How to Apply for Jobs

In this class, we're gonna talk about how to apply for jobs. And as simple as that might sound and think we've all done that before we've applied for jobs. It's actually a process and there are things you wanna be mindful of. So you get better results. So let me walk you through the agenda for this class and the things we're gonna cover.

First. We're gonna talk about our approach generally how we think about it and some of the, our thoughts that have gone into it, then we're gonna talk about the different ways to get in like another wave that we used to name this class was getting in the door because applying is not just the act of applying.

The process by which you go through to secure an interview. And so how do you get in the door? And so one way is referrals, right? And how you reach out to people and get them to refer you in the other is recruiters or another is recruiters. We're gonna talk about recruiters how they work internally, externally cold outreach.

You can actually reach out to a person you don't know that works at the. and then lastly, applying online and one of my favorite lines, you'll hear me say it throughout the classes is it's an and not an, or you're gonna do all four of these and some may be better for certain situations, but these are all different tactics and techniques that you will have at your disposal to get in the door.

And then you will focus on landing the. But task number one is to get in the door and get that interview. So we're gonna talk about the process of how you take your customized materials that we talked about in the preparing yourself and customizing your materials class, or customizing your resume, and then getting that into someone's hands so that they can review it and then call you in for the interview. All right. So with that, let's jump into the class

in this section. We're gonna talk about Teal's approach to applying and getting in the door. Part of what we want you to learn in this class is what's your customer doing right. If we go back to this line that we've said in a few of the classes, which is you are a salesperson and your product is you, we wanna understand your buyer, the best sales people understand their buyer.

So we want you to understand a little bit about what's going on the other side. And this is gonna be more geared towards large companies, obviously small, smaller companies. It's a bit of a, simpler process, but on an average based on research, The companies take about almost a month and a half.

If you think about this in work days, it's roughly 20 work days in a month, it's a month and a half, almost two months to fill a position. So what that tells you is they're taking a pretty serious they're putting a lot of steps in process to make sure that they're hiring the right person.

And it is your job to get through that process. And generally how it works is someone. Hey, I need someone for my team. So then the headcount gets approved, right? That usually happens in the budgeting process. Then again, if the company is bigger, the hiring manager will go to the talent or recruiting team and get some help writing the job description.

Then they will get it posted. Oftentimes they'll even talk about a budget if they can post it on different job sites or on different job boards. Cuz those cost money, maybe they have LinkedIn recruiter or maybe they're posting on different job boards if it's a very niche position, but then they get it posted.

Then applications start to come in. But oftentimes a recruiter will also do outbound. They will start to source talent. So if you've ever gotten an email or an email in LinkedIn that says, Hey, you're a perfect fit for our position. We'd love to talk. That's a recruiter doing outbound to you. That recruiter also might be an external recruiter that's been retained or hired on a contingent basis to fill the position.

So we'll talk about that. In, in that specific section of the class, then once they have all the applicants, they start to screen them and they go through that process of vetting and screen. And then they set up the interview. And that's all the stuff that's happening on the back end when you wanna get in.

And so that's why it's important for you to know what's happening and to think about, again, what's your customer doing? What's their process and how can you get in. You're probably gonna talk to a few different people in the process. And these are the folks that are gonna be involved. There's gonna be oftentimes the sourcer, those that are doing that outbound, or, doing that initial screening, then there's gonna be the recruiter who is a much more seasoned and experienced talent manager and manage the whole process.

They're usually accountable for filling a certain amount of the positions as usually. How they're measured. And then there's the hiring manager, the person who you'd probably report to the person who is running the process and is ultimately vetting the person that's being recruited because they're gonna be on their team.

And so those are three pretty important roles. And then occasionally there's a fourth role, which would be like an approve or who sort of sits above the hiring manager. And that might be checking for different things that might be the CEO or an executive in the.

