If you are like most job seekers your job search focus is relegated to inside the Western New York area. WNY natives tend to love the area and would not even think of relocating. Even more specifically, you are probably limiting your search to a geographic region that is a convenient commute from where you currently live.
Western New York tends to be a unique job search market compared to many other areas in the country. What makes it special is that so many employers are local in nature, rather than part of a large national (or international) company. This is the reason why WNYJOBS.com can have 20+ printed pages of local job postings each week while the large national sites have limited advertisements, often with the same jobs you read every week.
So, if you have been watching the non-stop television advertisements by the large national sites, you may be wondering whether you should focus on local options. While a multi-faceted approach is a good strategy to increase your lead penetration, a focus on local is often the best decision. Let’s review some of the reasons why this is the case.
• WNY is Local – As mentioned earlier, WNY tends to be driven by locally owned and managed employers. The area does not have the large corporate companies centrally managed by an off-site recruiting department. What this means is that local Recruiters and Hiring Managers tend to make their own decisions regarding where to post jobs and search resume databases.
• Your Resume Can Get Lost Nationally – A national site can collect resumes from anywhere and everywhere. It is easy for your submission to get lost within the thousands that are posted each day (some of the national sites have as many as 100 million resumes in their database). If you post your resume with WNYJOBS.com, your document will be reviewed by local Recruiters and Hiring Managers for positions in your area. This should improve your odds of getting and interview and ultimately hired.
• Stay Secure – By using a local resource, you can feel better about the submission of your resume or posting it on the database. The reason is WNYJOBS vets advertisers for legitimacy and only allows access to the resume database to actual local employers, limiting the risk of it falling under fraudulent hands. You can’t feel nearly as secure with the national sites that most likely can’t or won’t offer similar protections.
• Local Understands Local – By presenting your resume to local Recruiters and Hiring Managers, you greatly increase your chances of the reader understanding the nuances of your candidacy. A local person will be more likely to understand and respect your work history in regards to your previous employers. Likewise, a local Hiring Manager will appreciate your local university degree (especially if he or she also graduated from the same school), rather than having any “big city” bias that a national Recruiter may possess.
• Paper Combined with a Website is Convenient – A job website certainly offers some benefits especially in terms of daily job postings. A combination of a physical paper along with a website, however, offers the best of both worlds. An actual paper can be a very convenient way to skim all the local postings in quick fashion to determine if there is an open position of interest rather than having to search a number of different categories or keywords online. A paper can also be marked up with notes regarding employers you are applying to. Finally, it is nice sometimes to just not have to look an electronic screen all the time.
• Local Information – A local source, such as WNYJOBS.com, will offer much more than job postings. WNYJOBS.com will have a listing of area Career Fairs, many of which are actually sponsored by the company. You will also find a summary of career training opportunities available in the area.
• The “Wisdom of Yours Truly” – Only WNYJOBS.com has weekly job search tips written by a WNY native who focuses on real guidance that you can use. Those national websites tend to have articles filled with a lot of theory, much of which you can’t use. You also can’t be sure of their qualifications, especially when compared to reading the thoughts of a person who has been in Human Resources for 25 years.
A Job Seeker has a lot of different options when looking for a new job, unfortunately, most of these websites are large national (or international) companies with limited knowledge of the local WNY market. Job seeking is similar to financial investing in that diversification is important for not only success, but to limited risk. This is why it is important to make sure your job search strategy contains a local option, such as WNYJOBS.com
As always, the best of luck in your job search.
The following has been prepared for the general information of WNYJobs readers. It is not meant to provide advice with respect to any specific legal or policy matter and should not be acted upon without verification by the reader.
Joe Stein WNY Human Resources Professional
Feel free to contact Joe Stein regarding questions or comments at: Joe Stein
