Consultant

Why is the question in the title interesting? After all, most people now look for their new job on the Internet, and that’s not a problem in itself.

The problem stems from this, and this issue affects a large number of professionals, especially those over the age of 40-45 because most people start their job search by sending dozens of applications only to advertisements uploaded to well-known, large job portals.

Of course, mostly completely ineffective and unanswered. If you might be walking in this shoe before you start blaming yourself or the advertising companies, or possibly referring to your age or qualifications, it’s worth taking a closer look at what’s behind it all.

One of the largest job portals in Hungary has recently published an interesting analysis, which I would like to draw your attention to at the very beginning of this article.

The study of profession reveals that despite the fact that there are 10-15 thousand active job advertisements on the online job portals at the same time, most of them (roughly 85-90% of them) expect less than 3 years of professional experience.

What does all this mean?

So if someone is past 40-45, has no chance? Do you think it is completely unnecessary for an experienced professional to apply on job portals?

No, that’s not the case, even if quite a few of my clients look at it from time to time exactly because they feel it’s completely impossible to find a job for the reasons above. 

Who posts job postings?

If you look at who is posting online job postings, on the one hand, you will find that a significant proportion of advertisers are large companies, including multinationals. This is understandable, not least because one such job advertisement has a very peppery price, not to mention that a smaller company often does not have the budget or adequate HR infrastructure to manage job advertisements.

In addition to multis, you will also find a significant number of job applications submitted by staff consultants. These are staffing companies that in many cases also work for large companies.

Many people do not even know that a significant part of the advertisements on job portals are posted by personnel consultants who otherwise fill only 2% of the jobs in the national economy in Hungary. On the profession.hu website approx. 25-30% of advertisements are posted by staff consultants, and on other job portals this proportion can be as high as 45-50%.

So what do we see?

All job seekers have to reckon with the fact that they will come across a lot of multi-companies on online job portals, and as we discussed in a previous article, these companies are primarily building from the bottom up, looking for a lot of young people.

In their advertisements, they almost always emphasize the youthful work environment and the opportunity for development, so they explicitly or explicitly expect young workers to apply.

In other words, you are NOT allowed to apply for job portal advertisements over the age of 40-45!

Not even as a younger worker. You’ll see why right away, but let’s take a look at the other side of it before that!

To what extent is the exclusionary or limiting factor of 1-3 years of professional experience?

Many people misinterpret this “from-to” limit, and many job seekers do not apply for a job they like simply because, based on their professional experience, they believe they are out of the job. However, my experience is that companies do not usually define the maximum experience with this stipulation. It’s more about letting go of their expectations.

Many companies today find it quite difficult to find a good professional in a short time, and in the current labor market conditions, it is becoming increasingly difficult for employers. Thus, they too tend to move in a more permissive direction, and in many cases prefer lower conditions in their job advertisements, hoping that they will have a better chance of finding a suitable workforce.

So, 1-3 years of work experience as a stipulation, for the most part, does not mean that the company does not want to talk to professionals with more experience.

So what is a good tactic over the age of 40-45?

It is true that online job portals are not the best terrain for job seekers over the age of 40-45. If you belong to this circle, you will have to move out of this circle, if only because there are a number of other job search techniques that you can use successfully as an experienced professional. Among other things, I will introduce you to these at my next free online mini-training, get to know them, and use them yourself!

However, you don’t necessarily have to dismiss ads on job portals. I would like to point out that since most of the staff consultants who advertise on job portals fill only 2-3% of job advertisements, you should apply for these advertisements mainly if you are in the 25-45 age group, have competitive professional experience and at least English negotiation. you are talking on a level. If these conditions are right for you, there is a good chance that you will meet the requirements they set, and you will be their target group.

However, if you do not meet these parameters, you may want to filter these ads from the search list in the advanced search engine of the job portal in advance, and only apply for ads posted by employers.

Finally, one more important thing

When it comes to big business. If you look at most large companies ’own career pages, you’ll find that from time to time they fill up a relatively large number of jobs on their own homepages. But if you go up to the job portals, you will NOT encounter most of these job opportunities.

So it is not at all automatic for companies to advertise all their open positions on job portals immediately. And not because they already have a potential candidate for the position from the inside, but because it is simply not worthwhile for them to advertise every single job. (Just think of the high advertising fees already mentioned.)