And then that takes us to company size. Again you'll hear us reference this a lot of, if we're thinking about this, you are a salesperson and your product is you, your customers company. So we really want you to understand companies one for what's the environment you want, but then also what's their process like and what can you expect?

When you're engaging with smaller companies, again, you're gonna be speaking to ownership directly, very fast decision making, medium size company, hiring managers, possibly recruiters. Once they start to get large, they probably have, a recruiting team that's handling it. Once they start to get pretty big thousand to 10,000 people, they might have sourcers, people that are specifically focused on filling the funnel and recruiters.

And then in enterprise, your first contact's probably gonna be a sourcer, Or in the enterprise, plus, as we said here, these are the really big companies and they've got a very robust hiring process and screening process. And so you're probably gonna speak to someone in HR and recruiting first as just a sourcer to do that initial screening.

What you want to have in mind is that the goal of applying is not landing the job it's to land the interview, right? All these materials that you prepared, your customized resume, potentially a cover letter, the work that you did. It's all to land the interview. Once you land the interview, you will focus on landing the job or landing the offer we should say, but really the goal of this process and what success looks like and that you're making progress in the overall process is that you landed the interview.

And we're gonna talk about the four ways that you get in the door. and the different amount of effort that you've gotta go into these like referrals, take a lot of effort. You've gotta put your social capital out there. You've gotta connect with people, but when you get them, they're incredibly effective recruiters also take high effort.

You've gotta build the network, but if they don't think they can get you placed, they're probably not gonna invest in the relationship with you. So it could be low impact, cold outreach, high effort. And maybe low impact in the sense that you won't get as many responses, but if it's like one out of 20, but then you make that direct connection and it could be really impactful, but you're just not gonna see the kind of quality of impact that you would like.

And then, the low effort, but low impact is applying online. You could apply to 50 jobs online in a day. Maybe it's not gonna be the most customized resume, fairly low effort in terms of getting volume out there. But it's a pretty low response rate. A lot of those don't get looked at, or, they don't get screened, or there's the ATS. But as usual as I've said, in any of the other classes, if you've watched them. And not an, or you're gonna do all of these, and for certain opportunities, for one particular opportunity, you might do all four because you're really excited about the role. And, one might say no, but one might say yes.

And so you want to know these four approaches to getting in and how to get your materials in front of somebody so that you ultimately land that I.

In this section, we're gonna talk about getting referrals and how you wanna go about doing that. And some of the tactics you could use to get referrals into a company.

So hands down referrals are the best way to get into a company. They have the highest percentage of new hires. A lot of companies up to 70% actually have a bounty of a sort that they will pay a bonus if you refer people in because hiring is a risky process. And if the people that you've already hired and are part of your culture are vetting for a person that just really builds and boosts the confidence that the person's gonna be a great hire.

referrals are definitely the way to go. And companies even hire faster when they're referred. Cause people get to skip the line. So you really want to go to referrals first and tap your network. And that's why we talked about building out your network in one of the other classes and how important that is and the contact based approach to finding opportunities.

But networking and referrals is really great. Now you can't always get it. You can't always find somebody, but we can't stress enough. How important referrals are in the overall process. and some things you want to think about when trying to get referrals is you wanna find those contacts, whether they're first connection, second connection, you want to find them in different places, whether it be social media, LinkedIn, I think Twitter is a really becoming a great place to find these contacts.

Cause a lot of people are actually answering their DMS more so than like LinkedIn, which has become, fairly spammy at this point. Referrals work great for people, already. We'll talk about cold outreach to someone you don't know, but when the person knows you and can vouch for you, cuz oftentimes the company will ask, Hey, how do you know this person?

And if they just say, Hey, I just met them in a community. It's not gonna carry as much weight as I worked with them at the previous job. So think about those people that you worked with before at different companies where they are now learn about a company's referral process. Do they offer the bonus?

