Job Hunting Advice - What Color Is Your Parachute? Job-Hunter's Resource Center

There are thousands of testimonials from job-hunters who have used the Internet successfully, to find a match, and thence a job. But this job-matching doesn't work for every job-hunter. In fact, it doesn't work for the vast majority of job-hunters. (Ouch!)

Why Job-Hunting on the Internet Doesn't Always Work

There are thousands of testimonials from job-hunters who have used the Internet successfully, to find a match, and thence a job. But this job-matching doesn't work for every job-hunter. In fact, it doesn't work for the vast majority of job-hunters. (Ouch!)

Why not?

Well, job-matching works by using job-titles, and job-titles are, generally speaking, a big problem for the Internet. Well, not a big problem when you're looking for a job that has a simple title, such as "secretary," or "gardener," or "nurse," or "driver," or "waitress," or "mechanic," or "salesperson." Any of these should turn up a lot of matches.

But, you may be looking for a job that various employers call by differing titles, and that's an entirely different ballgame. If you guess wrongly what they call the job you're looking for, then you and those employers will be like two ships passing in the night, on the Internet high seas. Your faithful, hardworking computer will report back to you in the morning: "No matches," when in fact there actually are. You just didn't guess correctly what title those employers are using. Oops!

Another problem: you may be looking for a job-title that essentially has disappeared from the workforce. Over the centuries, our economy has moved from one largely based on agriculture, to one largely based on manufacturing, to one largely based on information and services. As each transition has occurred, certain job-titles have essentially disappeared from the workforce, and in large numbers. Oh, they're still around, but in such small numbers that no one tells the Internet. "Blacksmith" is one example that comes to mind. There are blacksmiths, still; I happen to know of one of them. But I wouldn't count on the Internet turning up many matches, if any, with this title. The same fate generally awaits job-titles with the old words "assembly line" and "manufacturing" in them. As John McCain truthfully told Michigan voters during the Republican primaries in early 2008, "those jobs aren't coming back."

Finally, job-titles are a problem for an Internet search because a particular search program on the Internet may depend completely on beginning with a prepared list of job-titles that you are required to choose from, and in the interests of space and speed their menu may only offer you a choice between two dozen or so job-titles, which does not come even close to mentioning all the possibilities; i.e., the 20,000 job-titles that are out there in the workforce–including, of course, the one that you are searching for, in particular.

So sure, Internet job-matching works. Sometimes. Beautifully. You must try it, using Indeed, or a general search engine such as Google, or Metacrawler. Input anything or everything you can think of to describe what you are looking for.

But know ahead of time that you can't count on it necessarily working for You. In the end, it's a big fat gamble. And not at all the sure thing that so-called experts would have you think it is. Back to top of page.

The Five Worst Ways to Look for a Job

4 to 10% success rate

1. Looking for employers' job-postings on the Internet. The media are filled with -stories of job-hunters who have successfully used the Internet to find a job.

One job-seeker, a systems administrator in Taos, New Mexico, who wanted to move to San Francisco posted his resume at 10 p.m. on a Monday night, on a San Francisco online bulletin board (Craigslist.org). By Wednesday morning he had over seventy responses from employers

Again, a marketing professional developed her resume following guidance she found on the Internet, posted it to two advertised positions she found there, and within seventy-two hours of posting her electronic resume, both firms contacted her, and she is now working for one of them.

It is not just the media that are filled with such stories. So is my mail. Here's a letter that I received: "In May I was very unexpectedly laid off from a company I was with for five years. I was given a copy of your book by a ministry in our church that helps people without jobs. I read the book, and it was a great source of encouragement for me. The day I was laid off I committed my job search to the Lord. He blessed us, provided for us, and gave me peace of mind throughout my job-hunt. The Internet was my lifeline in finding the right job. I did 100 percent of my job search and research via the Internet. I found all my leads online, sent all my resumes via e-mail, and had about a 25 percent response rate that actually lead to a phone interview or a face-to-face interview. It was a software company that laid me off, and I am [now] going to work for a publishing company, a position I found online."

And another: "Thanks to the Internet, I found what I believe to be the ideal job in [just] eight weeks–a great job with a great company and great opportunities…"

And so we see the Internet can do a marvelous job of making it possible for an employer and a job-hunter to get together, in a way that was rarely possible even a decade or so ago. Internet sites currently devoted to job-hunting–some experts say they number 1,000; some say 5,000; some, 10,000; some 40,000; and some, 100,000 or more–make it possible to get together faster than ever before in history.

Of course, it doesn't always work. Aye, and there's the rub! It actually doesn't work for a huge percentage of those who try it. Research has turned up the fact that out of every 100 job-hunters who use the Internet as their search method for finding jobs, 4 of them will get lucky and find a job thereby, while 96 job-hunters out of the 100 will not–if they use only the Internet to search for a job.

Exception: If you are seeking a technical or computer-related job, an IT job, or a job in engineering, finances, or healthcare, the success rate rises, to somewhere around 10 percent. But for the other 20,000 job--titles that are out there in the job-market, the success rate remains at 4 percent only.

Did they teach you this when you were in school? Of course not! So you are left free to suppose that the Internet is working for everyone. And if that is what you think, and you then fail to find a job on the Internet, you can end up with lowered self-esteem, or mammoth depression.

