The term “personal branding” is usually thrown around in the context of job search.

It’s important to note, however, that your brand will transcend the job search you’re about to undertake.

It will shape the context and direction of your career. It will work for you (or against you) when you’re up for a promotion. It will determine the quality of your professional network. It will give you a tailwind – or throw sand into your wheels -when transitioning between roles.

What Is Personal Branding?

Well, quite simply, it’s a matter of defining what makes you unique as a professional.

To put it another way, your brand is the answer to the question “why you?”.

As in, why should an employer choose you over candidates who are chasing the same position?

The first critical step in defining your brand is knowing your audience. Just as with product marketing, if you are designing a brand message, you need to know who to appeal to. It’s important not to be vague in your audience selection; not to be everything to everyone.

You Need To Pinpoint Your Target Audience.

(And their pain).

Yes, this means you need to become comfortable with the idea of repelling certain types of opportunities. It’s very difficult to create a compelling brand if you don’t narrow your focus and clarify in your mind exactly what the right step looks like for you. You need to filter out the least suitable opportunities in order to attract the right ones.

You’ll notice that the process of sharpening your focus will automatically force you to sharpen your brand messaging.

Clarity about your audience will translate into a clarity of thought which, in turn, will help you select the skills and strengths you need to highlight.

Let’s say you’re an IT manager and a service delivery manager. Your intended audience is likely to be a Program Director or an IT Director. If you were to shape your brand message using these parameters alone, it would be quite vague.

For example:

Pretty boring, right?

Now, if you were to zero in on the ….

• type of company
• size of the project
• challenges that the organisation is likely to be facing
• your (relevant) qualifications, and
• your strength

.. you could end up with something like this:

You’re now clearly positioning yourself as someone who can help telco organisations reach their project goals on time – by acting as a conduit between their technical and leadership teams.

As you begin defining your brand, you’re likely to fall into the trap of defining yourself through generic adjectives, rather than facts.

Instead of zeroing in on challenges that you’re known for solving and the types of organisations that you’re a fit for, you’ll be tempted to cast yourself as “driven”, “hard-working”, “results-oriented”, “strategic”, etc.

Qualities like these are the bare minimum expectations.

They’re not selling points.

If you do fall into the trap of thinking about yourself in those terms, you’ll end up with generic brand and career marketing documents that are poor in substance but are rich in fluff and clichés.

Ready to Start Shaping Your Brand?

It’s time to do some homework. Grab a pen and a sheet of paper. Ask yourself these questions:

What are your areas of expertise?

What commercial problems are you known for solving?

What size of company do you prefer to work at?

What business outcomes do your efforts produce? (Hint: keep asking yourself “so what” to drill down to the core).

How does your personality shape your approach to business? (e.g., are you someone who is effective at leading teams through difficult times or are you a technical professional who is known for keeping a cool head in high-pressure situations?).

The three most essential tools that you need to build a successful job search strategy are:

• resume
• cover letter, and
• LinkedIn profile

LinkedIn specifically has emerged as one of the main channels – if not the main channel – for candidate screening. This means that in many cases, you will get “checked out” by a potential employer or a recruiter via LinkedIn – without knowing about it. If they like what they see, they’ll contact you “for a quick chat”.

Despite the rising importance of LinkedIn, a lot of professionals continue to neglect their LinkedIn profiles.

In doing so, they miss out on a huge opportunity to position themselves and broadcast their unique value to the world.

How To Fix Your LinkedIn Profile And Resume?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably an existing client of Exceptional Resumes – and are in the possession of a brand-new, top-notch, professionally written LinkedIn profile, resume and cover letter. Congrats!

You should skip to the next subheading.

If you happen NOT to be our client, well, this is awkward. Let’s begin with a few quick pointers:

When writing your resume or your LinkedIn profile, remember that they must be both aspirational and historical in nature. In other words, they have to support where you want to go while choosing the right things to say about where you’ve been.