Sometimes they won't give a bonus if you apply. And then the person refers you. So just be mindful of that. What you wanna do is ask your friend. If you've got a friend that works at that company or a colleague, or, someone, an acquaintance say, Hey, do you guys offer a referral bonus? Is it easier if I apply online first or do you need to put my name in?

And that might be a little bit of an awkward conversation, but one you'd be helping them because re recommending people that they think are great and helping grow the talent at a company is a great boost to their identity. And they may get the bonus, which is. They may wanna give it to charity or who knows what, but, they also may wanna pocket it.

And no one's gonna get mad at that. So I would definitely ask and learn because if you apply and there is a bonus, they might not get a chance to get it. So that's something you'd look out for.

I've said this a few times in some of the classes you wanna mine your context. Anybody like a re a light referral is still better than nothing. If it's someone that you worked with at a previous company, and they can vouch for you and say, Hey, I worked with this person. They were great. Or even that they were in another department, but the fact that you were employed there and someone knows you, you'd be surprised how little it takes for them to just get you at the top of the pile.

It's like, all right, cool. We'll interview them. And at least you'll get a screen and you get yourself out of the pile of all the people that apply it online. So highly recommend that you look. Anyone that, that works at the company and LinkedIn does this, go to the company page on LinkedIn and see if there's anyone, maybe there's a second degree connection.

that there's gonna be different ways that you can connect in. There's gonna be people that, you know, directly. So that would be a first level connection. Someone that you've worked with, or you're connected with on LinkedIn that works at that place. But then there's also second level connections and that's still better than a cold, don't know the person at all connection.

And so that might be someone that, you know, that, so you find a company that you're really excited about. We're gonna use Oscar health as an example later. So say I'm really excited to go work there. I don't know anyone that works there, but I do a search on LinkedIn and I know someone that knows someone that works there and they're probably willing to make an introduction.

And so LinkedIn makes that incredibly easy. If you go over to the search. And just search for companies and you can filter on whether your connections are first or second degree. And so if you have no first connections, it'll just show you right there. We don't recommend you go to the company page, cuz that makes it a little harder, leverage the search and this interface that we're seeing right now.

I know LinkedIn just did an update. But the interface is pretty much the same. So when you do a search, the main thing you wanna look out for is that you check the second connections as well, because then there's gonna be people that you know, that, They can probably get you in. And what you would do is you would ask that first connection.

Hey, I'd love to talk to someone at that company. Would you mind making an introduction to this person that, then you can have a conversation it's a little more robust than an informational interview because you're coming with clear intent that you wanna work there, but they may be a little uncomfortable kind of putting their identity out there on your behalf.

So they just may want to get to know you first. And this is where those referral bonuses and things like that really come in handy. So be mindful of that whole process.

and then once you identify those people, you wanna send them the direct ask and you wanna make it easy for them to make the referral. And in our template library, we've got lots of different templates, but here's an example of your ask and a little bit of a pitch for yourself. What's your value. So make it clear.

Don't make it too long. You wanna direct email this person? And then again, be clear with what you're asking for. I'm really interested in this particular title. This is why I think I'm a great candidate for it. Will you help me and get a referral in, and with that's what we've got on referrals. Again, a really great way to get into a company.

So we recommend that you use these techniques and try to build up that list of people that can refer you into companies that you're excited about

in this section, we're gonna talk about recruiters. Recruiters can be a great resource and huge ally into getting into companies. So let's talk a little bit about how they.

So there's two main categories of recruiters. There are internal recruiters. These are employees of a company usually salaried, maybe they have some kind of bonus structure. And then there's external recruiters. Sometimes they might be called head hunters, but these folks are contracted and they're contracted in two ways, either on a retained basis or a contingent basis.

But we'll get into that in a second. But the way that they work is. Different. And they're both recruiting, but, and you wanna be mindful of that relationship when you engage with them. Cause those that are internal are really looking to grow that company. They're a part of it. They're invested external tend to be a little bit more transactional and just trying to get the, the person in, because they get paid when they make the hire.

