9 Outdated Job Search Techniques That No Longer Work

It's time to up your job hunting game!

Landing a job was already hard enough back before Covid-19 threw the entire world into chaos. Now, with both legal and social restrictions limiting communication, and with more people than ever desperate for employment, finding a job can be a real nightmare. 
 

Whether you lost your previous position and want to get a new one, or are looking to do a bit of job hopping, you will need to adapt to the new normal to have any chance of success in today’s job market. This means that you need to discard all of the outdated, useless, and often - counterproductive job search techniques in favor of methods that actually give you a fair chance of landing a job. 

Here are some of the practices you need to avoid at all costs.

Writing a Long and Verbose CV

Putting large chunks of text in your CV, or worse yet - building it as a mini-autobiography, is not going to impress recruiters. Even putting a cover letter at the very front of a resume is a bad practice, as recruiters don’t have the time, or inclination, to comb through walls of text looking for important details.

Instead, the very first entries you should have in your CV are the details the recruiter would want to know about you - your professional experience, your education, your qualifications, your relevant skills. Further, the information in your CV needs to be deliberately structured so that it is eminently browsable, for the convenience of HRs.

When you write your CV, you can arrange those details however you think they’d be the most useful for the recruiter. Just make sure you trim as much fat as possible, make the whole thing as concise and to the point as you can, and keep in mind that it’s most likely going to be judged at a glance.

Relying on LinkedIn & Easy Apply

In theory, LinkedIn should be an excellent platform that you can use to connect to other professionals in your field and network. In practice, it’s just another social media account - only it is one that allows users to create a facade of sophistication and expertise, rather than anything else.

However, since everyone on board knows that this is just a hollow presentation, the chances of people actually finding it impressive, or even convincing, are microscopic. With this in mind, it should be obvious why relying on LinkedIn, and especially its one-click-apply function is an ineffective way of looking for employment.

Focusing on the CV and Skipping the Cover Letter Entirely

As mentioned above, including a cover letter as your opening act is a terrible practice. However, job applicants should not assume they can do without a cover letter especially when it’s a requirement in the job description.

A cover letter still has a role to play in finding a job in the current recruitment environment. Reviewing it is usually the step recruiters proceed with after going through an applicant’s CV and determining that the job seeker covers all the necessary bases so far. Furthermore, recruiters looking to fill positions that require command of a language or communication skills analyze cover letters to discern whether the applicant actually meets their criteria or not.

This is why it pays to send a personalized cover letter along with your CV when applying for a job. Doing so demonstrates to the company that you can communicate well and are serious about your application - after all, you took the time to create a unique cover letter. That’s important for the majority of recruiters.

Networking in Person

There is only one way a get-together could yield meaningful results for job-seekers. You may have some success if you go to a networking event organized for the express purpose of creating connections between industry specialists and companies looking to hire. Attending any other type of meeting with your peers may be pleasurable, but does not constitute an effective networking strategy.

Not Tailoring Your CV to the Job 

When job hunting, it’s tempting to just make one polished, well-written CV and just send that every time you apply for a job. Unfortunately, most recruiters take a very dim view of applicants who present them with a generic CV - those applications tend to find their way to the bin remarkably quickly. 

The sorting software that recruiters use nowadays is also usually set to detect certain industry-specific keywords or phrases that appear in the job offer, so a generic CV isn't going to cut it at all. To have a good chance of getting the job, applicants need to tailor the CVs they send out to each job ad.

Undermining Your Employment History

Not too long ago, job-hopping was considered to be a bad practice. Changing jobs regularly could be taken as a sign that the employee in question has no particular loyalty to any company, which has been considered to be a serious failing in the past. This can prompt many applicants to try and de-emphasize the employment experience they have when writing their CVs, to avoid making a bad impression.

Such applicants will be happy to find out that the stigma surrounding job-hopping has largely disappeared in recent years, as it has become more and more common. Employment experience is now more important than ever, and the current generation of recruiters and managers don’t care how the applicant gained said experience.

Staying Laser-focused on One Approach

You must not cut your options when looking for a job. Keeping in touch with old contacts is a good practice - combine that with regularly checking all available job offer platforms, and even proactively approaching businesses and offering them your services. Any one of those methods can yield results - don’t limit your chances for success by focusing on just one.

Applying for Every Ad

The “spray and pray” approach may have been useful once upon a time but is by far not the best way of going about looking for employment nowadays. Sending a bunch of applications to random employers nowadays just results in your CVs ending up in a bunch of virtual recycling bins.

This is why you should pass on job ads if you don’t meet their criteria or are uncertain about the whole thing. Instead, focus on applying for just a few positions that pique your interest, and giving the task your all when doing so. This tends to produce much better results.

Dedicating All Your Time to Job Hunting

Looking for a job is an endeavor you have to take seriously to achieve any results. However, focusing on just that undertaking to the exclusion of all others is extremely unproductive.

Even if finding employment is your highest priority, you should not neglect self-improvement and self-care in the process. On the contrary, you should dedicate time and effort to develop new marketable skills, take the time to relax and unwind, take a few gigs on the side so that you stay in shape. All of those are worthwhile activities that can supplement your job searching endeavors - and can double as a convenient excuse for any gaps in your resume.

Andrew Arkley is the Founder of PurpleCV, one of the UK's leading CV writing providers - with over 15 years’ experience in HR and recruitment at a senior level and having conducted thousands of interviews, he knows precisely what it takes to land a job! Andrew has personally written over 3000 CVs and since its inception, PurpleCV has grown rapidly to encompass a UK-based team committed to providing market-leading CVs for any jobseeker or individual. Visit https://purplecv.co.uk/ Connect Andrew Arkley