It's not your father's job search

With the pandemic and people out of work, we have added career coaching to our list of services by partnering with a leader in the field that has helped more than 100,000 executives get back in the saddle. Allow me to elaborate. In 1998, I exited a small software company I had helped found and went to work for a major enterprise-wide software giant with offices all over the world. I found the job in a local paper. The ad had a phone number to call, which I did. I was shocked to be put through to the practice director doing the hiring. After a nice chat, he asked me to send my resume, which I also did. Soon after, I got a call to come in and interview, and he hired me on the spot. I started with them and worked for four years until I got laid off after 9/11. The point of all this is that job searches were much different than today even just 22 years ago. We sometimes lose sight of the changes wrought by the internet. In the ensuing years, online job boards have dominated the hiring process. Today there are more than 40,000 of them, ranging from very small to humongous. Unfortunately, only about 20% of companies actually use the big public boards like Indeed, Monster, Glass Door, etc.; 80% of executive positions are either found on the private boards, which are accessible only to the hiring and placement communities, company websites and LinkedIn. Even if you do have access to these various “insider” boards, it’s not enough. The average call-back rate on resumes submitted to major employers is only about 3%. Obviously, employment rates are much smaller. The issue is that the vast majority of resumes are never even read. Most large…
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