A little over a month ago a message was posted to one of the LinkedIn groups I follow. It directed us to this article(Stop Being Creative in Your Job Search) at CrossRoads, a blog on the NetTemps site. The article is written by Kevin Donlin, the Co-Director of Guerrilla Job Search International.
I both agree and disagree with many points in this article. First he is correct that if you have been searching for a long period of time you need to evaluate what you have been doing and begin to tweak this process. My biggest caution to job seekers would be that in his step 2, he mentions that if emailing the resume is not working then mail, fax, hand deliver. I would just remind the searcher that following the posted instructions of the employer is possible the most important of the job search.
With most employers receiving hundreds (if not thousands) of applications for each opening, they will use any reason possible to weed out these applications. Remember that the number of unemployed Americans, 13.9 million, for a very narrow definition of unemployed is far higher that the number of job openings: 3.1 million. While these numbers are also about a month old, the trend has been holding for the better part of a year. For the employer a legal and easy way to reduce the amount of work of reviewing these applications is to throw out any that don't meet all the requirements or who didn't follow the directions.
Moral: Be innovative, and review your search process for ways to improve your job search. Just don't break a cardinal rule and let that innovation cause you to skip or ignore instructions of the employer.
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