Yeah – It’s clear that many of the generalizations made in this thread are germane only to certain fields or certain types of jobs, and are more true in some geographic regions than others.
Today is not so great, but what gets me is that I’ve heard people complain about how hard it was to get a job last year, with record low unemployment.
Sometimes the problem isn’t with the job market, it is with the job seeker. I know someone who had trouble getting a job during the tech bubble when all you needed was a pulse. The problem there was definitely him.
I had a bit of a hard time finding a job last year before I landed my last one. I was getting a lot of interviews, but most of them weren’t a good fit for one reason or another. I think it had to do more with the company I had just left. It was a small consulting firm that was basically just a sort of “lifestyle business” for its founders for the past 15 years. They were never all that busy and I didn’t really learn any skills or experience I could bring somewhere else. It was like they founded the company in 2005 and then stopped growing or developing.
In my experience, if you have a collection of tech skills that are in demand, you can kind of write your ticket. So long as that demand lasts. I kind of found that once I reached “middle management” (around 2008), I kind of struggled a bit because I ended up in a string of jobs where I didn’t “do anything”, while the companies would go through these various reorgs. So not only could I not figure out what I was supposed to be doing in the grand scheme of the company. It was hard to figure out what ANYONE was doing or even if they would be there in a few weeks.
It’s hard to take it personally when you are one of five candidates going through half a dozen rounds of interviews for one position.
Yeah, I was being a bit glib. I was thinking more of those who say in general it is tough for everyone because it is tough for them. But people can be working in an area where there is a decline, or have skills issues, or just fall into the “it takes n months per $x in salary to find a job” rule.
I was in a not doing anything job once. I couldn’t even get my boss to define what the department was supposed to be doing. That’s bad. I jumped ship to a department that was lower prestige in being more manufacturing oriented. Turned out to be a good move because this department swallowed up my old one, and I was there first.
Knock 'em Dead Cover Letters by Martin Yate.
The advice seemed to be sort of silly and asked you to write really braggy cover letters, but it works.
Please don’t take this as a smart-assy remark…
I had no idea people read cover letters anymore. On the rare occasion I write one, it’s basically to highlight the specific position I’m applying for. And even that goes in the body of the email with my resume attached.
Dear so-and-so,
Thank you for your interest. This is in response to the posted position of Chief Bottle Washer. Please find my resume attached.
Regards…
The tricks, hoops, and rules you are expected to follow while you exaggerate and conveniently mislead people into hiring you for a job you are overqualified for is such a stupid outdated rigmarole and really needs a complete overhaul. The system sucks and I want it to burn.
The system is certainly broken - it’s a great deal of effort for poor results.
I can’t figure out if I can multi-quote, so I have a few points I want to address.
A lot depends on the field. Working in education, you can’t really switch jobs without switching locations, and that makes networking very difficult. You probably don’t know anyone in the new location who can help you find a job, but if you can’t stay in your district, you have to leave.
I have found that I interview pretty well, but I don’t live up to my interviews. Whatever principals want in teachers, I don’t have it. I can have have my students score the highest test scores in the grade level, but by the time test scores are released, contracts are already decided and mine wasn’t renewed.
I followed conventional wisdom and advice from the Dept of Ed and got my Master of Ed in a “high need” area. Can’t even get an interview now. Districts would have to pay me too much when there are always more fresh graduates applying.
Is it legal to leave off all my experience and advance degree on a job application? All of them have a statement that the applicant must sign that the info provided is true.
What drives me nuts is that I apply for jobs in fields outside of my experience, and employers seem to be sure I don’t really want the job. I made too much in my last job and they can’t match that, so they won’t hire me. I’m well aware that retail pays less than teaching, so of course I never expected a salary match. If you asked me, I’d tell you that I’m done teaching and won’t leave a good job for it. If you can’t give me a good job that I’d want to stay with, that’s on you as the employer.
I decided to quit trying and applied to be an instructional assistant. Got hired easily and begged to return both years so far. Too bad citizens and school boards don’t recognize the necessity of the position in the big district we are in, because that means it’s a part-time, hourly position, no benefits. There is so much I could do to make my co-teachers’ lives easier if I could just be there another hour every day.
