What Color Is Your Parachute? (10 page)

Once we are out of work, but have decided exactly what kind of work we would now like to find, we come to the job-hunt. And if we haven’t been “out there” for a number of years, what a shock that is! We, who have spent half our lives trying to avoid being rejected by strangers as well as
by people we care about, suddenly find ourselves deep in the middle of a process that is nothing but rejection. A process that lasts twenty-seven weeks or more, for almost half of the unemployed, and in many cases six months or a year or more.
¹

Career expert Tom Jackson has well characterized this nature of the job-hunt. He says that as we send out our resumes, or go from job-interview to job-interview, this is what we hear the employers say:

Before we get to that final YES—or if we are lucky, two YESES,
so that we have a choice
—before we get there, the job-hunt is nothing but one long process of rejection. And we, if we do not know ahead of time that this is going to happen, go into a kind of Rejection Shock. And who can blame us?

Well, to avoid that, let us sit down and review what our options are, for lessening this Rejection Shock. To begin with, we know many, many things about the whole process of job-hunting. Let me give you an example. There are millions of vacancies out there. How many different ways to find them, do you suppose there are? It turns out the answer is: eighteen.

So here they are: the eighteen different places you can turn to, for help in finding the kind of work that suits you best:

1. Self-Inventory.
   We saw this in the
   previous chapter
   . This is when, before you do anything else, you do a thorough self-inventory of the transferable skills and interests that you most enjoy and do best, so in the future you can define in stunning detail exactly the job(s) you would most like to have, to your family, friends, contacts, network, and ultimately to employers.
   

2. The Internet.
   Use the Internet, to post your resume and/or to look for employers’ “job-postings” (vacancies) on the employer’s own website or elsewhere (CareerBuilder, Yahoo/Hot Jobs, Monster, LinkedIn, etc.).
   

3. Networking.
   Ask friends, family, or people in the community for job-leads.
   

4. School.
   Ask a former professor or teacher for job-leads, or career/alumni services at schools that you attended (high school, trade schools, online schools, community college, college, or university).
   

5. The Feds.
   Go to the state/federal unemployment service, or to One-Stop Career Centers (directory at
   www.careeronestop.org
   ).
   

6. In Your State.
   Go to private employment agencies (
   www.usa.gov/Agencies/State_and_Territories.shtml
   ).
   

7. Civil Service.
   Take a civil service exam to compete for a government job (
   http://federaljobs.net/exams.htm
   ).
   

8. Newspapers.
   Answer local “want-ads” (in newspapers, assuming your city or town still has a newspaper, online or otherwise). The Sunday editions usually prove most useful. (See
   http://tinyurl.com/d58l8z
   for how to use them; for a directory of their websites, see
   www.newslink.org
   .)
   

9. Journals.
   Look at professional journals in your profession or field, and answer any ads there that intrigue you (
   http://tinyurl.com/dlfsdz
   ).
   

10. Temp Agencies.
    Go to temp agencies (agencies that get you short-term contracts in places that need your time and skills temporarily) and see if they can place you, in one place after another, until some place says, “Could you stay on, permanently?” At the very least you’ll pick up experience that you can later cite on your resume (
    http://tinyurl.com/dxrdjy
    ).
    

11. Pickups.
    Go to places where employers pick up workers: well-known street corners in your town (ask around), or union halls, etc., in order to get short-term work, which may lead to more permanent work, eventually. For the time being, it may be yard work, or work that requires you to use your hands; but no job is too humble when you’re desperate.
    

12. Job Clubs.
    Join or form a “job club,” where you receive job-leads and weekly emotional support. Check with your local chamber of commerce, and local churches, mosques, or synagogues. Excellent directory at
    Job-hunt.org
    (
    http://tinyurl.com/7a9xbb
    ).
    

13. Resumes.
    Mail out resumes blindly to anyone and everyone, blanketing the area.
    

14. Choose Places That Interest You.
    Knock on the doors of any employer, factory, store, organization, or office that interests you, whether they are known to have a vacancy or not.
    

