Job seekers should be avoiding HR people like the plague. If you are answering ads by sending in resumes like good little boys and girls you are pretty much wasting your time.

2. “Go into detail about why your past experiences will help you excel at the position you’re gunning to land.”

Going into detail by customizing individual resumes and writing exceptionally well-crafted cover letters takes time . . . lots and lots of time. There is a much better way (thank you Mr. Bell).

Exceptionally effective job searches can be and are conducted without sending in resumes at all.

3. “Neither of my last two jobs were advertised via traditional channels — I happened into them by meeting the right people, letting them know what I was good at, and making a positive impression.”

See 1 and 2 above.

Don’t most of us know people who have sent out a couple hundred resumes to a couple hundred job ads, in the space of a month or two, and have gotten back zero responses? It’s so easy to send resumes today . . . that resumes have become in many (most?) instances the junk mail of the job search.

4. “Online it means developing and maintaining a network of active professional acquaintances….”

The idea behind networking is (or at least should be) to be the person who gets contacted about a job opening, and who gets hired, before the employer even starts thinking of posting the job on their web site, let alone advertising on job boards.

5. “It’s never a bad thing when you apply for a job and the person on the other end reading your cover letter thinks, “Where have I heard this name before? … Oh right, he wrote that great article about unit testing!”

Any chance this will ever be a HR staff person reading articles about unit testing?

6. “These are a great starting point, and while you’re conducting your job search you should live on these sites.”

Yes, specific to most SitePoint readers. But you are still competing with the other 300,000 SitePoint readers and millions of readers around the world who are also reading these job ads. Many if not most of whom are more technically qualified than you, by the way.

7. “. . . knowing your price is very important.”

Knowing when or if to disclose your price is crucial. See, more for job seekers but very applicable to solo practitioners, “Negotiating Your Salary: How to make a $1000 a Minute” by Chapman.

8. “The job market is competitive and you shouldn’t rest on your laurels and assume that what you know is enough to get by.”

More often than not, the job goes not to the one who is most technically qualified, but to the one who conducts the most effective job search (attributed to Richard Lathrop).

9. “A well-timed follow up (can) move your resume to the top of the pile just as the employer is sorting through, and often times that sort of ambition will be looked upon favorably and rewarded.”

Yes, assuming that you are even in the pile and weren’t screened out by a high school intern working a summer term in the HR office. Wouldn’t it be better to have already spoken to or better yet visited with the actual employer before the pile ever arrives on his or her desk or computer screen?

10. “Finding a new job rarely means just applying for a couple. I’ve read more stories than I care to count about people who had to apply for 15, 20, 40, or even more jobs before they landed just one interview. That shouldn’t be discouraging — finding a new job is hard work and could take months — but it does illustrate why you need to be organized about your job hunt.”

Actually what is described here is very, very, very, very discouraging. There are of course no guarantees when it comes to finding work. But simply finding more job ads, and sending out more resumes, faster, while keeping meticulous records is not the answer (Let’s see, what I’m doing isn’t working . . . hmmm . . . so obviously the solution is to do more of the same thing, more efficiently).

There is a better way, a more effective way that provides very realistic odds of finding the right job, in the right location, at the right pay, in the shortest possible time.

That way is not described by finding job ads, sending in resumes, and waiting for the phone to ring.

I’m just saying that you should not only look in your backyard. A local company may not be hiring, but companies that target your area might.