So talking about internal recruiters, they're gonna typically be at larger companies. Very small companies won't have them cuz they can't afford to have it. And this is a person that needs to be hiring all the time. Otherwise, how else would they be busy? The bigger the company gets, the more focused they are on a function.

So they will give them like a series of like categories of jobs. So someone may just be focused on marketing roles, just sales roles, just engineers, just product managers. So you wanna look out for that when you're meeting, recruit. what's their category. Another thing to look out for is at large companies is recruiters will often have 30 to 40 roles.

That's how they're managed. They get a bunch of requisitions and that's what they're managing. So it gives you a sense of the volume they're working through. Most of the time they sit within the HR and people teams, some companies may peel off talent, or if it's a very small company that might be all they have they'll sometimes they'll call it the talent group.

but the majority of the time it's a, subfunction within HR and they're fairly easy to find because they're very active on LinkedIn. That is their tool of choice to find people oftentimes they are spending the bulk of their time and energy. On outbound and sourcing candidates and less so the inbound.

And so that's why, we talk about in the personal brand class, why you're LinkedIn has to be really tight because these are the people that are searching for you based on those keywords. But the internal recruiters spend a ton of time and energy on that. Then there's external recruiters.

These are people that are hired and they're hired in two forms. If you look at the third bullet there's conting. And retained and contingency is usually a lower fee. They usually pay like 25% of one year's salary, not including equity and bonus oftentimes. And so if someone makes a hundred K they're gonna get $25,000, if you get hired one caveat is that the person usually has to stay for six months for a year.

Otherwise they forfeit the fee and they have to give it. Or they give it like in the form of credits, but that's how these guys are compensated. They're compensated on the higher. So that's contingency. And it's usually if you bring us someone, okay, we'll pay you retained is a little different. It's when a company will go to a recruiter and say, we are going to retain you to actively look for this person.

And that means they start to spend time and energy sourcing. They build out presentations, they really help write the brief. And for retained positions, they'll often pay 33%. Sometimes as I is 50%, if the recruiter is really good and has a great ability to bring in talent cause they usually have like good databases of people that they work with.

And so that might be something that you ask a retainer. Hey, is this a contingent basis or is this a retained basis? Like when they reach out to you. so you can ask is it just someone who's like throwing a bunch of darts or they're being a bit more specific? Another thing to think about with external recruiters is they usually focus on a function because that's how they build out their network.

So they're focused on finance sales, marketing, real estate. So be mindful of that. When you're looking to reach out for recruiters to maybe help you find a position. and they tend to only carry a few roles at a time. They really focus on finding key people and they try to be very efficient with their time.

If you don't look like someone that they can place relatively quickly, they're probably not gonna invest a lot of time and energy in you. So be mindful of external recruiters. Remember they get paid if you get placed. So if they don't feel like they can place you, they're just not gonna invest a lot of time and energy that.

it's worthwhile investing in those relationships cuz you never know what opportunities they're gonna find. So be mindful of that. There's a bunch of good ones. There's a bunch that focus. There's a link in the presentation. You can get it from the PDF of the top recruiting firms, but they tend to be national.

They have great reach, but you really wanna focus on the person. Cause they jump from firm to firm and they really carry their book. And they're ultimately the ones that get retained for these things. And then they probably get bonused out on the individual level. So try to build relationships with the individual, but then also look at the firms and there's also lots of great.

Small recruiting firms that you probably wanna reach out to. And many of them have a place on their website where you can list yourself or let them know that you're looking. So great resource, external recruiters, but again, sometimes might not get the impact that you're looking for. Some additional best practices with recruiters is they're super busy and they're trying to fill positions.

So following up is really key in building the relationship and they're remember their job is to fill positions. So they're not looking to be mean they're not looking to screen people out, but they're super busy and they usually have a ton of pressure on them to fill positions. So build that rapport and make your case.

