What Tinder Can Tell Us About Job Hunting – Part 3: Playing the Game

Tinder can be a whole lot of fun. Like Snap, but infinitely more stimulating. But it’s not a game, and needs to be treated with the respect it deserves, or people can be left hurt and disappointed.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

This series of articles was co-authored with Andy Storrar, Digital Marketing Specialist.

Your search for a new job is the same. Like Tinder, you could take a YOLO approach, frantically swiping right on everything and waiting to see how many matches you get, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Recruiters and Employers keep databases of candidates. You don’t want your earlier flurry of applications for completely inappropriate jobs to undermine your chances of an interview for the perfect one next week.

So act with consideration, select your targets carefully, and the validation you gain from achieving a fantastic match will be all the greater. And you know that feeling of “Tinder Remorse” that can occur if you’ve swiped left too quickly (or swiped right without thinking properly)?

Well, it’s worse when it’s being pointed out to you by a recruiter that you’re not appropriate for this role either. So slow down, and give careful consideration to what you want from that big next step.

Stay Organised

Now, nobody’s suggesting you’re going to be as active as my friend Robin. She’s pretty much a Tinder pro. Last time I asked her, she was averaging 3 first dates and the same number of follow-ups each week. She barely has to buy dinner, let alone drinks, and is the proud owner of an insanely long list of matches, even after deleting the ones who open their messaging with “Hi, how are you?”

The number of dates she goes on is limited only by the miserly 7 days in each week and her own level of tiredness. But how does she keep track of where she is in these multiple simultaneous processes?

Robin keeps a spreadsheet. No, seriously. As a procurement professional, you’ll probably have come across one or two of these. I’d hazard Robin’s is a little less numerical than some, but the principle is exactly the same. It’s helped Robin keep track of conversations, venues, insights and key facts about her suitors, and helped her avoid embarrassing situations relating to her busy social life.

Robin may be an extreme example, but the tangled web that we can weave in online dating can often be reflected when job hunting. It’s quite usual to be chatting to and meeting several people in the same month through Tinder, and just as likely that you’ll be wooing several different employers simultaneously, and at varying stages of each relationship.

A simple spreadsheet can be an effective and diplomatic way of managing your information. You should be making notes of your conversations with recruiters anyway, but putting them all into a single document with sensibly indexed and easily referenced categories is a move you won’t regret.

Do Your Research

Information isn’t just gained from meeting a date or a potential employer, of course. Research is key too. We’ll deal with that in another article, but remember that it works both ways. Google will likely lead you to a wealth of insight about a prospective employer.

It will also allow them (like a Tinder match who knows your surname) to find out an awful lot about you. Remember your digital footprint, and consider restricting public access to any social media accounts that might not represent you in the best light.

There’s more than one game in town too. Tinder is certainly one route to meeting people, but if you’re looking for a partner you definitely shouldn’t restrict your search to Tinder alone. Apart from an ocean of different dating websites, you know that friends, colleagues, social activities and even chance encounters are all chances to ‘match’.

Vary Your Habits

And so it is that varying your job searching habits can reap rewards too. You won’t always find your perfect match via the search engines and even the most successful and broad-ranging of the job sites can only individually claim market coverage of a fraction of the whole.

Employers’ websites, industry publications and blogs, direct approaches and your own trusty network are all capable of revealing unadvertised opportunities. You’ve just got to make sure to keep your eyes open, remain alert to all of them, and be capable of managing the process efficiently and sensitively when opportunities appear.

The search for a new job can be a heady and exciting business – as of course can the fast-moving search for romance on Tinder – but you need to understand the rules, and learn the subtleties and complexities of the whole process, if you’re going to play this game well.