The brand that you broadcast via your career marketing documents will be more credible if it’s supported through a set of impactful achievements. Unfortunately, a lot of resumes fall into the trap of omitting achievements and including only the candidate’s responsibilities.

For more tips on how to improve your career marketing documents, check out our guide to writing achievements, this guide to writing a top-notch resume and these tips from our professional resume writers.

Also, if you’re not a client, why not consider letting us do the heavy lifting? We offer a pretty mean resume writing service and LinkedIn profile writing service for clients in Sydney, Melbourne and beyond. Click here to learn more.

Your Career Documents Are Fixed.

Now what?

Once you’re in possession of a top-notch resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profile, your next is to ensure that they get the full attention of employers.

This is not the same as submitting a few job applications online and waiting for the phone to ring.

A single-pronged approach like that will severely limit your chances of securing job interviews – because in the post-COVID 2025 world, most job opportunities are hotly contested (and many are filled without ever being advertised).

Thankfully, a number of job search strategies are available to you, and we’ll cover them in the following sections.

Before we go there, a reminder – you’re entering a market with no shortage of high calibre candidates.

This doesn’t mean that you have little chance of success.

It does mean, however, that your success is purely a function of your competitive advantage. And that, in turn, depends on your ability to do things that your competitors are unable – or are unprepared – to do.

Job advertising platforms such as LinkedIn, Seek and Indeed offer employers and recruiters relatively inexpensive, on-demand access to a large pool of experienced candidates.

Conversely, these platforms offer candidates like you access to a seemingly never-ending stream of job opportunities.

That being said, remember that advertised opportunities can attract hundreds of suitable candidates.

We’ve already discussed the importance of your career documents in the previous chapter, but this point is so crucial that it demands an added emphasis: it’s essential that you are in the possession of the best possible resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profile that succinctly showcase what you have to offer in relation to the requirements of a specific role.

Sadly, job advertisements often do not provide enough information about the roles on offer – and that makes it difficult for you to gauge what the organisation is really looking for.

We, therefore, recommend calling the contact person nominated in the advertisement to clarify role requirements or employer specifics.

This simple act often helps establish you in the minds of the employer or recruitment consultant and can differentiate you from most candidates. A surprisingly low proportion of people actually make the effort to call.

If the advertisement specifies the name of the company, take the time to research it as well as its industry. Use your findings to tailor your career marketing documents to both.

What If You See A Large Gap?

Between your skills and employer’s requirements, that is.

In most cases, we suggest that you only apply for roles that you’re a high match for.

In a highly competitive environment, there is little ROI on the effort you spend to apply for roles where you only meet 4 out of the 6 requirements – or where you meet all the requirements, but only to a marginal degree.

You can expect to be competing against at least a few dozen candidates who meet all of the requirements fully.

For employers, hiring is a game of risk and, in the vast majority of cases, they’ll seek to minimise risk by choosing a hire who has a demonstrated track record of solving a very specific set of problems.

An exception to this rule is a situation where a shortage of candidates stacks the odds in your favour. For example, rapid economic or legal changes may present employers with a surge in demand for a specific type of talent (COVID-19, anyone?).

In situations like these, you can capitalise on the shortage of candidates in a particular occupation or market niche and apply for roles that would otherwise not be a strong fit for you.

You may also get a concession if you get introduced by someone at the company. We’ll discuss the power of personal networking below.

Can You Submit Your Job Application After The Deadline?
If the advertisement specifies a deadline, late submission will send the wrong message about your priorities and organisational skills.

That being said, if you can’t submit your application in on time, you do have a fall-back, last resort option.

Call the recruiter and ask if they’ll consider your submission a few days past the due date. Their willingness to do so will hinge on two factors:

The number of suitable candidates who have already applied for the role.
Their take on your fit for the role.
You can’t control the former, but you can certainly influence their perception of you. When you call to ask for an extension, treat the interaction as a mini job interview.

Be prepared to pitch your value and to answer the recruiter’s questions. For example:

Notice what’s happening here:

You’re being succinct.