They're pretty easy to find online and then LinkedIn. build those relationships. A thing to keep in mind is that recruiters are really focused on that job description, right? They don't probably understand your role that like they know enough to be able to go hire those people, but the more you can get clear to them, your skills and terms of the JDS that they've got posted, the higher likelihood you're gonna get a return.

And then also remember. Recruiters jump around. They go from company to company, but they usually stay within the function. So build that rapport with the person, and if they go jump to another company in the future, that's something that can be incredibly valuable. So connect with them on LinkedIn.

Even if you don't get the job, connect with them on LinkedIn, they'll remember you, maybe they bring you back. Maybe they were a huge advocate for you. But for some reason, the hiring manager didn't want to fill in the position. So when something opens up later and they get assigned to a different hiring manager, maybe they.

Remember the conversation and wanna bring you in. So think about them as long term relationships, not just these transactional things, cause they can be incredibly powerful and unlock really great career opportunities for you. And because recruiters UN have the. Their finger on the pulse and really understand all the hiring that's happening in the role.

It's okay for you to direct outreach to them. Oftentimes you can even see in LinkedIn, if they posted it, you don't have to apply online. What we're trying to do here is really make applying online the last resort. How do you get your materials in front of a person? So here's a template you could use to reach out to a recruit.

You're talking about the title you're excited about. Oftentimes I would link to the post so they know exactly which one you're talking about and then make your pitch, make, make your value clear on why you think you're the right fit and, just try to get a meeting. And so that's what you would do to approach internal recruiters for external recruiters.

We provide a different template. You really have to make your value clear, right? At the beginning, they're thinking, look, I'm not looking to make friends here. If this person. can land the job that I want to invest in meeting them. And I wanna get them in there. If they get hired, I get paid right? External recruiters.

That's what you gotta be thinking. If they get hired, I get paid. That's what they're thinking. Now there's some great recruiters out there who will build the long term relationship and understand that, you might be someone that they can reach out to and place in the future, but they're so busy and so short on time, and they've gotta be very efficient with it because they gotta get people placed.

And so they're out there oftentimes doing that outbound and that sourcing. So you're gonna wanna be very direct when you engage with external recruit. All right. So that's it on how you work with recruiters. And again, they're a great resource for finding opportunities and another one of the ways that you can focus on getting in the door

in this section, we're gonna talk about cold outreach.

This is one of my favorites, because this is like a. Real sales tactic. And if you come from sales, this is gonna be super obvious to you. But a lot of people don't know that these tactics exist and might feel a little uncomfortable doing it. But a cold outreach is reaching out to someone that you don't know.

You've never met them before. Like a warm intro is someone that you've met and sort got some, something going cold is someone you've never met before, but this isn't. And this is totally doable and you gotta remember the people you're reaching out to are looking to hire. So if you frame it they're gonna be excited to talk to you.

So when you don't have a connection into a company, you wanna find anyone that is tied to the role of that company. And how you might do that is understanding the function. If it's in the marketing department ideally you get like the head of the marketing department and that'll be the use case we talk through now, someone else in the organization could also refer you in.

So you wanna get a contact. At the company. And so this is someone you don't know, you wanna find them and you wanna reach out and set up that initial meeting, but you might be thinking, how do I find that contact? How do I find a person it's not that tough? What you wanna do is identify a role. What's that role, maybe the job description says what role it's reporting into maybe it's the role itself.

If it's a role that they've probably got plenty of. So you search for that and then search the company. and locate people within a place like LinkedIn, that'll help you find the people by role. And then you can find their contact information. Don't recommend that you do an email on LinkedIn.

That's just become so spammy and hard to get through. You wanna try to send them an email and you might be thinking I don't have the person's email. I'm gonna show you how easy it is to get a person's email online and little things that you can do to try to get into their inbox. So let's walk through this example and then we'll do one live.

