Funnel is a new feature created to help you stay organized in your job search and applications. Before I explain how to use it in your job search, I’d like to give a little background on why we chose this methodology to help you land jobs.
Funnel is directly inspired by the sales funnel, a tool used in sales to help sales professionals analyze and manage a portfolio of sales opportunities. The process of getting a job is ultimately a sales exercise. You are selling yourself; your education, your skills, and your personality as the solution to a problem an employer is having.
The idea behind a funnel is that at the top of the funnel you’ll have many job opportunities in the form of job leads, the goal is to move the opportunity through the funnel towards the end goal of getting hired. By taking your opportunities through this process you will learn where road blocks are and where you need to spend your time to improve your employability.
Stages of the Employment Funnel
1. Job Lead
A job lead is any potential job where you see a fit for your skills. You will want to have a good pool of job leads so that you can identify job leads that you want to move down the funnel.
2. Preparing
There are a lot of important decisions that go into successfully preparing yourself for a job application.
After you’ve identified the leads you want to pursue, you need to understand what the employer is looking for. To do this you need a deep understanding their job description. The job description tells you what skills are important to the employer and by reading between the lines you can understand the exact problem they are struggling with as a business. Understanding the problem is the first step to presenting yourself as the solution in your application. We’ll have another post shortly that goes into best practices for preparing for a job opportunity.
3. Applied
After you’ve applied to a job, you can start to focus your attention on other job leads while the employer begins to review applications. During this time you can follow up with the employer, see if anyone you know works at the employer or knows someone at the employer to put in a good word on your behalf.
4. Interviewing
If you get to the interview stage, it is a great sign that your application is working, the employer has identified you as a possible solution. They now want to see if you are the real deal, that the application was accurate. Review your application to understand what they liked about you so that you can reinforce it in the interview.
If you do not get to the interview stage, it suggests that you need to spend some time on improving the quality of your applications.
5. Job Offer
If you get a job offer, it shows that your interview skills successfully reinforced your application. The goal is to have multiple job offers, a) for options, and b) it will allow you to have more leverage and negotiating strength for securing the best compensation for yourself.
6. Hired
Upon accepting a job offer, you have completed the funnel.
7. Job Filled
Don’t be disheartened when you don’t land most of the jobs you apply for, the odds are heavily against you. Take what you’ve learned from the process and apply it to your new applications.
Three ways Funnel will help you
1. Stay organized
Finding a job can get hectic fast. With potentially hundreds of job applications going out in a very short period, it can get confusing and difficult to stay on top of your applications. By putting your applications in a funnel, you’ll be able to see exactly where each application is at any given moment.
2. Get Action Oriented
Knowing where you are in the employment funnel makes it much easier for you to maintain an actionable approach to employability. The funnel makes it easy to see where you are and what action items are required to get you to the next step. For example, after you’ve added a job as a “job lead”, by moving it down the funnel to the “preparing application” will trigger the following actions 1) research the company and position to understand what kind of application they are looking for, and 2) prepare an application that will differentiate you and show the company why you’re a great fit.
3. Identify Bottlenecks and make Improvements
As you progress through the employment funnel, you will begin to notice patterns, areas where you typically get stuck. This will help you identify where you need to spend time making improvements. Identifying areas where you can improve will give you a huge leg up on the competition and allow you to take actions to get around the trouble areas.
We’re excited about Funnel and we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on how we can make it better.
