How to skip the job application and still get hired

If you want a new job you have to apply for the job – right? That’s the most basic job-search reality there is. The problem is that applying for a job these days is a tedious, discouraging, mojo-sucking process.

That’s because most of the medium-sized and large employers have installed nasty Applicant Tracking System software that requires you to fill out endless forms online just to be considered for a job opening. There’s not much room for story-telling in those things.

There’s not much opportunity to get your experience and passion through the filter. Automated recruiting systems flatten out even the most vibrant and energized people. Nobody reduces down to keywords very well!

When a robot is screening resumes, how are you going to hire awesome people? You’ll drive the awesome people away. Still, this is what job-seekers are faced with: Black Hole recruiting portals, endless waits for any response from the employer and then maybe, if you’re lucky, a terse auto-responder message six weeks later.

The standard recruiting system is broken. It’s the most badly broken part of the whole shaky, old-school Godzilla business apparatus.

The whole thing is rickety and falling apart at the seams, but recruiting is more broken than any other business process. Annual performance reviews come in at a close second.

The good news is that you can get a job without filling out the online job application. People get jobs that way every day. They can do it because hiring managers — the department heads who need folks like you to solve their problems — hate the automated recruiting systems as much as you and I do. Automated recruiting makes it much harder on the manager who’s trying to fill a job.

That’s why many hiring managers will often read and respond to your overture when you reach them outside the defined applicant-tracking-system process. You’re going to step outside the velvet ropes and make your own process! You can reach the hiring manager directly at his or her desk.

You’re going to send a letter called a Pain Letter together with a new version of your resume, called a Human-Voiced Resume. You’ll send these two documents, stapled together with one staple in the upper left corner, right through the mail.

Your resume will still be one or two pages long, but instead of sounding like every battle drone a la “Results-oriented professional with a bottom-line orientation,” your Human-Voiced Resume is going to sound like you.

“Since I started writing business stories for my college newspaper, I’ve been a zealot for business story-telling and its power in shaping audience behavior. As a PR manager I’ve gotten my employers and clients covered by USA Today, CNN and the Chicago Tribune.”

You can tell a little story in your Human-Voiced Resume Summary, the way our PR friend Michael has done in his Summary, above. Beyond the Summary at the top, your entire Human-Voiced Resume will use a human voice. You won’t believe how powerful you feel and look through the lens of your Human-Voiced Resume!

That new power you feel isn’t puffery. it isn’t exaggeration. It’s completely authentic and solid. If you did it, you’ll claim it! If you can talk about it, you’ll own it right on your resume.

You have amazing accomplishments to trumpet. It’s just that the traditional, boring resume format didn’t give you a good opportunity to tell your awesome story before.

You’ll include even smaller stories called Dragon-Slaying Stories in the body of your resume. You have them, if you stop and think about it. Don’t get doubtful now! You have tons of stories — I guarantee it. We just haven’t been trained to think about our stories.

We’ve been trained to bleat “I’ve been using SQL for seven years.” What a stupid question to ask: “How long have you been using this tool?”

How long? Who cares! Ask me what I’ve DONE with the tool, for Pete’s sake!

Like I said — recruiting is broken.

Your Pain Letter accompanies your Human-Voiced Resume to your hiring manager’s desk. Your Pain Letter is the connective tissue between your Human-Voiced Resume and your hiring manager’s need.

We have a name for that need: we call it Business Pain. Every manager has pain.

Your job is to make an educated guess about what might be keeping your manager up at night, and then talk about that pain in your Pain Letter.

You have to know who your hiring manager is, in each employer. Here’s how to start. First, make a list of your target job titles. Next, ask yourself “What is the most likely title for the person I will report to?”

Go to your Target Employer List (if you don’t have one, there’s a how-to story below). Use LinkedIn and the company’s own website to find the name of your hiring manager in each firm (and don’t tell me you can’t! We find over 90% of the hiring managers we look for). Now you’re ready to send out Pain Letters!

You can research and compose five Pain Letters per day, at least, if you’re a full-time job seeker and one or two if you’re job-hunting after hours.

The great thing about creating your Human-Voiced Resume, and about researching employers and writing Pain Letters, is that it grows your mojo to do those things.

Your mojo is your self-esteem. It’s the fuel for your job search, and everything else you want to accomplish! It’s the most important element in any ambitious undertaking, including your search for a tremendous job that deserves you. Not every job does!

Not every hiring manager deserves you. Some of them are frogs and toads. You don’t have time for that.  You are becoming a Mojofied Job Seeker.

You are remembering who you were when you were a kid super hero about nine or ten years old. You had your life force then. You’re getting it back, now!

You can put a toe in the water. You can pick out a company you like and research and write a Pain Letter this weekend. You can start thinking about the Business Pain you solve. You can take some of the zombie language out of your resume.

There are a million  things you can do to start growing your muscles and preparing to take charge of your job search and stop waiting for somebody to take pity on you and offer you a position. You have no need for anyone’s pity. You are a Pain Relief Specialist!

You are mighty. You have a path to follow. You can’t wait around for auto-response robots to notice what you bring. You’ve got talents that managers desperately need.

Start thinking about pain and pain-killers, and start talking about  them! After all, you’ve read this into this story far for a reason. I am talking to you right now, and my message is:

Go forth!

This article is published in collaboration with LinkedIn. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Liz Ryan is CEO and Founder of Human Workplace.

Image: British Prime Minister Tony Blair (L) shakes hands with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. UNICS REUTERS/Jim Young