Tina Miller throughout the series of these classes is trying to get a job at Oscar health. So what do you do? You do a search for CMO Oscar health marketing director, Oscar health, VP marketing, Oscar health, right? In this case, we're gonna do the CMO. And what do you know? It's the first Google search result, Ivan Wix deed CMO.

So you're gonna click that. And you're gonna get it on LinkedIn, and you're gonna see who the person is. You can do a little bit of research about them. You can see where they've worked, how they build their team, things like that. All right. So now I've got the person's information and you're gonna head over to a platform called hunter.io.

It's a really great platform for finding email addresses. You just put in the person's first name, last name, the company it'll even give you a really cool auto suggest because it knows all the websites of all the C. And bam, it'll spit out the email address for you. And it'll even tell you a confidence by which it thinks it's gonna work or not work.

But the good thing about email is if you send it and it doesn't work, it'll just bounce, nothing will happen, but that's, it's as simple as that. So let's go ahead and do one live so you can see, how this process would work.

Okay, so here, we're gonna look for a CMO at a really cool company that just recently went public door dash, great company. I wanna work there. They're doing great. I think the sky's the limit. So let me look up who their CMO is.

So here we go. We got the results and I'm seeing the name of the person. Okay. Okay. But I'm not seeing their LinkedIn profile and I could go search on LinkedIn, what I'll just do is I'll just add LinkedIn. And there we go gave me their profile, as the top link, pretty easy. All right.

We're not connected so I could follow 'em, but they're, I have an account. So I'm able to see things and I want to email Kofi. So let's go ahead and copy his. I'm just hitting command C and then let's just go to hunter.io and okay. I landed on the site. I'm gonna go to their products and I'm gonna go to email finder.

And now I can just hit command V on my keyboard and at door dash right there. I do a search. And there's his email address right now? It's saying it can't verify it, but I could send it. And if I get it wrong, it'll just bounce. You gotta remember that with company email addresses 99% of the time they follow a format.

Because these big companies is they gotta keep it easy and it can't be all over the place. So what these sites are able to do is like ping the server, see if they get a response. And so they have a database of their formats and the way that they do the names. And that's why they're able to do this.

Obviously, personal emails are much, much harder, cuz those can be all over the map. But for business, email addresses. It's pretty straightforward. And this is a very known and common sales tactic to do direct outreach. So this is how you would go about finding the email address of a person that you're excited to talk to about a role at a company.

All right. So with that, let's jump back over to the presentation. So as usual, we've got a template for you, right? These cold outreach emails can be a little overwhelming and you might be thinking, how do I send this? What do I say? And we don't want that to be a blocker for why you do. Really, there's no risk in this.

What's the worst that can happen, that they don't reply, but we've got a template for you. It's in the templates, in the platform, just copy paste it, put it in your own voice and make your ask. So find the person's email address. Write them and hopefully they'll get back to you. There are other cool things you could do, track your email if you're using like a CRM, like HubSpot or something like that, but not really necessary here.

But you really wanna probably bypass LinkedIn in mail. There's too much spam over there and it shows some resourcefulness, if you can get right into their inbox, so highly recommend that you find the person's email, use the template or write your own and try to get that meeting on the. All right. So that's cold outreach and we'll move on from here

in this section. We're gonna talk about applying online, which is what a lot of people do. The great thing about it is we feel like we're making progress. We can, apply to companies that we're excited about. We don't have to put ourselves out there in some of these other ways, but. It comes with the lowest response rate, because it just goes into a giant digital heap of applications.

But there are some things you can do to make it more effective. I don't wanna make it sound like you don't get hired this way. Lots of people every day get hired applying online. So don't think that this is an ineffective strategy. It just doesn't have the same efficacy as some of the others, but you should absolutely do it.

And you should not. Stop from doing it. If you can't make the others happen, we've talked to some people that have said, oh, I didn't get an introduction. And I've been waiting almost two weeks too late. If the job gets posted and it's been two weeks, don't even bother. So my general advice is if you can't get a referral or one of the other ways in, within 48 to 72 hours just apply online.

