Get a Job By Targeting the Hiring Manager

In the past, candidates could self-submit their resume to job postings, post a resume on a job board or just wait for the phone to ring. A small percentage would actually try to network their way into a new job -- which is the single best way to land a new gig. Well here are some tips for you to be able to target hiring managers and therefore allow you to network and even send a resume to them directly. My goal is to help you locate key Human Resource professionals, recruiters and hiring managers at targeted companies within your industry, and at third-party recruiting firms. You want to be able to find leads to emerging opportunities and place your resume with your best prospects, and one of the only ways to do so is to have the hiring manager's contact information to begin self-targeted resume submissions, so you can increase visibility and enhance chances of obtaining employment.

Become the first to get into a company and become more competitive by accessing daily information pertaining to your industry and in your metro. Set up Google news and Yahoo news alerts for the words "relocating" or "relocation" and your city's or near-city's name to find companies who are relocating to your area. Set up alerts for "expansion" and "growth" to identify growth companies and emerging opportunities for you to seek out hiring decision makers and recruiters at those companies. I had a client that was set on being in one particular city, so her chances of receiving new employment were lower than if she would have been tolerable with relocation. Well once her husband was laid off and they were open to relocation, she requested some pointers to find new employment over 200 miles away. I showed her this process of setting up alerts, and her first interview came from a hiring manager whom was mentioned in a Google News article. My client tracked down this hiring manager she read about, submitted her resume and landed a job post-interview.

Review leading online and published newspapers like Forbes and The Wall Street Journal (and your local paper) to keep up on those growth industries. This also allows you to be fully- informed on what is going on in your market. Be an expert!

Obviously you cannot get a job unless you put yourself out there. You must answer ads, contact recruiters at staffing companies, network, post resumes on niche and general job boards and employer websites. There is still more you can do! Research growing companies that hire your job description. Connect with hiring managers and decision makers on outlets like LinkedIn. Cover all your bases!

Making Contact
Hiring personnel get annoyed very easily. Do not be overly pushy and take yourself out of the running before the race even starts. If the hiring managers and recruiters can find a job for you, trust me, they will! They want to hire a qualified candidate as fast as possible, but they know what they want and hopefully (if you market yourself correctly) they know what you can bring to the company. If it is a match, great! If it is not, let it go and move on. I once had a candidate that contacted our recruiting office numerous times a week and applied to every single job that every single recruiter posted, he became blacklisted from any future opportunities. It was not the fact that he was eager, but the fact that he then would lie to each of the recruiters and create tension between the office. It was company policy to document every conversation, so thus he was not eligible for any future opportunities with our company.

Great ways to search for hiring contacts:
- Looking up resumes posted online and searching through references on a resume. This can provide direct contact with managers and can be a good way to begin a networking campaign.
- Contacting associations and respected leaders in a certain industry and finding out who they know does the hiring at various companies.
- Communicating with college instructors or career service personnel who can provide contact information of employers who have performed on-site speeches during a class or attended a career fair.
- Networking with past colleagues and managers to find out if they know of anyone looking to add talent. Sometimes a past reference might be looking to hire someone of your skill-set again.

Another trick is to utilize the Google search command to find email addresses of your targeted hiring managers. Find the hiring manager's name either by using sites like LinkedIn, on the company's website, a professional forum or even in a job posting. Then search the company's email format. By that I mean search how the company sets up their email address for the employees. For instance, Google's might be setup like "John.Doe@google.com". So now you know that the hiring manager at Google, Jane Doe, whom you are targeting will be "Jane.Doe@google.com". Now you have the direct email address and therefore can initiate contact and even send a resume.

The goal again is to get your credentials in front of the people making the hiring decisions. Sometimes it can be Human Resources, but most of the time it is a departmental person who will physically be making the decision because that will be your new boss. So get yourself out there and work the networking route for a higher number of interviews and thus, a higher chance of interview success.