I’ve written – and you’ve commented – about the state of project management, current hiring practices by employers, and the relevance of the PMP certification through the Project Management Institute (PMI) as it pertains to finding your next project management gig.

 

 

 

 

What I found eye-opening…maybe even eye-popping…was some findings I read about recently concerning job boards and their ability to help individuals find positions.

 

 

 

 

PMP Certification

 

 

 

 

First, let’s cover the PMP certification – briefly again – and what we’ve discussed already so far. It’s a given that more and more postings are requiring PMP certification for prospective project managers. Nearly all others state PMP certification as being highly preferred or that first consideration goes to PMP candidates. And even on some of those candidates have been told by recruiters that company ‘X’ won’t even talk to you if you’re not certified.

 

 

 

 

Good or bad, employers are eliminating the need to wade through thousands of good resumes of experienced individuals by having their HR departments do initial screenings – in many cases – on the existence or non-existence of PMP certification for the candidate. I’ll maintain again that this is a bad and lazy practice, in my opinion, but I’ve already beaten this one to death, so I won’t go into it any further.

 

 

 

 

Most of the rest of the information for this article comes from August Cohen's very comprehensive article entitled "Need a Job? Then Don't Waste Time on Job Boards."  You can read his full article here.

 

 

 

 

Job Board Findings

 

 

 

 

Now on to the recent job board findings. CareerXroads recently conducted their 8th Annual Source of Hire Study and the findings for external hires were astounding…downright disappointing, I guess. If you’re looking for a job right now, brace yourselves because this is very surprising information…but there’s light at the end of the tunnel in the form of job board advice so keep reading on.

 

 

 

 

According to the study, CareerBuilder is accountable for 3.95% of all external hires, Monster is accountable for 3.14%, and HotJobs is accountable for 1.35%. Granted, Craigslist isn’t mentioned - it’s a flaky job search site at best - but this means that the Big 3 right now account for only 8.44% of all external hires. I never would have guessed it.

 

 

 

 

What does this mean to job seekers? At the very least it means don’t rely only on those three job boards – be sure to incorporate other sources (yes, including Craigslist), but also utilize sources like Twitter and LinkedIn and network as much as possible. And when you are using the job boards, be sure to keep your information fresh because that gets the attention of hiring organizations. Be careful on this one if you are currently employed and just looking or keeping your information updated – it also gets the attention of your own HR department. I can attest to that as I did a CareerBuilder refresh one time at CareerBuilder’s request and had to have a discussion with the PMO Director and HR. Geez.

 

 

 

 

Ways to Aid Your Search

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned, keep your job board info fresh. Just as you look for recent postings, HR departments are looking for recent resumes and if you keep yours updated, it looks new.

 

 

 

 

Here are a few ways you can help your online search process:

 

 

 

 

 

 





     
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  • Make sure your resume is uploaded in the exact format requested, e.g., .doc or .txt. Note that .docx is not widely accepted.




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  • Refresh your resume every week or two so it looks like a new submission and doesn’t get stale. Just as you search by date of position posted, sourcers search by date of resume posted.




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  • Use job board aggregators like Indeed.com or SimplyHired.com. These sites are great time savers as they provide an easily searchable database for thousands of boards in one location.




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  • Take advantage of industry association and niche job sites. And, don’t forget LinkedIn’s exclusive job postings.




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  • Apply directly to the company career board if possible. LinkUp.com is a nice website that features jobs aggregated exclusively from more than 22,000 company job boards.




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  • Create a resume that is rich with keywords that are reflected in the position description. This means you have to modify your resume for each specific position, every time.




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  • Label your resume document as “lastnamefirstname,” or “lastnamefirstname_position” to make it easier for the recipient to identify and remember you.




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  • Don’t put a date on your resume file (“resume_05-08”), as you don’t want to accentuate how long you may have been looking.




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