And then if it comes in later, then make maybe they can push it to the top of the pile. But applying online, it's a numbers game, but it does. And people do get hired this way. So let's talk about the best practices for that. So it starts with the applicant tracking system. Companies are doing some slicker things now, but they tend to be startups.

Once companies get a little bit bigger, they use an ATS, the applicant tracking system, and 99% of the fortune 500 use an ATS. And the ATS is not as scary as you might read. It's not some sort. AI cyborg , trying to guess at resumes, what it really is a very simple platform to collect data in a structured way.

It's usually run by HR. A lot of times it's used for compliance to make sure that they're doing the right kind of diverse hiring and being mindful about that process. But one of the core things it does is it takes the resume and it makes 'em searchable. And again, that is not some sort of funky AI.

That's using a recommendation engine. It's usually a recruiter typing in key words to search. So imagine a company posts a job, they get 500 applications. A human is not gonna read all 500. They'll probably read 50. So they need to then do a search for a few key terms. If there's a particular software or a technical skill or an experience, they will search for those, they recruiters call them ion searches, and then they will get that, that piled down.

But you need to get past the ATS when you apply online. It is one of the core things so that when that recruiter does that search and takes it from 500 to 50, you are in that pile of 50. And that's why in the customizing your resume class, we talk so much about keywords and getting through the ATS. So when you apply online, do not just copy and paste the same resume.

It is. That you look at the job description, try to discern what is most important for them and that be in your materials. So when you are applying online, customizing your resume is the most important thing that you could do. So a few things to avoid when you're applying online, you wanna make your resume.

As text readable as possible, avoid columns and tables, cuz that's gonna make it hard for the ATS to present your information back and searchable, avoid things like text boxes, logos, RAs, pictures of yourself, raster images like JPEGs. You don't want those in there. Avoid graphics. The one exception might be is if you're a visual designer, you're probably not getting put through an ATS anyway, but if you're applying to a big enter.

HR is doing it. So it doesn't matter. So what we recommend for there is have two, have your more like illustrator indig version. You might bring that one in with you, or you might email that one in, but if you're applying online through an ATS, avoid those things, be mindful of headers and footers. The document is gonna do things to put that in a different place.

And so the ATS isn't gonna like it avoid uncommon section heading. Avoid adding too many hyperlinks because that's gonna jumble up the text as well. Cuz that's gonna be in the metadata of the document, use common fonts, don't go crazy making it all, visual. And then use real language.

Don't use abbreviations people aren't searching for abbreviations. You may wanna put both, the abbreviation and then the full spelling, cuz you just don't know what they're gonna search for when they do the keyword search. And when you're thinking about the fonts I talked about not using funky fonts earlier, just try to use the basic.

Aerial VEA times, new Roman, don't go crazy because if it is crazy and the company doesn't have that font, then it could break it. If you send a word doc versus a PDF. So just use these standard fonts that, are all the machines, a couple things that you can do when trying to get past the ATS.

Bold is totally fine. You wanna use bolding because remember someone's gonna read it. There's just that first screening let's call it that 90% that they're gonna screen out for the 10% that they'll read. So you need the bolding, you need the ITX you need the underlying a little bit of color may be okay.

And then bullets, those things come through using a. Ordered or unordered lists, but all those other things aren't gonna work. So you really want to keep it simple. We've got a template online that you can use in the te platform it's really reduced and really straightforward or have your own, but avoid some of those things that, that we talked about in the previous slide, be mindful of what you're uploading and don't do resume final dash final.

Whatever right. Be clear because a lot of times once they screen them, they'll move them all over to a folder and then they will read them or print them. So be real good with your name, Tina Miller dash resume. And then also be mindful about the file format dot D C dot D O CX dot PDF. If you're using pages on.

