Why Posting & Praying is NOT a Sustainable Job Search Practice

I talk to a lot of people about their job search practices, and I'm often impressed by the very organized, well-thought out systems that people use to manage their search process. I had one client whose Excel spreadsheets seemed like something I'd find at Bloomberg's data analysis center. Despite her hyper-organization, from day one I was confident that she'd find a job quickly, and that she'd also be very good at the kinds of jobs she was looking for. My opinion: if you can sustain a highly organized system throughout your job search, more power to you - you're that much more likely to land something. In my judgment, following up and following through is perhaps 20% memory and persistence, and 80% organization.

With certain job search practices, a good organization system is downright essential. If you find that you are combing the Internet and applying for jobs - what I call the "Post and Pray" strategy - I highly recommend a system for organizing your applications. Your system can be whatever works for you - using Evernote.com, Excel, a notebook, Diigo - doesn't matter as long as you can sustain it through the process of selecting, applying, interviewing and starting a job.

I'd like to elaborate on the "Post and Pray" job search strategy, so you can see why it's important to get organize. Let's say you see an enticing posting on a job board, quickly read the description, then attach your resume and click submit. Done. Finito. Then, because you applied for a job you feel like something might happen - and it might - but there's a lot of hoping and waiting involved. Few days go by... A week... A few months... Some people spends entire days of their lives scouring the Internet and "posting and praying" only to become very discouraged by the lack of response they receive. After just a few days of this, you may start to wonder: is anyone home? Why doesn't anyone get back to me!?

Now consider why there might be no response from the other side: the potential employer who took the gambit and posted his job description on the web. Imagine Mr. Recruiter sitting at his desk, Monday morning, fresh off the weekend, coffee in hand. Consider his surprise when he logs into his recruiting email account and he sees 74 new applicants. 74! And he just posted this position on Friday! By the end of the day on Monday, won't all the resumes start to look very similar? Most companies don't have the resources to act like a college recruiting process where there's a whole admissions team pouring over the applicants - it's likely just Mr. Recruiter who now has 346 applicants for the 7 positions he's working on. Will he even go through all these applicants? Will he see your resume? Will he take the time to respond? Very doubtful. What he'll probably do is favor 3 or 4 applicants that other people referred to him - and ignore the rest. Can you blame him?

Now, despite Mr. Recruiter's overwhelming workload, and the low odds - in my opinion, there's still nothing wrong with the post & pray strategy. It can produce an interview and ultimately a job. Yes, I've heard it happen even on job sites as generic as Monster, CareerBuilder and Craigslist, where recruiters may receive 1,000's of resumes. However, it's important to be honest and realistic about 2 aspects of this strategy.

1) Posting and Praying is not at all sustainable by itself. If posting and praying is your main strategy or (yikes!) your only strategy, it will suck the life out of you and cause you great distress after just a few days. You will not be able to sustain your productivity or focus, and you will become frayed at the edges from staring at your computer screen and filling out forms. You'll probably wind up playing solitaire a lot.

2) If you are working this strategy - as part of a larger strategy - then I say do it aggressively and creatively. Get really organized and follow everything up. Make a killer Excel Spreadsheet or keep a handwritten notebook of everywhere you've posted and when - and follow-up at routine times. Posting & praying is okay - but you're much more likely to get a response if you send a follow-up email and a specific cover letter. That's why organization is so important: how else will you know where you applied, and when?

Now, if you've tried posting and pray before, I suspect that you will probably agree with me about 1). It's mind-numbing and soul-destroying to search, fill out a form and click submit more than a few times a day. So, I doubt I'll get much disagreement there. However, my guess is that some of you might disagree with 2). You might think, if Mr. Recruiter is already so overloaded, how will sending him more emails win him over to look at my resume and consider me? Won't he ignore that email too? Won't I just be bothering him because he already has so much to do?

Well, sadly, the answer is that he probably won't respond to your email either, but the good news is that I doubt you'll be bothering him. I think it's worth it to follow-up because you create a new possibility (that he might see you) - and you are exerting more of your personal influence over the outcome. So, now, if we imagine Mr. Recruiter with his 74 new emails, consider for a moment that all of those 74 emails are likely containing the same formatting on his screen, they have the same look. It's a pretty drab landscape for Mr. Recruiter to look at his email inbox on that Monday morning and see 74 similar resumes. Now, imagine your email coming through - your email with your personal domain name - with your engaging writing style - with your charm and wit. Perhaps you could catch his attention, perhaps you could stand out? I think you're still praying, but your follow-up email just might change the odds. Plus, doesn't it feel better to do something than to simply pray?

However, I must say that "doing something" will not be satisfying unless you feel good about you overall approach to your job search. I often hear people say something like "searching for a job is a job." They will tell you to treat your job search like it's your most important job. I think people who say this are probably well-intentioned and they're speaking figuratively, but if you are literal like I am, and it's true that searching for a job is a job, then, uh oh, how do you quit that job? I don't think anyone is looking for a job looking for jobs. That job would stink. Looking for a job is an often thankless set of tasks that doesn't pay anything and offers up a lot of rejection. Would you like to apply for that?! I don't think there's anyone out there who likes it. Good at it, maybe, but would they rather be paid for their work? Yes.

No, for most of us, applying for jobs - especially posting and praying - is much more like a chore than a job. In my opinion, you can transform the period of unemployment by relating to it realistically and honestly, and learning the skills to handle it as a chore every time it arises, because who knows when you might have be looking again? So, my question is: how do you do this chore more effectively? How do you stay on top of it, manage it, get it done? It turns out that a big part of maintaining focus, productivity and some morale and self-worth throughout the job search process has to do with how you manage your activities - and the personal organizational systems you develop. When you have your search on track and under control, why pray?

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