You’re demonstrating to the recruiter that you’ve done your research into the company and have specific reasons for wanting to work there.

You’re not just “spraying and praying”.

Finally, you’re lessening the recruiter’s cognitive load by proposing a new due date that you implicitly agree to be responsible for.

This is one of the key reasons why you should always have an up-to-date, professionally written resume on hand. In doing so, you will avoid a situation where you see a rare opportunity and have to either ask for an extension or submit a rushed, underwhelming resume.

If the advertisement does not indicate a deadline, call the contact person to find it out. If you get the response “submit your application as soon as you can”, you have your answer.

Do Fake Job Ads Exist?

We often get asked whether all advertised jobs – particularly those listed by recruitment firms – actually exist.

This is a fair question because the recruitment industry is infamous for its less-than-stellar ethical track record. In the past, they’d often advertise non-existent roles to build up their candidate pipeline, or to simply promote the brand of their firm.

This practice was not uncommon during the last decade, when good candidates were often in short supply.

However, in recent years this practice ceased to be as prevalent, not least of all because LinkedIn – and the Internet in a broader sense – have given recruiters access to an almost endless, global supply of quality candidates.

Chances are if a company spends money on advertising, it almost certainly has a role to fill.

How To Beat Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).

Almost 100% of recruitment firms and nearly 40% of employers use applicant tracking systems (ATSs) to separate the strong job applications from the weak.

This means that in most cases, your resume will be scanned by a piece of software before it’s read by a person.

If the ATS gives your resume a low score, your application is likely to be automatically eliminated (or downgraded) by the software.

If the ATS gives your resume a high score, your resume is likely to progress to the next stage of the recruitment process and be assessed by a person.

An exception to this rule is executive recruitment and other low-volume types of hiring. In situations like these recruiters are more likely to disregard ATS recommendations and comb through every application that they receive.

AT systems vary in their accuracy; some are more sophisticated and more ‘intelligent’ than others. They are programmed to compare what you say about yourself in your resume with the requirements of the role for which you have applied.

How can you ensure that your resume gets a high score from the ATS?

Great question.

The answer is simple – you must ensure that the “Skills” or “Areas of Expertise” section of your resume is very closely aligned with the requirements of the roles that you apply for. Requirements are contained within the advertisement.

Yes, this means you need to tailor your resume every time you apply for an advertised opportunity.

Should You Follow Up With Recruiters?

Adopt the view that follow-up isn’t optional. It’s mandatory.

Every job application that you submit online needs to be backed up with a strong follow-up effort. The best-case scenario is for you to have a 5-10 minute phone conversation with a recruiter within a week of submitting your application online.

This is, of course, not always easy. Recruiters are busy people who are inundated with phone calls, email requests and LinkedIn messages.

A delicate, polite but firm approach is required to help yourself cut through the noise.

If you don’t manage to get through to a recruiter who is hiring for a specific role, don’t get disheartened – and don’t take it personally.

It’s important to begin by noting that there are two types of recruiters:

• External recruiters: those who send candidates to their clients’ companies.
• Internal recruiters: usually the internal “talent acquisition” staff of the client company.

Some companies use both, some use only one.

In this section, we’ll be discussing the former type – the external recruiter. (We will touch on internal recruiters in the next section).

How To Find A Good Recruiter?

We often hear disparaging comments about the value added by recruitment firms, the calibre and experience of their staff and the ethics underlying some of their practices.

The criticisms are sometimes entirely valid. You, as a candidate, must screen your recruiters in the same way as they’ll be screening you. If you sense something iffy, move on.

You will find enormous variability between the capabilities, skills and approaches of individuals within firms and between firms.

In addition, because staff turnover in the recruitment industry is high, the person you dealt with in one firm six months or a year ago may have left the firm to join a competitor, has established their own boutique firm or has left the industry altogether.

The best advice is to initially reach out to as many recruiters as you can – and do so using a targeted approach.

Which Recruitment Firms Are Best: Large or Small?

