Analyzing a job ad
Author: Stefan Waldvogel
Analyzing a job ad gives you insides about the job
The picture on the left side shows some important things to pick the right job ad/company.
Think about personal satisfaction before you apply for a job. You want to work for an excellent company with nice coworkers, and you want an outstanding boss.
If you work for the right company, work is not working anymore, it is more a hobby, and you love it.
People like you have different needs, and therefore your pyramid of satisfaction looks different.
The picture shows an ideal situation, and I agree; it is hard to get. The point is, you will not get it if you do not think about it, and it is not your goal.
Remember, you can apply for over 300,000 open positions in the US, and you have the choice.
Think about personal satisfaction before you apply for a job. You want to work for an excellent company with nice coworkers, and you want an outstanding boss.
If you work for the right company, work is not working anymore, it is more a hobby, and you love it.
People like you have different needs, and therefore your pyramid of satisfaction looks different.
The picture shows an ideal situation, and I agree; it is hard to get. The point is, you will not get it if you do not think about it, and it is not your goal.
Remember, you can apply for over 300,000 open positions in the US, and you have the choice.
When should you read specific job descriptions?
My answer is: Early and long before you apply for a job. You can use job descriptions to find your goal, to align your skills to a specific job or a company, and you can use them for networking. If you like a specific company, you can talk to their employees about a different topic and slowly you build a relationship. If you apply six months later for a job, you can ask for a referral. Such referrals can be powerful because you know each other for a long time and this person might take your resume and bring it in front of a hiring manager. You skip the biggest enemy, the ATS.
How can you find a matching job ad?
If you are looking for a job via LinkedIn, Indeed, or a different platform, you might find thousands of open positions, but you cannot apply for all of them. Shrink the numbers down. If I look for a remote position as a "Security Analyst" I get over 1,900 jobs. This is still a high number. We can exclude all CISSP jobs with the NOT command.
My answer is: Early and long before you apply for a job. You can use job descriptions to find your goal, to align your skills to a specific job or a company, and you can use them for networking. If you like a specific company, you can talk to their employees about a different topic and slowly you build a relationship. If you apply six months later for a job, you can ask for a referral. Such referrals can be powerful because you know each other for a long time and this person might take your resume and bring it in front of a hiring manager. You skip the biggest enemy, the ATS.
How can you find a matching job ad?
If you are looking for a job via LinkedIn, Indeed, or a different platform, you might find thousands of open positions, but you cannot apply for all of them. Shrink the numbers down. If I look for a remote position as a "Security Analyst" I get over 1,900 jobs. This is still a high number. We can exclude all CISSP jobs with the NOT command.
I do this because if HR uses CISSP for a SOC job; I know they do not know what they want. CISSP qualifies many people for a >$100K position because you must have 5 years in IT security to get this certification. I still get 1,390 jobs with this change, so I have to drill it down further. We can reduce the time to “last week” and I see 495 jobs. We can use a lot of other filters to shrink the numbers. They hide the advanced filters under “All filters”. Here you can search for “Under 10 applicants”, different benefits, salary and much more. In the end, I get 14 results for a $60K+ job. Now, I can work with this number and I can study each of them.
What is an excellent job offer?
People have different opinions about this, but I look for realistic and well-written job descriptions.
For this chapter, I take a different job description, because I have the skills for such a job and it is easier to explain how it works with an authentic example. Hint: You cannot find this job via LinkedIn, ask people to get such good job openings. Networking is important.
Writing a resume starts with analyzing the job description. We did that before, but here we dive in and I go through it step by step with a job ad.
What is an excellent job offer?
People have different opinions about this, but I look for realistic and well-written job descriptions.
For this chapter, I take a different job description, because I have the skills for such a job and it is easier to explain how it works with an authentic example. Hint: You cannot find this job via LinkedIn, ask people to get such good job openings. Networking is important.
Writing a resume starts with analyzing the job description. We did that before, but here we dive in and I go through it step by step with a job ad.
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