Even if it’s not a lottery, the skillset required to find/land a job all too often has little overlap with the skillset required to do the job well once you have it.
It’s only true because the vast majority of companies and employees are “not great”. Not bad per se, but middle of the bell curve. And all that is highly subjective and changes over time.
Plus logically it doesn’t make sense. By your logic, the “best workers” are those who stay put and tolerate “bad policies and bad managers”.
The problem is that plenty of hiring managers and HR people have that attitude. Which is a bit frustrating since I spent the past year at a company where I received nothing but positive praise from the three layers of management above me, clients, and coworkers alike and I constantly met or exceeded any objective measurements in terms of my utilization and the metrics related to my projects and accounts. But now due to some perverse HR logic, I’m some kind of “bad worker” due to a combination of external forces and perhaps some bad leadership decisions far above my pay grade?
I don’t remember what you do exactly, but I’m just thinking of my own experience. There’s a bunch of stuff that happens between someone looking for a job and me staffing them on one of my project. I won’t bore you with the details, but it often ends up with a lot of horse trading and wheeling / dealing with resource managers, other engagement managers, practice leads, recruiters, external vendors, etc. Basically I know what the project may need. But how close I can get to that depends on timing, availability, budget, and other factors.
This. 1000 times this.
In effect jobs go to the people who are most skilled at job-finding, not job-doing.
Add in clueless HRs that use buzzword bingo matching algorithms to screen resumes and the total effect is positively perverse.
I mean, being bad at networking isn’t doing you any favors. COVID-19 is really hurting my networking ability because I can’t go to all the various events and Meetups and professional activities I used to go to.
Someone mentioned social media being overstated, and I tend to agree. Every “job coach” talks up social media as if they way to land a job is to connect with someone who knows someone you worked with five years ago. The way I’ve seen it REALLY work is that you network with people you know who you don’t need LinkedIn for who are actually in a position to hire you.
One reason why you hear a lot of “hundred resume” stories and not much of the latter is that if someone is sharing a tale of employment hunt woe, all the other people who have the same experience are going to come in for support and validation, and it seems a bit obnoxious to waltz on up with an “I get hired instantly all the time!” tale. So there’s a selection bias.
In fact my experience is very similar to Voyager’s - I live in an area with lots and lots of people more corporate manager-level than me, often people I send my kids to school with, go to church with, and so on. I frequently have “I know a person who needs a person” experiences. And I’m a fair introvert, and do introvert-networking - tell all my extrovert friends when I’m on the hunt, see what happens.
I recognise that this is absolutely no use at all as advice for people who don’t live in my circumstances. But it is one part of the explanation for the apparent mismatch … people like me who know a person who needs a person, are bubbling up to the tops of queues all the time.
I may not be the best person to weigh in on this, as I’ve only looked for a job once in my life (as was mentioned above, in grad school, companies keep track of you and come calling when you near graduation).
But I have been a hiring manager and am high up enough in my (Fortune 150) company to see the mechanics of hiring at scale.
Networking is important. But it doesn’t have to be a chore. On the job, just about every interaction you have with other employees is networking. You never know when the guy you helped out of a crisis is going to be in five years. Maybe at a company you want to get an interview at.
Just about every definable white collar job (and quite a few blue collar ones) has some sort of professional association that contains it. Joining and just showing up at conferences, workshops, etc. makes you a known quantity to more people who may be a useful contact in a few years.
In sort, if you are open, personable, and helpful, you are networking. And while I agree that getting jobs through LinkedIn or other social networking sites is overrated, they are useful in keeping up on contact information for that personal network of people you meet and drift away from over the years.
My father grew up very poor, during the Depression, and certainly didn’t go to college. My mother went to a CUNY college which was more like high school.
What I did learn from my father is that if you join a club or something, volunteer, and do the job well. This is so rare that you’ll get recognized. And have a set of references and contacts.
And I’m not exactly Mr. Social.
But networking as a thing wasn’t something I thought about until after I did it.
The conference I’m involved with (more networking) does a survey, and the number one reason people come is networking - above listening to papers.
It may be unfair, but any hiring manager would rather deal with a known candidate.
The big negative is that it means that a manager might hire people who look like them.
But even without networking, researching companies and not spewing resumes will be an advantage.
Whoa, It sounds like you had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a job opening defined and approved. I feel for you.
I worked on a microprocessor design team, and we basically got headcount. Now we did have a nutty hiring system I had to learn to game. We never dealt with external recruiters, and internal ones were reasonably helpful.
I had the advantage of a VP who yelled at his reports who didn’t make their hiring numbers. Made getting approval much easier.
The poor candidates see none of this, which makes it even tougher for them to figure out what is going on.
Just to let you know, when I talk to professors I get their take on their students, and if companies are coming to call on you, that means you earned it.
That’s why managers like networking also. If you get someone you trust to tell you that a candidate can do the job, it is much better than hiring someone with a good spiel.
I know keyword matching gets a bad rep, but if people spew 1,000 resumes 900 of them (at least) are for jobs they have no clue about how to do. If a company is looking for someone with experience with app XYZ, and a person applies who has never even heard of it so it is not in their resume, getting screened out works. If someone bothered to understand the jobs they apply for it wouldn’t be an issue.
Companies don’t train anyone anymore, which is a bummer but how life is.
