What Color Is Your Parachute? (11 page)

1.
Looking for employers’ job-postings on the Internet.

Let’s start with a common question here:

Ah, you’re exactly right. That’s how it’s
supposed
to work. And, even during this Recovery from Recession, there are lots of testimonials from job-hunters who have used the Internet successfully, to find a match, and thence a job. But the bad news is, this job-matching doesn’t work
for every job-hunter. In fact, it doesn’t work for the vast majority of job-hunters.

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 health care, 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.

Does anyone tell you this? 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, not to mention, mammoth depression, thinking “
Gee, this works for everyone else; what’s wrong with me???
” (The answer is: absolutely nothing. Something’s wrong with our whole job-hunting system.)

Now, before we get to the other job-hunting methods, let’s hang in here, for just a moment. Let’s examine
why
the Internet breaks down, on us. The answer, in a nutshell, revolves around the nature of job-matching. Job-matching on the Internet typically depends upon using job-titles. And job-titles are, generally speaking, a big problem. Maybe not a big problem if you’re looking for a job that has a simple title, such as “administrative assistant,” or “gardener,” or “nurse,” or “driver,” or “waitress,” or “mechanic,” or “salesperson.” Any of these should turn up a number of matches, though maybe not in your geographical area.

But with any title less simple, unbeknownst to you, 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, “No matches,” when in fact there actually are. You just didn’t guess correctly what title those employers are using. Oops!

Or, you may be looking for a job-title that essentially has disappeared from the workforce. Over just two or three 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 pass the shop of one of them quite often. But I wouldn’t count on the Internet turning up many matches, if any, for this title. The same fate generally awaits job-titles like “sardine packer” and the like.

Finally, the Internet doesn’t give enough choice. A particular search program on the Internet may force you to choose between only two dozen or so job-titles, in their pull-down menu—which does not come even close to covering the 20,000 job-titles that are actually out there in the workforce—including, I’m sure, the one that
you
are searching for, in particular.

So sure, Internet job-matching works. Sometimes. You must try it, using a search engine such as
Google
, or
Indeed
. On their search line, input anything or everything you can think of to describe what you are looking for, not just the job-title.

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 some so-called experts would have you think it is.

Having dissected at length the Internet’s ineffectiveness at least in the job-matching department, we can now go faster, as we look at the other Worst methods of job-hunting.

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; 93 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 at 1 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.
¹
No one’s bothered to try to count how many of these actually turned up a job for the job-hunter
.

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; 93 job-hunters out of 100 will not—if they use only this method to search for them.

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; 76 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.
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; 72 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.)

Other Job-Hunting Methods in the
Least Effective
Category:
For the sake of completeness we should note that there are at least four other methods for trying to find jobs, that technically fall into this category of Worst Ways. Those four are:

Going to places where employers pick out workers, such as union halls.
This has an 8 percent success rate.

(Only 12.1 percent of U.S. workers are union members, but it is claimed that those who have access to a union hiring hall, have a 22 percent success rate. What is not stated, however, is how long it takes to get a job at the hall, and how temporary and short-lived such a job may be; in the trades it’s often just a few days.)