7% success rate

2. Mailing out resumes to employers at random. This job-search method is reported to have a 7 percent success rate. That is, out of every 100 job-hunters who use only this search method, 7 will get lucky, and find a job thereby. Ninety-three job-hunters out of 100 will not–if they use only resumes to search for a job.

I'm being generous here with my percentages for success. One study suggested that outside the Internet only 1 out of 1,470 resumes actually resulted in a job. Another study put the figure even higher: one job offer for every 1,700 resumes floating around out there. We do not know what the odds are if you post your resume on the Internet. We do know that there are reportedly at least 40,000,000 resumes floating around out there in the ether, like lost ships on the Sargasso Sea.2 No one's bothered to try to count how many of these actually turned up a job for the job-hunter.

7% success rate

3. Answering ads in professional or trade journals, appropriate to your field. This search method, like the one above, has a 7 percent success rate. That is, out of every 100 job-hunters who use only this search method, 7 will get lucky and find a job thereby. Ninety-three job-hunters out of 100 will not–if they use only this method to search for them.

5 to 24% success rate

4. Answering local newspaper ads. This search method has a 5 to 24 percent success rate. That is, out of every 100 job-hunters who use only this search method, between 5 and 24 will get lucky and find a job thereby. Seventy-six to 95 job-hunters out of 100 will not–if they use only this method to search for them.

(The fluctuation between 5 percent and 24 percent is due to the level of salary that is being sought; the higher the salary being sought, the fewer job-hunters who are able to find a job–using only this search method.)

5 to 28% success rate

5. Going to private employment agencies or search firms for help. This method has a 5 to 28 percent success rate– again depending on the level of salary that is being sought. Which is to say, out of every 100 job-hunters who use only this method, between 5 and 28 will get lucky and find a job thereby. Seventy-two to 95 job-hunters out of 100 will not–if they use only this method to search for them.

(The range is for the same reason as noted in #4. It is of interest that the success rate of this method has risen slightly in recent years, in the case of women but not of men: in a comparatively recent study, 27.8 percent of female job-hunters found a job within two months, by going to private employment agencies.) Back to top of page.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR JOB INTERVIEWS

Whereby Your Chances of Finding a Job Are Vastly Increased

1. Go after small organizations with twenty or fewer employees, since they create two-thirds of all new jobs.
2. Hunt for interviews using the aid of friends and acquaintances, because a job-hunt requires eighty pairs of eyes and ears.
3. Do thorough homework on an organization before going there, using Informational Interviews plus the library.
4. At any organization, identify who has the power to hire you there, for the position you want, and use your friends and acquaintances' contacts, to get in to see that person.
5. Ask for just twenty minutes of their time, when asking for the appointment; and keep to your word.
6. Go to the interview with your own agenda, your own questions and curiosities about whether or not this job fits you.
7. Talk about yourself only if what you say offers some benefit to that organization, and their "problems."
8. When answering a question of theirs, talk only between twenty seconds and two minutes, at any one time.
9. Basically approach them as if you were a resource person, able to produce better work for that organization than any predecessor.
10. Always write a thank-you note the same evening of the interview, and mail it at the latest by the next morning. Back to top of page.

Seven Rules for Choosing or Changing Careers

Now, when you have to choose, or change, a career, here are seven rules to keep in mind:

Rule #1 about choosing or changing a career: go for any career that seems interesting or even fascinating to you. But first talk to people who are already doing that work, to find out if the career or job is as great as it seems at first impression. Ask them: what do you like best about this work? What do you like least about this work? And, how did you get into this work? This last question, which sounds like mere cheeky curiosity, actually can give you important job-hunting clues about how you get into this line of work or career.

Rule #2 about choosing or changing a career: the key to doing this successfully is to make sure that you preserve both constancy and change, in your life. In other words, don't change everything. Remember the words of Archimedes with his long lever, loosely paraphrased as: Give me a fulcrum and a place to stand, and with a lever I will move the Earth. You need a place to stand, when you move your life around, and that place is provided by the things that stay constant about you: your transferable skills, your values, your faith.

We can illustrate this principle with a simple diagram of creative career change, page 137. Let us say you are an accountant, in the television industry, and you want to become a reporter, covering medicine. You can, of course, try to change everything in one big leap (labeled the difficult path in this diagram), but it's easier if you first change just your job title and only later your field. Or first change just your field, and only later your job title (two steps). This two-step plan for career change preserves some constancy at every turn, some continuity with the past––and allows you to always claim some past experience and expertise, each time you make a move.

Rule #3 about choosing or changing a career: you do better to start with yourself and what you want, rather than with the job-market, and what's "hot."

Rule #4 about choosing or changing a career: the best work, the best career, for you is going to be one that uses: your favorite transferable skills, in your favorite subjects, fields, or fields of fascination, in a job that offers you your preferred people environments, your preferred working conditions, with your preferred salary or other rewards, working toward your preferred goals and values. This requires thorough self-inventory. Detailed instructions are to be found in chapter 11.

Rule #5 about choosing or changing a career: the more time you give to it, the better your choice is going to be. There is a penalty for seeking "quick and dirty" fixes.

Rule #6 about choosing or changing a career: you don't have to get it right, the first time; it's okay to make a mistake, in your choice. You'll very likely have time to correct it, down the road, regardless of your age. Most of us have three to five careers, during our lifetime.

Rule #7 about choosing or changing a career: try to make the task as much fun as possible. The more fun you're having, the more you're doing it right. Back to top of page.