In todays employment market a company with a help wanted ad running in a major newspaper might get a thousand applicants, or more. They usually put a blind ad in, that is one where you send your application or resume to a post office box. This is a matter of self protection since they really don’t want their offices overrun with eager job seekers.

At that point your might know the name of the company but that’s doubtful. The ad usually says something like “a major chemical company, or a fortune 500 software company” leaving you to guess which one. Your other handicap is not knowing the person who is on the other end, whether they are the final decision maker or simply someone who reads your application, makes a judgement and then passes it on.

At one time I was the CEO of a pretty large career consulting firm. Most of our clients were college graduates and many were senior executives. As a small part of our program we had them search major newspapers around the country and bring us ads for positions they thought might be suitable for their job search. Today, that search would include the internet.

We then used a technique we had developed to answer the ads and it turned out to be very successful. Our theory was that, if we could find out the name of the company, and better yet, the name of a person in that company, we were ahead of the pack and in a position to take the search one step further by making a case for our clients.. So we fed them back their own ad!

If the ad stated the company was looking for a six foot, red headed man with a mole on his left cheek (I exaggerate of course) then the opening sentence in our clients letter of application stated “I am a six foot, red headed man with a mole on my left cheek”. If there were further qualifications in the ad that our clients could satisfy we used the ads exact language to describe them. In other words, we were feeding back to the company the qualifications they stated they were seeking in the ad.

Remember, we weren’t looking so much for a phone call offering the job, although that happened once in a while, but a letter from the company saying they were interested in pursuing the hiring process further. We got replies in a surprising number of cases and when we did we had exactly what we were after, the name of the company on its letterhead, the phone number of the company on its letterhead and a name at the bottom of the letter that provided us with a personal contact. Now our clients were in a position to really sell themselves while the other applicants still didn’t know who or what they were dealing with.

To test this techniques from time to time we “practiced” on some local companies with members of our staff and it was surprising how many were told they sounded like the perfect candidate. Of course they were, the interviewer was reading back his or hers own copy!

Incidentally, when answering any ad that requests salary information, ignore that part. You don’t want to put a potential deal-breaker in your first letter.

Will this work every time? Of course not, but any job search technique that has the potential to put you ahead of the pack is worth trying.

Looking for employment is never a pleasant task. At the end of the day it helps to relax with a good, home cooked meal. Don’t know how, or not too sure of yourself in the kitchen? Try my award-winning Cooking Guide and Cookbook, Help-I Gotta Cook! and I’ll have you eating a great meal, that YOU cooked, within an hour. Go to http://www.ineedtocook.com and you can eat well even without a job!

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