Building a profile that delivers

When you register as a job candidate on our website, you should use great care in filling out your registration profile—and then you should keep your profile current. The reason? Employers search our database of registered candidates for potential employees, and the first set of search results they obtain is based on job seeker profiles. We’ll give you four examples of how paying close attention to the profile can increase a job seeker’s chances of getting a great job.

> We’ll give you four examples of how paying close attention to the profile can increase a job seeker’s chances of getting a great job.

Let’s consider a scenario with two main characters: Carla, a human resources specialist for a manufacturing company, and Pete, an enlisted man who made the transition from active duty to civilian life three months ago. Carla is looking for a person for her company to train as a maintenance crew chief in a factory, with a projected career path leading to a position as a plant manager. Pete would like to work in a factory, and he has ambitions to become a manager or superintendent. He has proven himself as a leader, and he has worked in maintenance in the military. Since leaving the military, he has completed one quarter of college work. He has also been working in the service department of a friend’s automobile dealership while he searches for a full-time job. He has registered with us as a job seeker.

**Update your education record**

Carla conducts a search on our site, and Pete’s name shows up in the first set of results. But that set contains more results than Carla has time to study carefully, so she conducts another search. On Carla’s first search, she did not use education as a search criterion, but this time she selects “Some College.” Does Pete’s name show up this time? Yes, because he updated his profile after he completed that quarter of college. He did not make the mistake of thinking that “Some College” means at least one year of successfully completed college work.

**Be realistic about salary**

Now Carla scans the profiles, looking at the “Minimum Salary” entries. In this case, she is on the lookout for any numbers that seem unrealistically low or high. Pete has done plenty of employment research on the Internet. He has determined that an annual salary of $40,000 falls in the middle of the range of salaries being paid for the type of job he wants. He has put that number in his profile, so he survives Carla’s scan.

**Keep all contact information current**

Now Carla sends email messages to the surviving candidates. She tells each job seeker that his or her name has shown up in a job search, describes the job, and asks some questions. Some of the job seekers don’t get the message because they have not kept their email addresses up to date. When those job seekers registered with us, they were on active duty, and so they used “dot mil” addresses. When they left the service and obtained “dot com“ addresses, they failed to change their profiles. But Pete didn’t fail. Pete got the message—and, eventually, the job.
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