Don't upload it as the page is it's just not gonna be very common. It's gonna be hard for them to open it. And if there's just ever the slightest bit of friction, they're just not gonna deal with it. Remember six seconds per resume. So use these formats. Most applications will export to this, even if you're using Google docs Again, you can export it as a D C or a PDF when you do make a PDF, be mindful that it's not ized, which is what turns it into an image.

So when you open it in a PDF reader, like all the text is still highlightable that tells you the text is still in a raw form and the ATFs will be able to convert it. When you're applying online, it's becoming more and more common for companies to ask things. salary. And so when you encounter that on an online application form, there's some, here's some things we want you to think about if they ask your salary expectation and it's not required, leave it blank if it's required and it allows you to put in text right in negotiable, if it's in required and you have to put in a number.

You don't wanna price yourself out because unfortunately, some companies will screen by this. If your salary expectations are higher than they're willing to pay for the role. So what we recommend is get your honest number, give yourself a little bit of buffer. And if you're worried that you're gonna undershoot your number, you can always negotiate that later.

You can say something like, based on what I've learned throughout this process, and now understanding the full scope of the role. I actually. It's worth this. So don't worry too much about it. Obviously it's a little bit of an uphill battle, but very much negotiable. And if they're excited about you and you're talking comp, then that's a good sign.

All right. For all the jobs you've applied online or for all the jobs that you've gone through. Anyway, we, again, we highly recommend that you track it. What gets measured, gets managed. So log those jobs in your track. Track their phase, once you've applied, all of these things that we just talked about, I would call applying, right?

Cuz they're getting you in the door, even though it's not just an online application, but you got it in. So you definitely wanna track that. You could watch any of the videos on the teal job tracker and we'll link to it in the description. So you can watch it and get a full rundown on how to use the te job tracker.

Once you've applied, you wanna follow up a key thing to. Job searching and growing your career and finding these opportunities is the follow up. And a lot of people get disheartened when they don't hear back and they say, oh people are busy. And so you've gotta follow up. It is really important.

So after you've applied, if you haven't heard anything for five to seven days, Follow up, if you were able to do it as a direct connection with a person or through a referral follow up, and then we recommend that you follow up to three times, do it once a week for three weeks, cuz you never know.

Maybe they've been meaning to maybe they left it unread, but follow up. And it might take a while. Don't take it. Personal people are busy and they just don't have the time all the time. I find myself like by the third one being, oh my God, I feel so bad. I didn't send it so follow up. It's okay. What's the worst that you can, that can happen.

They say no, one's gonna write you back saying you're really annoying. You're following up too many times because you're doing it right. You're doing it tactfully. And ultimately you want to grow and be part of that company. So no one's gonna be offended. Definitely. And as usual, here's the template don't let not having the copy be a blocker for you.

So we've got some templates online. Again, you can modify them and tweak them, but you wanna send that email and follow up either whether it was to a recruiter, internal, external, the contact that you've got or who the hiring manager is, or even directly right into HR follow ups are absolutely fine. And we recommend that you do it again every week for three weeks.

And then at that. Maybe you follow up a little later, if you never hear back, it's probably, chances are pretty low at that point, but give it that good three weeks, cuz we know that the hiring process takes about five. So until that job's taken down and you haven't heard back, keep following up. No bad can come of it.

Alright. So in this class, the main focus is getting in the door and we talked about the different ways that you can do that. Whether it's through a referral, leveraging relationships with the recruiters, internal, external. The direct cold outreach, a person you don't know, but you get an email into their inbox.

And then lastly, applying online. You're gonna have to do all four different situations, may call for different tactics, but these are all ways that you're gonna get in and ways that you're gonna be able to open up those opportunities. Cuz remember the goal of this phase is to get in and get the interview.

Then you're gonna have to knock it outta the park on the interview and get them excited about you there. But this phase, your focus and the things that gets you progress in the process. Is getting that interview. So for this phase, success looks like an email in your inbox that says, Hey, we'd like to schedule an interview.

That means that you got in the door and your, this process worked for you.