Just because a firm is large, there is no guarantee that the calibre of the consultant you’re assigned to will be high.

Conversely, just because a firm is small provides no guarantee that you will get personalised consideration and a higher share of the consultant’s attention.

Large recruitment firms will typically have a client base that is based around a roster of large organisations. Large organisations, in turn, use large recruitment firms because of their capability of handling all their recruitment needs across all occupational categories.

That being said, large employers will also engage boutique firms that have established a niche in certain industries or professions. To complicate things further, employers often advertise the same role through a number of recruitment firms.

Can I Build Relationships With Recruiters?

Yes.*

Why the asterisk? Glad you’ve asked.

* Remember that recruiters are paid when the position is filled. They work for the employer.

Also, many recruitment consultants do not have a long-term view. Their compensation, after all, is based on achieving short term outcomes.

Therefore, many do not see candidates as key elements of their success – and many do not always see the value of treating candidates particularly well.

Don’t let this discourage you.

The recruitment industry is undergoing a transformation and the old, short term, entrenched mindsets are changing. A lot of recruiters now recognise that a strong connection with a pool of high calibre candidates can make their lives easier.

These are the types of recruiters who you want to set up a strong relationship with.

Based on all of the above, we recommend that you reach out to recruiters who specialise in your industry, profession or level of management.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Create A Shortlist Of Recruiters.

Make a list of recruitment firms that handle the types of roles that you’re interested in, or specialise in recruiting for industries that you want to work in.

The obvious place to start is with large household names like Hudson, Robert Walters, Egon Zehnder, Aquent, etc.

Next, obtain the contact details of individual recruiters.

In most cases, you’ll find names, phone numbers and email addresses without difficulty.

Some firms choose to showcase their team of recruiters in a dedicated section of their website. Others take a more clandestine approach and only reveal the details of a recruiter once you click through to a specific job advertisement.

Larger firms tend to specialise along industry or occupational lines or, less frequently, along both dimensions:

Therefore, if you are interested in a marketing management role in the pharmaceuticals manufacturing sector, seek out consultants who handle that type and level of role in that sector.

If you are interested in sales management roles and are able to work across two or more industries, look for the details of consultants dealing with sales management roles.

Smaller firms might not specialise – and you should ask whether the firm deals with the occupational categories, professions, levels or industries in which you are interested. Some smaller firms specialise in certain industries, professions of levels. Their websites usually indicate their areas of specialisation.

Add smaller, boutique firms to your list by leveraging Google search and LinkedIn. Almost every niche has specialist recruiters. If you’re a lawyer, for example, search for “legal recruiters”. If you’re a creative, search for “digital talent recruitment firms”, etc:

In any event, a dose of patience and an afternoon spent behind the computer will provide you with a healthy database of recruiters’ contact details.

A glass of wine probably won’t hurt, either. If you can’t find a recruiter’s contact details online, feel free to call the firm’s reception and ask.

2. Reach Out Via Email.

There’s a difference between hassling someone and building a relationship with them. Email a recruiter with your resume attached and let them know about the types of opportunities you’re interested in.

Resist the temptation to send them a lengthy email that contains your “war and peace” story. If your email is too long, the recruiter might be tempted to come back to it “another day,” which of course means never.

Also, get straight to the point. Write in short, punchy sentences. Don’t fluff. Don’t waffle. Keep the length around 5-7 sentences. For example, compare this…

Versus…

Remember that recruitment is a game of sales. In other words, the recruiter’s job is to sell you – the candidate – to the employer.

Help them help you by succinctly showcasing, at every opportunity, what makes you the best candidate for the role.

Provide points of difference, notable achievements – anything that can be used to highlight your track record and showcase your value to a hiring manager.

3. Connect On LinkedIn.

Your LinkedIn profile serves as your interim resume, so you don’t have to provide one when initially contacting a recruiter via the platform.

Also, keep in mind that brevity is your friend. Don’t kick off your message with “My name is John Doe and I’m a Sales Manager at ABC Co” – because LinkedIn will automatically attach those details to your message anyway.

