Background Screening | 5 Ways to Modernize Your Job Search Pt. 2
Background Screening | 3. Remove “references available upon request.” Employers take it for granted that you’ll provide references when they ask for them, so there’s no need to announce it up front. This is a convention left over from another time. No employer is going to reject you for including it, but it takes up space better used for something else and, like an objective, it makes your résumé feel dated.
4. Kill the sales-iness in your approach. Job-search advice used to center around tactics that today come across as uncomfortably aggressive to most employers. For instance:
- Including a line in your cover letter that you’ll call in a week to schedule an interview. (You’re not the one who decides whether to schedule an interview; once you’ve expressed interest by applying, the ball is in the employer’s court.)
- Sending cookies or chocolate to the hiring manager, the person doing the background screening or other gimmicks designed to get your résumé noticed. (You’ll come across as if you don’t understand professional boundaries, and as if you don’t think your qualifications stand on their own merit. Plus, fewer people these days accept food from strangers, so it’s likely your food gift will end up in the trash.)
- Overnighting your résumé to the hiring manager to make it stand out. Pick up any job-search guide from a decade ago, and you’ll find this advice still in it. But these days, you’re more likely to look like someone who doesn’t follow directions – and worse, your materials might not be considered at all, because you didn’t enter them into the company’s electronic application system.
5. Don’t “pound the pavement.” You might hear from your parents or people who haven’t job searched in a long time that you should show up at the companies you want to work for and drop off your résumé in person. But with the exception of a small handful of employers who specifically request this, this is no longer done and will come across as naive and annoying to most employers. Instead, most job searches these days are done online primarily – looking at online listings, emailing résumés and cover letters, filling out electronic applications and networking on sites like LinkedIn. Of course, you should still connect with your network in person, but the concept of “pounding the pavement” looking for a job has mostly died off. -US News
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