Standing out is tough in crowded job market

In the hunt for a job -- tight market or no -- the first, second and third rules of searching are: Stand out from the competition.

Problem is, with more people looking for work against a backdrop of 10 percent unemployment in Georgia, that’s become much harder to do.

Consumer products giant Newell Rubbermaid, for example, has 400 open positions worldwide, including 99 at its Sandy Springs headquarters. The company has been inundated with applications this year, with volumes for some posts up 35 to 40 percent from past years, said Mike Rickheim, the company’s vice president of global talent acquisition.

To stand out for a chance to interview for those jobs, which include marketing, engineering and supply chain management slots, some applicants are literally looking down to their feet to get a leg up, he said.

“In the past two months, I’ve gotten four shoes sent to me. The messages with them have been ‘I want to get my foot in the door,’ “ Rickheim said.

Banking giant Wells Fargo/Wachovia said applications for its unfilled jobs have increased 50 percent from last year. Would-be hires are bypassing an apparent backlog with law enforcement officials for fingerprinting checks -- a bank requirement -- by going to private firms that send digital fingerprints files directly to Wells Fargo for its background checks.

Even those who don’t make the final cut are putting a little more effort into thank you notes, said Jay Lawrence a Wells Fargo spokesman in Atlanta.

“We had a candidate the other day come in person to present a thank you letter to the recruiter even though he was declined for the position,” Lawrence said.

At the other end of the spectrum, some applicants still don’t seem to get it: One man, who said he had call center experience, called Atlanta-based Rollins Inc. to say he’d work for the company if it moved its Covington call center to its Piedmont Avenue headquarters, which was more convenient to him.

“That one made us laugh,” said Ruby Swann, director of recruitment and talent management for the pest control giant, which has 25 open jobs in metro Atlanta and 254 nationwide.

“We’re certainly seeing a lot of boldness and persistence in applicants.”

Most of the jobs are seasonally related and open up in the spring and summer, though some are newly created posts, she said.

The crush of job applicants has forced some employers to reexamine their how they interact with applicants, particularly since many of them are using the popular job board sites like monster.com and careerbuilder.com.

Sandy Springs-based UPS directs all applicants to apply at its own site, upsjobs.com.

“You can only complete an application to a specific posted position,” said Susan Rosenberg, a UPS spokeswoman. The company reports its job candidate interviews jumped 20 percent between January and July of this year, compared with last year, though it’s still down from the same period in 2008.

Newell is focused more on its social media efforts on LinkedIn, a professional- and business-oriented website where it posts job openings. Using Twitter and Facebook also is part of the the company’s web recruiting strategy, Rickheim said. Those sites target people with the skills Newell seeks.

Rickheim said the push dovetails with Newell’s effort to better understand customer behavior and social media, since a job candidate familiar with that area could help the cause.