LinkedIn has been built to behave like a chat function – not an email function.

Honour that.

Ask one question at a time. Think of it as a place where you send an SMS, rather than have a deep conversation. A couple of pointers:

Start by sending a connection request with a short message attached. You’ll get a much higher acceptance rate if you include a personalised message. Make the message specific:

Send a follow-up message after they accept – thank them for accepting the connection. Offer 1-2 sentences that showcase your brand and differentiate you from other candidates. For example:

4. Call The Recruiter.

By this point one of two things is possible – you’ve either established a basic level of dialogue with the recruiter via online means, or you haven’t.

In either case, it’s time for you to have a phone conversation with the recruiter. Obviously, you need to use common sense and plan to adjust the content of your conversation to each situation.

Preparation is key. Know why you’re calling.

Also, Be prepared to answer open-ended questions like “tell me about yourself”. Know what types of companies you’d like to work at. If you have questions for the recruiter, make sure that they’re intelligent (don’t ask basic career questions that you can easily get answers to online – a recruiter is not your career coach).

It’s OK to be nervous. Good luck.

4. Follow Up (Whether You Succeed or Not).

If you don’t get a response to any of your overtures, follow up in a week or so with an email like this:

You’ll find that a short follow-up like this works very well.

Ending the email with “…if any” is key –  it takes the pressure off the recipient, gives them mental breathing space and increases the chances of them responding – even if it’s just to let you know that nothing is available at the moment.

A “rejection” like this is actually a mini-win for you. Remember – your goal here is to break the ice, not to land a job straight away.

If you do succeed in having a conversation with the recruiter, send them a thank you note. For bonus points, use video. Here’s an example of something that you could create using a simple webcam:

Bonus Tip 1: Don’t Act Entitled.

Remember that recruiters aren’t obliged to help you. If you come off as a jerk in your email, they’ll think twice about recommending you to any employers. After all, their paycheck depends on the impression you make on the said employers.

Instead of saying “Please review my resume and pass it on to all possible hiring managers”, we suggest that you go with the more mild and tactful “I’d be grateful if you could review my resume and pass it on to any potentially interested hiring managers”.

Bonus Tip 2: What To Do If A Recruiter Checks You Out On LinkedIn?

First of all, I highly recommend that you stop reading right now and unlock the “Who viewed your profile” feature on your LinkedIn profile (and advanced search features) by subscribing to LinkedIn Premium.

The cost of a subscription is about $40/month at the time of writing and, in the grand scheme of things, more than pays for itself.

Once active, the feature will provide you with a list of people who have checked out your profile in the last 90 days. Just navigate to Me -> View Profile -> Who Viewed Your Profile to review them.

If you notice a recruiter on the list, treat it as an opportunity to reach out to them. Here is a script for doing so:

In Closing: 5 Rules Of Recruiter Outreach:

• Do not ramble. Resist the temptation to send fluffy, lengthy messages about yourself.
• Do not just say “Hi”.
• Do not send generic messages. Customise!
• Do not act entitled. Recruiters don’t work for you, they work with you.
• Expect rejection – and don’t take it personally. Most of your advances will be rejected or ignored – and that’s OK. This is, to a large extent, a numbers game.

A solid job search effort will get pretty complex, pretty quickly.

Unless you have a system that keeps you organised, you’ll quickly lose track of recruiters, priorities and next steps. You’ll miss opportunities and forget to follow up the right people at the right time.

As a bare minimum, use a spreadsheet that will help you keep track of recruiters, employers, job applications and stages that you’re in with any of those.

If you’re serious about your job search, however, go a step further and use a platform like Trello to build a Kanban-style simple job search management system.

Your job search will become more streamlined and efficient.

There are a lot of project management tools out there, but Trello stands out because of its simplicity.

It provides you with a system for organising and monitoring your job search efforts at a glance and is based on a simple idea: for effective project management, you need full visibility over all relevant tasks and flexibility to rearrange them as your priorities change.

