How many times must one turn in an application/resume before getting any “bites?” I am having a difficult time making any progress. I always follow up on my app’s/res’ within several days by phone to request an interview, yet I still have little luck. I always get the “don’t call us, we’ll call you!” attitude from employers. They never call.
Someone told me a statistic that on avg. for every 100 app’s/res’ you send out, you only get one interview, regardless of your training/qualifications/employment history/or the position you are applying for. Is this accurate? If not, does anyone have an accurate figure? I am so tired of pounding the pavement/want ads.
I am seriously considering starting my own business doing landscaping and/or housecleaning. I have been doing these as odd jobs for almost a year, and I make more per hour than I would from any potential employer. Unfortunately, work comes and goes, and isn’t very stable. I am off to a start at least.
I don’t know what profession you are trying to get a job in, but I haven’t pounded the pavement for many years. Starting in 1996 I started faxing everyone I was interested in by looking in the online yellow pages under the business listings I was interested in and more recently got away from even that by using online job search services like monster.com and dice.com. These particular places may not have the kinds of jobs you want, but if you use a search engine like http://www.metacrawler.com and put a few terms about your profession plus the work “job” or “job” “search” it might turn up some places that will do most of the work for you. These online job services really can work and it doesn’t mean the job will be some didly poor paying one either. I make $95 an hour at my full-time job I got from a lead on dice.com.
MSK- Been there, and it sucked royally. The two times I went job hunting, I sent out maybe fifty resumes. I got two requests for an in-person resume, and two over-the-phone interviews from people who swore they’d call me back for a real interview. Bastards. The only people who actually did pursue me were headhunters for temp agencies (which is why I’m temping now).
It sucks, and there’s not a lot to be done about it. Keep in mind that when you’re sending your resume to an ad you’ve seen in the paper or on-line, that you’re probably one of a couple hundred people sending their resumes in. Hell, even if you’ve got all of the qualifications they want, it’ll be a few days before they wade through enough resumes to read yours, and no knowing how many dozen other, more qualified people they’ve picked out of the stack as candidates.
IMHO, your best bet is to keep plugging away, but focus more on people and places you know. I’ve had more requests for job interviews in three temping assignments than I had in a full month of sending resumes out; by actually working with the people who are hiring, I get a step up over all of the fluffy resumes that might not mean diddly in the long run.
Of course, I’m still temping and haven’t been able to get a real, permanent job in nine months, so I may not be the best source of wisdom on this matter.