I believe that the line between employees and employers just keeps becoming more and more like a wall with every government regulation created. I think part of that wall was cemented when employees went from being personnel to human resources. Persons are people; resources are used up until they are discarded.
I’ve read many times of small companies that are like family, but I’ve never experienced or even seen it.
When I couldn’t get hired and wound up in a state-sponsored class for people who, like myself, had decades of work experience but couldn’t seem to get hired what I was told was that everything you put on your application materials must be true… but you don’t have to say everything. Just as you don’t have to list absolutely every job you’ve had over 30 years back to “ice cream dipper at age 16” nor do you have to list every academic achievement. You are advised to list those relevant to the job, but if you were, say, my sister who holds four degrees and you were applying for a job as a doctor you would certainly list your MD but the BS in music you could leave off because it’s not relevant to the job your applying for. (She has college level degrees in music, accounting, computer science, and medicine. Overachiever.)
Whether or not subsequent revelation that you do, in fact, have a master’s in some field at a later date is going to be a problem would depend on the employer, but as far as I know it’s not illegal (disclaimer: I am not a lawyer).
Yep, that was me for a few years. Until I stopped putting my college degree on those retail applications, then suddenly I was getting interviews.
I’ve seen it. I’ve worked for some small companies and it can be a good experience. I’ve also worked for some that were highly dysfunctional “families” and in one instance the matter wound up in court.
Doesn’t matter where you are on the scale from small to big, some employers are good, some are crap, and some are batshit crazy or even criminal.
It depends somewhat on the field. But many jobs do a security check as a matter of process, and if your resume doesn’t match what they find, that can be a huge red flag. So depending on “later” may not work.
I never did. For one thing, the resume is the thing that goes into the system, either directly or by being digitized. Cover letter implies letter which is so 20th century. When I got an email from someone with a resume, I never forwarded the email just the body of the resume.
That was engineering - it might be different in a creative field where writing style could count.
100 times this. People seem convinced that spamming their resumes to 100 job sites and 1,000 irrelevant companies is the way to find a job.
And hiring managers seem to think this also.
I used to hear ads on the radio from job sites bragging about getting you lots and lots of candidates. I never wanted lots and lots, I just wanted a few good ones.
As a person of Indian origin working in the US, I’m ashamed to say that the latter part of your statement is very true. I would also qualify it by saying that it is not all Indians who try to get their friends and families but people from a particular region of India.
These Indians also have “US training camps” in India, many times have fake resumes exaggerating their experience and some have fake degrees too.
I was just looking for a warehouse job, ond only got two interviews in eight months. I gave up and retired.
Ah, not my statement but my friend’s.
Degrees from east Asian universities are unfortunately often suspect, but it is not the only part of the world where fake qualifications are used.
I don’t teach anymore, but my sibling who does is active in various field-specific groups, ranging from official-sounding associations to Facebook groups. And has met people through continuing education work. Used a headhunter once for one job at a private school.
Re: leaving things off, I did have one employer become agitated that I hadn’t listed my MS in chemistry, which I received only because I asked for it when working on my PhD (which was listed.) And I know some federal government jobs are adamant that every little bit and bob be listed. I don’t know about local government jobs. That said, I’ve always felt that accurate does not have to mean comprehensive unless specified.
My assumption is that it is like online dating.
You get 50+ applications so you assume “I have endless options, I’ll hold out for the best”. The problem is that ‘the best’ can do way better than you. So employers hold out for some amazing super employee who is overqualified, but if someone like that does exist they’re just going to leave in a few months anyway.
I don’t think older people understand what its like nowadays. Even for crap jobs you may have to go through several rounds of interviews just to work with a bunch of fuck ups.
Its like politics in that regards, politics rewards people who are good at obtaining and keeping power, not people who know how to use the power effectively.
My first job after college was at a giant (over 20,000 person) company. I’ve since worked at 3 small companies (1 consulting company and 2 startups) and I really miss the giant company. It is incredible how bureaucratic people can become if they even have 3 levels on the org chart. The consulting company I worked at was like a family, but it was more like the Simpsons than anything else.