Getting Past Applicant Tracking Systems: Emailing Recruiters Directly? (job hunting, highest, applying)

[GiantCow]

Fresh grad here hoping to get some thoughts on job hunting. With almost every medium-sized or larger company now using some sort of applicant tracking system (Taleo/iCIMS/etc), the majority of resumes submitted are never even read by a human. What's the best way to go about getting a pair of human eyes to at least take a look at your resume?

What are your thoughts on following up by contacting a recruiter a few days after submitting an application through their portal just to say something along the lines of "I applied for this position and would love to be considered."?

Which leads to a second question, at large companies it's difficult to tell which recruiter is in charge of filling which positions. Should I reach out to several of them with the same message?

[davenj08]

Reaching out to recruiters who aren't responsible for the specific position is going to be a futile exercise. They might delete the email your second they see it is not one of their positions. I wouldn't recommend you do it. I could see it being annoying if a lot of candidates started doing it.

Try contacting your school's alumni, track them down on LinkedIn or via your school's alumni directory and ask them for 15 minutes to talk about a specific career choice. Most should be willing to help, if approached for mentoring. And if they seem interested in helping, ask them to refer you to their HR.

Good luck!

[loves2read]

Originally Posted by davenj08

Reaching out to recruiters who aren't responsible for the specific position is going to be a futile exercise. They might delete the email your second they see it is not one of their positions. I wouldn't recommend you do it. I could see it being annoying if a lot of candidates started doing it.

Try contacting your school's alumni, track them down on LinkedIn or via your school's alumni directory and ask them for 15 minutes to talk about a specific career choice. Most should be willing to help, if approached for mentoring. And if they seem interested in helping, ask them to refer you to their HR.

Good luck!

Yes
Bcus most colleges have NO type of placement help beyond having companies come to interview on campus and think that isn't big deal anymore like it was in past

Suggest you also contact your fraternity/sorority if you belong and any professional organizations that your degree might allow you to join as a newbie
Reduced rates for college members in many of them
Bigger cities have meetings for alumni/professional groups
Go meet people
See if you click with anyone

Most people in college try to leverage intern slots into full time offers
Did you do any interning?

[GiantCow]

Thanks for the replies, I've been working on building up my contacts.

If this is a particular company where I have literally zero contacts though, whether it be through alumni or family/friends, is there anything I can do after submitting my application through the portal?

[MLSFan]

try going up to HR ask just asking for the manager/highest person in charge?

most of the time, the manager is "free" enough to see a visitor, and until he sees you, he won't know why you are asking to see him. He'll still tell you to apply online, but you can make it a point to keep an eye out for you.

Yeah, you are depending on how well you can sell yourself in those few minutes so come up with a good speech and make sure you have a good personality... but it doesn't hurt your chances either. At least no more than if you had applied online and then forgot about it.

You can find out a bit more on the position too from talking with him, then fix the application with that in mind. kind of cheating in that you see what their hand is before you give them your application, everyone else will be applying based on the info posted on the internet, and not the type of person/skills they are looking for, if you can get it out of the manager during the talk

not much different than before internet age... you just have to do things in person if you have no network

it works better than trying to email directly, they will always just reply just fill out online application. It's harder to say that in person because they already took time to talk to you