Are you the spammy marketer of job search?

I participate in a short list of LinkedIn groups that are specifically relevant to my areas of expertise. Among the most useful for my work are those LinkedIn groups that serve communities of people who are either considering career transitions or actively seeking.

Unfortunately, as many of you know, LinkedIn groups are also a breeding ground for spammy marketing messages, whose authors pay little (or no) attention to the core mission or purpose of that group, nor the needs and preferences of its members.

And it gets a little old.

And it can choke the good stuff right out of the discussion stream if the group's moderators aren't diligent in policing.

So you can imagine what a refreshing delight it was when, last week, I saw a polite reminder from the moderator of a career community group in which I participate. The message asked the group's members to kindly consider that spammy, irrelevant marketing is self-serving, fails to add any real value and is not a welcome part of the conversation.

I applauded from my desk chair, as did several others within the comments section of the thread.

Afterwards, I got to thinking ...

This careless, lazy (and frankly, ineffective) method of marketing is also common among job seekers.

You know how much you hate spammy marketing, right?

It yells messages at you.

It gets in your way.

You wonder, "Why the hell is this person even talking to me? I'm not even close to his target customer."

You hate it, but

...are you being a spammy marketer in your own job search?

Are you machine-gunning out bunches of resumes without spending time to consider the core needs, goals and values of the receiver?
Are you sending out the same cover letter, with the same unpersonalized messaging to every single potential employer you contact?
Are you thinking that, if you yell out to enough people, with enough noise, eventually you'll find a taker?

If this sounds at all like your approach to date, stop it. For your own sake, stop.

Instead, build a marketing campaign of real dialogue.

Find the right people to approach, and be thoughtful in how you can best appraoch them.

Seek to build genuine relationships.

Do some homework.

Offer to help the people around you.

Just don't be spam. Spam is lazy. It tells the recipient, "I don't really care about you, but I'm hoping you'll buy from me anyway."

And more importantly, it just doesn't work.

What techniques are you using, or have you used, that have worked? If you have some non-spammy job search tactics to share, please be sure and do so in the comments section below!