If you’ve attempted to apply for a posted job opening lately, there’s a good chance you came away from the experience feeling like a can of peas…or a radial tire…or a lithium battery…or any other item viewed as a commodity.  And for the most part, your experience will have gone exactly as planned by the employer.

For all the talk about “the importance of our people”, corporate America has become more than comfortable with the idea of treating large bodies of candidates for employment as commodities.

For readers not familiar with the term, a commodity is defined as “an article of trade or commerce, a product, as distinguished from a service”.   In also tends to imply a product acquired in volume, where price is often the primary driver in the selection of vendors.

Since the jobs meltdown of 2001, through the end of 2014, there’s been no denying the fact there have been far too many candidates for far too few jobs.

As a result, unemployment, until recently, has been rampant.  Its spirit-killing cousin, underemployment, remains an American epidemic.

American employers have responded to this long-term market condition by modeling their recruitment processes after traditional procurement process models.  Recruitment, traditionally a selling process, has become procurement, a buying process.  (I’ll address this topic in a later post, but procurement-based recruitment organizations are going to hit a wall, hard, as labor markets continue to stabilize, and quality candidates of any kind become scarce.)

That means recruiting enterprises are currently focused on vetting candidates; looking for reasons to not hire, rather than reasons to hire.

This phenomenon is especially impactful on candidates for positions calling for candidates with generic skills and abilities, transferrable from one industry to another.  Let’s call them generically skilled positions.  An example might be an accountant, or an HR generalist, or an administrative assistant.

These are the positions generating virtual mountains of resumes for employers to consider, and where candidates are most likely to be treated like commodities.  Unless you’re one of the select few, you don’t get a phone call, you don’t get an interview, and you sure as heck don’t get to sniff an offer.

So the question becomes “What can a candidate do to break out of the commodity mold?”; what can a candidate do to make themselves one of the select few to be considered for positions requiring “generic” skills and experience?

Step 1…Look at the people employers HAVE hired into the jobs you want

In prior labor markets, candidates were advised to limit their resumes to a single page whenever possible.  But in today’s procurement atmosphere, a resume must communicate the experiences, skills, training, and abilities optimizing your chances of being selected for consideration.

Some resume writers recommend using a block of key words at the end of your resume to assure their inclusion in your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) record, while taking up the least amount of resume real estate.   That’s still good advice, but using the desired words and phrases in the blocks describing your work for specific employers is more powerful.

The greater challenge is figuring out what skills and abilities will positively differentiate you with the employers you’re pursuing.

By using a business networking site, such as LinkedIn, to identify individuals working for your most desired employers, in jobs similar to the one you want to acquire, you can get a clear picture of what experiences and skills resonate with the employer.  The closer you can get your resume to theirs, the better your chances of being viewed as a desirable candidate.

As you optimize your resume content, however, you should make certain to do the same with your business networking profiles.  If you’re seeking a job, your professional profiles should look a lot like your resume, even if your actual resume is linked to the profile.  You should do everything possible to help a potential employer find you, and see your qualifications.

Step 2…Position employers to view you as a human.

Connecting with the people working in the jobs and companies you want, either by telephone or via a networking site, can help you acquire additional insight as to what skills and abilities will most help advance you as a candidate.

And if you’re fortunate, they may also connect you with someone looking to fill an open position in your area of interest, either in their company, or a company trying to recruit your connection!  An introduction to a hiring manager by an employee of the company will give you a big boost up the candidate food chain.

By connecting and communicating with humans, you make yourself a human.

Remember, though; while some people will be interested in knowing or helping you, others will not.  But attempting to connect with 20 people, in order to become connected with 2, is work worth doing, as all it takes is one great connection to create a path to opportunity.

Step 3…Fill your experience and skills gaps.

In the event you find your desired employers are looking for experience using a specific tool or set of practices with which you have no experience, the obvious advice is to look for training in the use of these tools or practices.   Even if you have to pay for it, gaining desired knowledge, skills, and abilities turns the cost into an investment.

A less obvious path is to seek out temporary and contract recruiting firms looking for candidates to work temporary assignments with companies using the tools and practices you want to learn.  Figuring out what temporary and contract firms support your desired employers is pretty easy, as they tend to run advertisements for candidates.

If the need for temporary or contract employees with the skills you seek is high enough, some recruiting firms will actually offer skills training programs to help boost the qualifications of their candidates.

A secondary benefit of seeking temporary opportunities to gain experience and knowledge is that, once inside, you have a chance to make yourself known to the people you want to hire you, positioning you to be considered for full time opportunities as they come open.

Welcome back to Step 2, making yourself a human, a hard-working, diligent human, to the people you want to work for.

Step 4…Play the right Numbers Game

While it’s tempting for a generically skilled candidate to view their job search as a numbers game, where they send multiple resumes to every potential employer they can find, I would propose this is the wrong Number to focus on.

The more powerful Numbers Game is building the number of personal connections you’ve got with humans working in the field and companies in which you are most interested.  There’s nothing wrong with sending out a lot of resumes, but there’s a whole lot right about sending them to individuals who are expecting to receive them.

At the end of the day, the fact that you’re working in a field that’s crowded with qualified candidates doesn’t mean you have to accept being viewed as a commodity.  It simply means you’ve got to take responsibility for differentiating yourself from the crowd, using the tools and access available to you.