15. The Phone Book.
    Use the index to your phone book’s Yellow Pages, to identify five to ten subjects, fields, or interests that intrigue you—that are located in the city or town where you are, or want to be, and then call or visit the organizations listed under these headings.
    

16. Volunteering.
    If you’re okay financially for a spell, volunteer to work for nothing, short-term, at a place that interests you, whether or not they have a known vacancy, with the hope that down the line they may want to hire you (
    www.volunteermatch.org
    or
    www.networkforgood.org/volunteer
    ).
    

17. Work for Yourself.
    Start your own small business, trade, or service, after observing what your community lacks but needs (
    http://tinyurl.com/yqt7pc
    ).
    

18. Retraining.
    Go back to school and get retrained for some other kind of occupation than the one you’ve been doing.
    

Now, why is it important to know about all these methods of job-hunting? Well, researchers discovered some years ago that one-third to one-half of us, when we are job-hunting, simply
give up
by the second month of our job-hunt. We stop looking.
(Of course, most of us have to resume, somewhere further down the road, when and if things get really desperate.)
But why oh why do we initially
give up
?

Research has revealed that the answer is related to how many job-hunting methods we are using. In a study of 100 job-hunters who were using only one method to hunt for a job, typically 51 abandoned their search by the second month. That’s more than half of them. On the other hand, of 100 job-hunters who were using
several
different ways of hunting for a job, typically only 31 of them abandoned their search by the second month. That’s less than a third of them.

You might conclude from this, that the more job-hunting methods you use in looking for a job, the more successful you will be. Well, almost; but not quite. Further research found out that your chances
of uncovering a job does indeed increase with each additional method that you use—but only up to four, in number. If you use more than four methods of job-hunting, your likelihood of success begins to decrease, and continues to decrease with each additional method that you add to your search, beyond four.

Naturally, I have my hunches about
why
these things are true, but for now I just want to give an illustration of one of the things that just makes me sick, and that is: the job-hunt has been researched in exquisite detail, to help us find the most effective strategies when we are out of work, but neither our school nor anyone else ever tells us this stuff. So, we endure much more rejection during our time of unemployment, than we need to.

While I’m on my soapbox, want some more examples of things school never taught us? And nobody else ever told us?

Okay. It’s been discovered that in a job-interview, you are most likely to get hired if you talk half the time, and the interviewer talks half the time. On the other hand, if you talk 90 percent of the time, or the interviewer talks 90 percent of the time, things are not likely to go so well for you there.

Another research finding: it’s been discovered that you are much more likely to get hired, if right after the interview you send two thank-you notes, one e-mailed and one handwritten by “snail-mail,” as techies now call the U.S. Postal Service. E-mailed for promptness, handwritten for the personal touch. And if your handwriting absolutely sucks, then at least type it, and on nice paper (30 lb. paper, or heavier). U.S. Postal currently charges 44 cents for the first ounce, and 17 cents for each additional ounce (
if for any reason you’re putting several sheets into the envelope, check at the post office to make sure you are putting enough postage on the envelope
). E-mail of course costs nothing, except that it is subject to the dictum everyone forgets, which is:
“Message sent” does not necessarily equal “message received.”
In other words, just because you e-mailed it to them, doesn’t mean it got there. The Internet has lots of hiccups. You can sit fretting about their rejection of you, when in fact “you” never even got there.

I could go on and on, with examples. But I have made my point: no school or adult class has educated us about the job-hunt if all it teaches us is
how to write resumes
and
conduct interviews
. That’s just “elementary job-hunting.” And I mean, kindergarten level. There is so much more we
need
to know, and
can
know, because—believe me—the job-hunt is one of the most researched of all human activities.

You may have already guessed that some job-hunting methods are more
in
effective than others; sometimes much more
in
effective.

You may not have guessed that some of your favorite job-hunting strategies are on the list of
least effective
. Oops! Guess school or
somebody
should have told us
that
.

Anyway, here are the likely percentages: a mishmash of my best guesses with somebody’s actual research about the percentage of job-hunters who use
each method
who will likely
succeed
in finding a job that way.