One of our best clients (My company places IT developers in contract positions) is in that rock and a hard place with his HR/Vendor Management firm. Technically, all people have to be sourced through Vendor Management - problem is, the people working in Vendor Management have no idea what a good developer is - they put out a general call to body shops, who fill the request for resumes with whatever has come across their desks most recently (they have no idea either - they just want to place someone - even if they are an idiot). So he gets useless resumes when going that route. He calls my business partner and she knows the right guy who is looking - at least some of the time - then we go in through the back door. We work to try and place people we know, or who come to us highly referred.
That does not follow logically from my argument. The fact that there are good employees out there looking for work doesn’t mean that bad ones aren’t overrepresented, a fact which I acknowledge when I said “Obviously, not everyone looking for a job is a bad worker,”
Once a “good” employee finds a “good” employer, that arrangement is likely to last. That’s all you need to agree with to see that on average bad workers are overrepresented in people seeking employment and bad employers are overrepresented in companies seeking employees.
Obviously, there are also good workers who leave bad employers, and good employers who are growing or have normal turnover or whatever and need more employees. And in times of general economic calamity, it may even be true that the vast majority of people seeking work are not bad employees but are good employees not employed through no fault of their own.
But the overrepresentation still exists.
The problem isn’t one of HR manager attitude (although I’m sure there are bad HR managers out there who have bad attitudes). It is an actual real problem that is hard to solve.
ETA: I’m sorry you’ve had trouble finding work. Statistics are real, but they don’t define you.
Back in 2007 post college post military I was unable to get a job absolutely ANYWHERE. I know there was a recession but it was obscene that for over a year I applied to IT departments in both professional offices (my degree and military career were both in computer science) as well as just applying to Best Buys geek squad. I kept getting interviews but never got actually hired until I joined the Post Office because they were actively hiring veterans.
I have trouble finding a job because I’ve been on disability for so many years. Currently, I’ve broadened my search from ‘jobs in fields I like and think I would be good at’ to ‘jobs I won’t absolutely hate and that I can do without getting fired’. I lack manual dexterity and don’t want too much pressure, so fast food is out of the question. My sister in law has informed me of local jobs that I would be perfect for, and that she has the power to hold them and put in many good words for me. Unfortunately, this would require moving from Philly to south Florida.
A friend does customer tech support for Telikin ( a computer designed for the elderly). I would need a little training to get my skill set up to date. They also required you to work in their office for the first 30 days. I have no car and public transportation can’t get me there. I considered Uber but that means I would be losing money for at least a month. I have to ask said friend if due to Covid, I could start remotely.
Yep. I don’t believe everyone really does have a hard time finding a job, either. I decided back in 2011 that I wasn’t getting enough hours at my job so I should find a part-time job. I filled out applications for about 6 retail jobs and didn’t hear anything (probably because of being considered over-qualified) so I thought hard about whether or not I was actually interested in another job all-together. And I read a great book on writing cover letters. I applied to four more places over the next two weeks, got three interviews, and was hired at my current organization. All together it took me six weeks from deciding to look for a job to being hired, and I didn’t have any networking connections to prevail upon, either.
Obviously a lot depends on the type of job, your experience, market conditions and a bit of luck. I don’t think now is a particularly good time for anyone to be job hunting. In the past, I’d sometimes get stressed out trying to juggle multiple offers.
Care to let us know which book?
It’s not only the USA, I hear the same over here in Europe.
There seem to be a number of issues. Firstly, mail merge and e-mail mean that you can shotgun your resume to dozens of companies, and even customize it up to a point. Been there, done that. In many companies the HR department gets a blizzard of paper and electronic resumes, often just sent on spec instead of for a specific job.
Secondly, the job market is shrinking in certain area and desperate for warm bodies in others. So middle managers tend to have hard time getting a new job, let alone at their old pay level, while IT specialists can usually get something quickly. But not always. An American friend I knew in Japan was a very experienced programmer who moved to Silicon Valley. He said that he was up against Indian programmers, who were cheaper, and also made every effort to fill jobs with their friends and family who the requisite skills.
Thirdly, geography. Often you have to go to where the jobs are, or a specific job. Not easy if you own a house, for example.
Fourthly, job rates are dropping. I seem to recall statistics that the real income of families in the USA peaked in the 80s and have declined slightly but steadily since then. Maybe somebody can confirm that, or correct it? But it is not only salaries. In my own field, as a freelance translator, I am faced with declining rates, and have great difficulty in getting my better rates any longer. I work at home thanks to the Internet, but the Internet puts me in competition with translators in cheap countries such as India (yes, they learn foreign languages there, too) or cheapskates who sell themselves below value.
I would also guess that there is a certain amount of oversupply. Many office jobs seem to assume a university qualification of some kind these days, and an MBA is no longer the way to the top, but merely the necessary means just to get started in many cases. More people have these qualifications, so you could say that they are devalued by their sheer mass. Whether all the qualifications are good is another matter - sometimes they are not.
On the technical side, having the right qualifications can get you the job, but you might climb the ladder to find that it ends up in thin air because the need for those skills has disappeared. That’s a big problem in IT, for one. You need to constantly learn new things to stay current, and it means that employers find it easier to take on recent graduates who are up to date and much cheaper.
At the lower end, you can make Trumpish noises about “immigrants taking our jobs.” But that is not just the USA, you hear the same mutterings in Europe.
“Begging for food is less humiliating than begging for a job.” – B. Traven, “Death Ship”