I’ve tried to write about “the numbers game” multiple times and haven’t succeeded in defining it or clearly demonstrating its pros and cons until now.

The Numbers Game: Applying to as many positions as possible within a short amount of time with a generic resume and cover letter regardless of the degree of relevance the position has to your experience and with little or no regard to other important factors.

Other Important Factors

Before going any farther, let’s define “other important factors”.  What matters in a job to you?  Everyone is different. Everyone has different circumstances.  Assuming we’re working on finding a position that we will enjoy and have a future with, these may be considerations:

• Demographics
• Benefits
• Salary
• Your Boss
• Work Environment
• Corporate strategy
• Stability
• Potential for Growth
• Experience to Gain
• Incentives
• Skill Set
• Company’s Mission

Some of you don’t care about half of these, but I bet most of you recognize how several of these have affected your happiness and productivity in the workplace in the past.  I certainly do.

Playing the numbers game means ignoring these and spraying resumes to every potential lead without doing any research.

Other Perspectives

Some career coaches will tell you to apply to anything and everything that looks anywhere close to the position you’d like to attain.  Once again, every situation is different.  You may be told this because you’re not working hard enough and fast enough.  You may need to create more opportunities faster.  You may be underestimating you skills.  You may be too picky.

A Balance

As with almost anything, there is a balance to be found here.  Most jobseekers who have been in the job hunt for an extended amount of time are probably not sending off enough resumes.  They probably aren’t seeing how their skills transfer from one position to another.  Just because you were a product manager in logistics software, doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t be a product manager for mobile software.

For Reference

For reference, what I’ve found in the past (when strictly playing the numbers game) is that for every 5 positions I applied for, I received 1 phone interview.  For every 5 phone interviews, I received 1 interview.  For every 5 interviews I got 1 offer.  That’s 125 applications for every offer.  Also, remember, not all offers are good offers.

The further you are in your understanding of the job search and in your effectiveness, you’ll see these numbers change and it may be that for every 3 phone interviews you get a face to face and 1 out of every 2 face-to-face interviews gets you an offer.  Even in that case, you’re still looking at 30 leads for every offer.

Turning the Tables

Clearly, we’ve got an issue.  How do you manage 30 leads in a reasonable amount of time?  Whittling down 150 or even 30 leads into offers takes a lot of time.  Research for phone interviews alone could take weeks.

So how do you turn the tables?  How do you make it so that more of your leads turn into phone screens or interviews?  NETWORKING.

When someone who knows your skill set tells you about a lead, do you think it will be a better or worse lead than the one you found on Monster?  Are you more or less likely to have a connection for a job you’ve heard about from a friend?

Playing the Numbers with Networking

If you’re going to play the numbers, do it the right way.  Start your search by determining what you want to do, preparing your resume, setting your priorities for the next position, and then sending (customized)emails to each of the people in your network.  You should be able to get 30 or more of these off in a week.

The toughest part about running a job search this way is the flood of communications and scheduling of coffees and lunches.  Be ready to handle this amount of traffic.  If you can handle 50 conversations a week and the traffic it produces, do it.  If you can’t respond to 30 contacts, cut it down to 20.

I have three friends who have led successful job searches in the last 18 months each of which was less than 2 months in length.  I’m certain each of them contacted over 50 people each week of their search and responded to each person they contacted.  They uncovered positions that weren’t advertised and had guaranteed interviews because people they knew were acting on their behalf.

Now that doesn’t mean they did 50 coffees and lunches a week.  It means they carried on 50 conversations and did the top 10 or so coffees and lunches each week.

Each of these friends got multiple offers in less than 2 months.

Play the numbers the right way.  Network like crazy and be responsive.  When you’re ready for a partner in your transition contact me.