Have You Had Enough?

How many resumes, cover letters and interviews are enough?

How many is enough? How many resumes do you need to send? How many online applications have you submitted? How many interviews have you gone on? How many informational interviews? How many networking events and/or contacts have you made in the past week? How many are enough to get you to your next job?

Of course there is no right or wrong answer to that question. That elusive number will vary from individual to individual. Some people land a job (or at least what ultimately is a successful interview) on the very first day of their job search.

Quantity vs quality

There is one thing on which virtually all recruiters and job coaches agree: quality beats quantity every time. Most add that online applications are more likely than not to be nothing but one large bottomless pit. One recruiter told of a job seeker who submitted approximately 100 online applications and was shocked that no one contacted her back.

Although those are not quality applications that doesn’t mean that you should ignore them all together. After all, those companies are looking for someone. Factor in the time and effort necessary to join that race and one never knows. Somebody is going to get that job.

On the quality side of the fence the thinking is more likely to follow Glassdoor’s research. They found that “employee referrals are much more likely to lead to an accepted job offer.” While Glassdoor found that employee referrals increased the likelihood of a hire by as much as 6.6 percent, other referrals are not far behind.

Referrals may be the highest quality job search activity out there. In a job search – as in so many other facets of life – quality trumps quantity every time.

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