Do your homework. Find out who heads up the department where the job is actually located. Sometimes this can be done with a simple Google search. Sometimes it’s a little harder. When you get that information, send them a copy of your resume. Include a cover letter, that begins, ‘Please find a copy of my resume which I recently submitted to your HR Department in application for the position of….”

You must not completely bypass HR, you must follow the application procedures they posted in the job announcement. You do not want them angry at you.

When the head of the department where the job is located gets the list of screened applicants from HR, he will look to see if your name is on it if he liked your resume. If he doesn’t see it, he will query HR as to why your name is not on the list.

The next most important thing is followup. Send a letter or an email to that same person a few days after you sent the resume to inquire about the status of the hiring procedure for the job. Send one to HR also. Don’t leave them out of the loop. Every time they get correspondence from you, in a normal office situation, it means they would have to pull the file and attach your inquiry to it. Every time they take the file out of the drawer or pull it up on the computer, it makes it stick more in their mind.

If you get an interview, be sure and ask at the interview what the next step is in the interviewing procedure. In some companies, the final candidate may go through as many as four or five screening interviews before he gets to the person who can actually make the hiring decision. Always send a fresh copy of your resume to the next person in the chain with a cover letter that begins “I recently had the pleasure of interviewing with (insert name) for the position of (position). I am looking forward to meeting you soon to further discuss this opportunity”. Same principle as before applies. He’ll look for your name on the list that comes up. Do this for every step in the process. After the final interview, you MUST send a thank you letter to the final interviewer. This also gives you a chance to elaborate on any point you feel you may not have covered as well as you should have in the interview. If you don’t hear anything in the following week, write another letter. Always be nice, and be sure they know that if you are not selected, you would like to be considered for any similar openings in the future.

THIS WORKS!

80% of the jobs in the USA are filled by word of mouth. “Who do you know”?

The reason HR types don’t consider experience as important as education and certifications is, they have a CYA mentality. If some one is hired who meets all of the education and certification requirements of the job description, and that person turns out to be a dud, it’s not their fault. On the other hand, if they decide to hire a person based on experience that does not have the education and certifications, and that person is a dud, they get the blame.

Certificates don’t always mean much in the real world, in my opinion. I’ve worked with college educated people with no real world/real work experience and to say that their personal and professional skills leave a lot to be desired would be a gross understatement. On the flip side, I’ve worked with non-college grads (like myself) and they can sometimes have the same mentality as college grads.

A big difference I’ve noticed in the US compared to back home in Australia is that almost every advertised job has the requirement of a college degree or similar. In Aussieland, for the same job, you most likely wouldn’t find that requirement listed – employers and recruiters are more interested in what you’ve accomplished vs certificates you’ve achieved. I guess the US is still a bit backward in the thinking that having a college education shows dedication towards something, b/c we all know that Gen Y’s are not the same as Gen X – their mentality towards work is very different in many aspects.

All in all, the first line of this article sums it up best: “You need experience to get a job, you need a job to get experience.”