (68.90%) have searched on a skill set and the largest segment (47.1%) think a skill set is somewhat effective in summarizing a professional background2. All of the major job searches provide a way to search by a skill set; you can provide a skill set in a LinkedIn profile. It is interwoven into the framework of a professional website. I expect in the near future there will be search engine that indexes only personal website, so it would more effective to search on skill sets externally. Moreover, once a potential employer gets to your professional website, they can search on your skills internally to pinpoint exactly what they are looking for in their employment opportunity. You should take full advantage of the skill set functionality of a professional website.

Pull Approach FAQ

In this section, I am going to share some of my responses to questions I have fielded along the way.
2

http://www.scribd.com/doc/117176551/Summary-Survey-Skills-Based, Survey: Skills Based Approach

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Introduction to Pull & Push Approach While Seeking Employment Published 12/18/2012 by TheProfessionalWebsite
How does a potential employer find out what type of career I am interested in? There are a few ways to share your career aspirations through your professional website. First, you can write a mission or objective statement something commonly found at the top of a resume and make it a focal point on the home page of your professional website. Second, you can take advantage of the skill-based approach and present your skill set something an employer can use to infer what career opportunities you would be interested in. Third, you can setup a SEO campaign to target career opportunities where you live; it takes time to be properly indexed in a search engine so this is more effective for a long-term employment search (or what we call casual employment seeking, i.e. when you are already employed but would be willing to explore other employment opportunities). Fourth, keep up a blog; potential employers can learn more about you on a personal level. I would like to see the concept of a pull approach to become more popular, enough so that web service companies develop new technologies to make it more effective. I envision a search mechanism that indexes personal websites, for example. How much should I rely on a pull approach to find employment? I would take the same amount of time applying to jobs with the traditional approach (what we call a push approach), especially if you are early in your career. According a recent survey I published, the respondents ranked finding and applying to job listings the most important factor in finding employment by a wide margin3. You can respond to job listings by sending not only the traditional PDF cover letter and resume, but also an email invitation to visit your professional website; of course, you would prefer they follow the invitation because of the richer content and communication features of a professional website. LinkedIn and MonsterJobs have effective search mechanisms where employers can find you by searching through a skill set; I recommend linking your profiles to your professional website, so an employer winds up there. Is there a way to tailor my website for a particular employment opportunity? Yes. You can optimize your website by setting up the sections you want to make available, and within the section, turn on or off line-items. In addition, you can make a targeted cover letter available to a potential employer visiting your website from an email invitation. They follow a link from your invitation, log into your website, and are then taken to a page where the targeted cover letter appears. How do I keep track of potential employers visiting my website? You can incorporate Google Analytics with your professional website. This helps you keep track of how visitors are finding you, what content they are accessing, and how long they are on your website. There is also a feature where a potential employer can leave a message after visiting your website for an employment opportunity; this functions like a guestbook. They can leave a message about the opportunity, how to contact them, and what the next step might be. Is a pull approach more effective for certain professions? Is a pull approach more effective at certain career stages?
3

http://www.scribd.com/doc/117175767, Survey: Employers Seeking Employees

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Introduction to Pull & Push Approach While Seeking Employment Published 12/18/2012 by TheProfessionalWebsite
I would expect that if you are seeking employment in IT, business, and communications, a pull approach might be more effective because of the direct influence of web media and the faster pace of hiring in these areas. I have experienced recruiters trying to fill a web designer job in a matter of hours. Matching job seekers with potential employers is a long standing, well established system. There are certain professions, such as entry-level lawyers and doctors, where there is a courting and internship programs that will ultimately determine whether you get an offer. However, even if you do not effectively pull a potential employer to your website, a professional website is still an excellent way to represent you. A pull approach can only be effective if employers actively seek employees, something we have discussed in previous blogs. The best evidence that this is happening is the success of LinkedIns flagship product Recruiter, where recruiters pay to access LinkedIns network to find potential candidates. The average age of a LinkedIn user is 42, which means they are established professionals. So there is no clear indication how effective a pull approach would be for early career professionals, but some indication it could be effective for mid to late career professionals.

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