Feb 1, 2012
Today’s topic has been hashed and re-hashed to death, but it’s because it’s extremely relevant and therefore deserving of too much attention.
What I want to complain (yes complain while educate) about today are job seekers who do nothing but maintain status quo in their job search. They wake up every morning, take a quick peek at the online job boards, maybe shoot their resume over for some of the more pertinent openings, and then they WAIT AND WONDER why it’s been 6 months or a year plus that they’ve been on the job market.
You may ask – “who is she to be so harsh?” – Well my friends, my lovely Fiancé is on the job market and EVEN THOUGH he knows better, this is the kind of job search rut he’s been in lately.
See here’s the rub – my Fiancé, just like SO MANY job seekers out there, is incredibly good in his profession and has the potential to use this opportunity to land himself an AWESOME job. He’s got excellent references, has all the necessary certifications, an excellent resume (compliments of me), and meaningful cover letters (also complements of me). BUT what good are his accolades and a perfect resume if no one of consequence is seeing/noticing?
My lesson today will come in the form of an anecdote that I’m not very proud of.
Last Friday I came home from work to my Fiancé sitting in front of the TV – you guessed it – playing video games (I swear, men from 19 – 59 enjoy a good round of gaming). As a matter of fact, he was in the same position on the couch from when I first left for work 9 hours earlier that morning.
WHY WAS HE ACTING SO LAZY???? The crazy thing is, is that he’s one of the least lazy people I know – one of the reasons I fell in love with him as a matter of fact.
So, instead of being the concerned and loving wife-to-be (maybe he’s in a rut?), I laid into him. Which I think was warranted to a degree. I asked him if he had even gotten off the couch – he said yes of course but clearly I wasn’t around to see it. I asked him if he had sent any new resumes out that day – he said no because there were no new postings. THEN I SAID – “Did it ever occur to you that it takes work to get a job?!?! Do you really think that sitting around and waiting for some employer to post on indeed is going to get you anywhere?!?!? DO YOU EVEN WANT A NEW JOB AT ALL!?!?!???”
Well, then he went quiet. I had gone psycho recruiter on him, and I made it sting.
OK – so to expedite the rest of the story I apologized for being so harsh and explained to him WHY he can’t just sit and wait for jobs to come to him:
It’s been proven that the job boards are only about 30%ish (I don’t remember the exact figure) effective in an individual’s job search. This has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of key jobs don’t even make it to the boards because those jobs get filled with someone who knew someone who referred someone. What does this mean for our purposes? That NETWORKING is presently the most effective way to score your next career opportunity. Networking means reaching out to a recruiter, it means reaching out to friends and old colleagues to let them know you’re on “the hunt”, it means doing your research and directly contacting companies in your field whether or not you see an opening on their website.
After my Fiancé came to understand the logic behind my… ahem… rage at his traditional and shortsighted efforts to job hunting he went proactive on me and the next week got movement on his resume!
He collated a list of major companies in his industry and personally called into the HR department or Sr. Managers to introduce himself (he left a lot of messages, but was able to speak to the owner of one firm who asked him to send his resume and follow up)
He got in touch with an industry-specific recruitment firm who is working with him on an unadvertised job opportunity – hopefully setting him up with an interview in the next couple weeks.
AND FINALLY, by complete chance a friend of my father’s whom he’d met over the holidays put him in touch with the President of another local firm in his field just yesterday!
SO – the moral to my story is that I’m always right.
JUST KIDDING! – The moral is that networking is a very necessary part of your job search. Just because you’re not finding your dream job up on Monster or CareerBuilder doesn’t mean it’s not out there. You just have to commit to a little digging.
OH AND FYI – if you’re an engineer or manufacturing/supply chain manager you best put yourself in touch with us! corey@txmq.com
ALSO – check out our BRAND NEW division website: www.engineering.txmq.com