If you’ve ever been in a project management or a sales role, you’ll be familiar with this “pipeline management” workflow:

In a system like this, each ticket represents a recruitment consultant who you’re targeting.

As your efforts unfold, you’ll progress each consultant through a series of stages, from left to right, that end with one of two outcomes – the consultant helps you land a role, or rejects you.

Larger employers typically have sophisticated and systematic processes for handling unsolicited approaches.

These are usually handled by their internal recruitment teams.

Generally, in-house recruiters at large organisations will be reluctant to speak with you – unless you have already applied for a role that they are advertising, and you’re a fit.

A recruiter at a company like Accenture or Microsoft, for example, simply doesn’t have the time to “have a chat” with thousands of candidates who are vying for roles at the company.

You can certainly make the effort to build a relationship with them using the same strategies that we outlined in the section above, but you should expect to hear a high degree of silence or rejection from their end.

How To Bypass The Internal Recruiter.

Here’s an idea – what if you were to skip the recruiter bureaucracy and reach out to hiring managers directly? Surely, if you make a great first impression, you’ll have a shot?

Yes and no.

Let’s start with the latter.

Chances are, you won’t be able to bypass the recruiters entirely – because most companies (except the smallest ones) have strict hiring protocols that rely on input from a number of internal stakeholders – recruiters included.

That being said, a friendly hiring manager can often weigh in on that decision, thus tipping the scales in your favour.

Also, these types of approaches sometimes work in unexpected ways. We know of several instances where people have had roles created for them because they were so impressive that the senior hiring managers did not want to risk the person joining a competitor.

Also, you may find that you don’t get far initially, but get a call weeks – or months – later.

How To Find The Right Companies. 

Create a list of organisations that you want to work with. You could start with the industries or sectors to identify the companies in those sectors and cull the ones you don’t want to approach.

You should probably research the company and the industry in which they operate and search for recent news items and reports of events relevant to the organisation.

This may help you determine whether they could have a need for your skills and experience.

The internet ensures that there is no excuse for not being reasonably well informed about an organisation’s activities and events occurring in its industry.

Reviewing financial reports and analysts’ opinions about the company or its industry can also help you decide if you want to work in that industry or whether the organisation seems to have a good future.

This process is also useful in eliminating organisations from your list. If the organisation has recently downsized its workforce in your occupational group or is about to close part of its operations in which you would be working or is about to pull out of the market, it’s probably not a good idea to approach them about a job.

How To Contact Hiring Managers Directly.

Your goal is to find the right people online and reach out to them through second-degree connections, third-degree connections or InMails.

Depending on the size of the company, you might be able to identify the appropriate point of contact directly on the website.

Click through to the “About Us” or “Team” pages and see if the organisation lists team members individually. Look for someone who has a job title that you may end up reporting into. For example, if you’re a marketing manager, look for marketing directors, CMOs, etc.

Nothing useful listed on the website?

Leverage LinkedIn to directly ask senior managers at companies you want to work for if anything is available on their teams.

You’ve created a shortlist of people. Now what? What do you say?

Start by sending a connection request (along with a personalised message).

Why is LinkedIn better than email? Well, it’s a social network—meaning it’s a far more casual and low-pressure way to reach out.

When you do send a personalised connection request, keep things short (you’ll have limited characters anyway) and somewhat general. Remember, this isn’t your opportunity to get into a lengthy discussion. Instead, your goal is to pop up on the business leader’s radar and demonstrate your value.

Don’t worry if you don’t hear back. Not everyone checks their LinkedIn messages frequently. Some people don’t bother at all. If you don’t get a response it doesn’t mean your efforts are in vain.

Remember that tact is essential. You must be confident, but not desperate or aggressive:

A message like this gives the hiring manager the opportunity to check you out on LinkedIn and offer the appropriate response. Although this approach can work when applying with large organisations, you’ll find that the highest level of response will be from small to medium organisations.