Many Times You Can Tell A Book By Its Cover

By Hank Stringer

President, Founder, and Chief Talent Officer

Hire.com

When it comes to looking for a job after college, thanks to the Internet, the opportunities seem to be endless. These days, nearly every company has a career Web site and offers a way for you to easily learn about a company, send in your resume or apply for a job online. So how can you tell the good companies from the bad or those with real positions they want to fill? Believe it or not it's pretty easy. Here are some simple techniques you can use to determine whether a company is right for you.

Are ‘Careers' clearly marked on the front page?

Take a few moments and write down 10 company names. Make sure that some are large and recognizable. Now go to their Web sites and time how long it takes you to find the ‘Careers' section link on the front page. We'll wait…go check them out and come back…

Surprised? Unemployment is at six percent nationally. For college grads the number is under three percent and dropping. Companies may not be hiring at the same rate as when unemployment was at the all time low of two percent, but they are hiring. And recent projections indicate that we'll have 10,000,000 more jobs than qualified workers by 2005. So why is it that when you go to the Web site of Company X, it can take several minutes just to find the careers section? If the careers site is hard to find then it's the first indication that the company does not fully appreciate its human resources. Remember, you're a valuable talent asset when visiting a company site. They should treat you as such and make it easy for you to find careers and information that might lead to employment. Given the evolution of the Web, there's already been improvement in this area, but -in a couple of years, it will be a given -all corporate Web sites will have this drill down. My advice, find those today that understand how to treat their most valuable asset and you'll find a forward thinking company that appreciates what you bring to the table.

Is it easy to find positions of interest?

OK, so you've made it to the careers section, what do you see? Most companies offer a list of open jobs and simply give the position name. For example, large companies may post every position so that the Customer Service Rep position #12345 is listed just above the Customer Service Rep position #12346. Same position for the same manager just happens they have multiple positions to fill. Ugly and makes it hard to find positions of interest. Most companies will give you search capabilities to find positions of interest - this is a good move. But listing all open jobs and doing it with general requisition information versus a compelling description about the position is again a way to understand how the company thinks about the talent they seek. Smart companies will make the list of positions easy to understand and intuitive to navigate. They'll make the job descriptions enticing and interesting, hoping to make you want to read and find out more.

Can you register with the company to learn more quickly and anonymously about career opportunities, while retaining control over your data?

This is the absolute best way to understand the hiring process of any company. If a company's Web site asks for a lot of data including your resume, name, address, phone number etc., then it's evident they want to store a static profile of you in a database that can be searched manually at a later date. Companies using this approach are hoping that when, and if, they have a position they think matches your skills, then they can contact you and get you interested. Oh, and I forgot to mention, pray that you're available. Here's why. Most companies don't have any sort of filtering mechanism for the electronic data they're receiving. Assuming they're getting submissions from all over the world, there's a glut of electronic resumes and duplicate profile data that must be sorted through in order to find candidate matches for job openings. So the likelihood of a company getting through this tsunami of information in a timely manner and matching

The above is an excerpt from The Last Job Search Guide You'll Ever Need: How to Find and Get the Job or Internship of Your Dreams, which is available for sale for $19.85 in our bookstore or $27.00 at Amazon.com but for free to those who subscriber to our free career newsletter. This hot new book contains job search secrets of the most experienced, most knowledgeable and most respected career experts. Learn career planning, job hunting tools and tactics, interviewing, cover letter and resume writing (lots of samples!), networking, and how to find an internship. Written by 149 career experts. To receive a free copy, subscribe to our free career newsletter.

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