I hear this phrase bandied-about among some people I know, all the time - when it comes to just wanting to quit your current job, without having something else lined up.
I understand all the arguments for/against “today’s economy”, the “grass is always greener on the other side”, etc., but why is it supposedly easier to find a job “when you already have a job”?
Is it because you go into the interview with an air of “I’d LIKE this job, but I don’t really NEED it”, and you project some sort of intangible self-confidence? Or is it simply that if your potential employer sees you as being currently employed, that somehow means you are more “marketable/hireable” than someone who’s been out of work for three months?
If it’s that simple, then what’s to keep me from quitting my job at ABC Corp, then two weeks later, interviewing at XYZ Corp, and showing my resume’ as “ABC Corp 2009 - present”, and requesting ‘XYZ’ to “please don’t contact ‘ABC’ - they don’t know I’m interviewing”?
I would think the opposite. When you have a crappy job, it’s harder to find a new job. because it sucks, but not enough to look very hard. And when you’re working 9 to 5 or whatever, it doesn’t leave much time for a job search, and you’d rather spend your PTO watching DVDs in your underwear and eating Cheetos.
Otherwise, selection bias? If you’ve been out of work for more than a few weeks, I could see (not necessarily agree) that an employer may consider that less desirable than someone still employed.
YMMV, but you’re supposed to be able to keep them from contacting your present employer, or at least mentioning you’re looking. Many companies these days only ask if you work(ed) there. If they mention that you quit, it may be a negative mark against you.
If you have a job there are no questions about why you are unemployed. But then there are questions about why you want to leave your current job. There’s no way to generalize it across existing jobs and potential jobs.
This might be a case of correlation without causation. If you take 50 employed people and 50 unemployed and send them on job interviews, which group do you expect to have the better success rate? Probably the employed people - employed people have, on average, better skills / experience / presentation than unemployed folks. That’s what got them employed in the first place.
That said, while d doubt being out of work for a couple of weeks makes a difference, a gap of several years on your resume will definitely make it harder to find a job. Employees worry that you’re not as sharp and your skills aren’t as relevant as they might have once been.
One is simply that if you have a job, you already have a set of connections that can help you find your next job. People are more likely to know your name, or know someone you know, or otherwise have some connection to you. You are also more likely to hear about potential opportunities in other organizations, either through water cooler gossip, keeping up with trade publications, etc. The more informed, hooked up, connected and social you are in your field, the more opportunities will come your way. And having a job is an easy way to get to that position.
I also think some undefinable “aura” is also a factor. It’s like dating- people can smell desperation, and they will run like crazy from it. If you seem at all like your confidence is shaken, how can people be confident in you?
I think employed people are more likely to ask “good” interview questions that get to the meat of the company- why do I want to work here? What is in the future at this company? What challenges does your department have right now? How do I fit in? Interviewers love tough, informed questions that show that you are making a fit with the organization. Unemployed people are more likely to shy away from tough questions or ask generic ones, leaving the company unsure about where you fit in. And it’s more than questions- that confidence adds up in a hundred ways, confirming that you are a desirable hire, you really do want to work with the company, and you have good ideas to bring in to it.
Finally, having a job keeps you from getting out of that unemployed funk where they stop really trying. It’s tough to motivate yourself to spending the evening sending out resumes when you have all day tomorrow, and all day the next day, and all day forever to do it. But when you’ve just had an absolutely shitty day at work and you can’t take it anymore, you are much more likely to work your “get the fuck out of there” mojo as hard as you can.
Many employers are assholes who suspect that anyone who is unemployed is that way because they are not good at their jobs. So they won’t hire people who are not employed, even in this godawful economy.
It’s just an expression people use to encourage the “work shy” to take any job going in order that they get a better job. Then the “work shy” person discovers they can’t actually get another job and are stuck in a dead end menial job forever
At least that’s been my own personal experience.
(“work shy” meaning anyone who’s on the dole - regardless of why they are unemployed. A coin termed during Maggie Thatcher’s ‘reign’ in the UK)
Contacts: In particular in professional fields, but can apply to just about any area, when you’re employed to meet people in your field. People who might be hiring, people who know others who are hiring etc. Those contacts can see you working and can get an immediate positive impression of who you are and what you do.
Credibility: When you’re employed you are perceived as a more credible candidate. Unemployed the person reading your application can interpret all sorts of reasons why you’re not currently employed.
Not ALL employers are such assholes. Some WILL hire the unemployed. Just assume that whomever you are talking with is a non-asshole. Doesn’t change the fact that the ones who won’t hire the unemployed are assholes.
One of the myriad bits of career advice that I got in a capstone class I took in college is that, if you’re looking at long-term unemployment for any reason, it’s a good idea to find a volunteer position for an organization you care about for which you can use your skills. The rationales for this are:
[ul]
[li]You eliminate gaps on your resume because you can show that you were doing something productive while you were unemployed;[/li][li]You can practice the skills you have and learn some new ones;[/li][li]You make contacts and get references for future jobs; and[/li][li]You can refine your workplace etiquette and (possibly) work with a public who you need more than it needs you.[/li][/ul]
In fact, several of my classmates wound up either in the nonprofit sector working for the organizations where they volunteered, or they used the contacts they gained to find a job. So it can help.
While she makes other good points, I think that this might be the most important one. Desperation is very unappealing, and it will just about kill any positive social interaction, whether that interaction is dating or interviewing.
I spent a couple of years in an entry level HR job assisting the recruiters. This was years ago, so a different economy, but there was definitely a sense that currently unemployed people were suspect. The line of thinking was that either they were not good workers and had therefore been fired, or they showed bad judgment by quitting one job before having another. That doesn’t mean that resumes from currently unemployed people were immediately tossed, but it was a definitely a count against them from the get go.
And both those things can be true. Hiring managers know that when they need to lay off, unless they have seniority restrictions, they will keep their best people. Things have to get pretty bad, or you have to be getting rid of everyone in a group, before the cream is let go. Experienced managers also have dealt with the ‘well, take this job and shove it’ employee who leaves suddenly - usually that announcement is met with relief, not regret. So someone previously employed but not currently employed has these perception hurdles to overcome, even if they are not true in their case.
(and it’s a shame, my last employer laid off 20% of its staff in 2008, including chopping through huge groups. Many people were let go who we’re dead weight, but we lost good people who then struggled to find work. However, the ones who struggled least were the ones who immediately started being productive, volunteer work, training, or consulting - even if it wasn’t full time or for much money.)
Employers are no different than single people. Someone else’s girlfriend or boyfriend often has more appeal than someone who is single, especially if they’ve been single for a while. Because why a they single, are they broken in some way?
Actually, in NYC the City Council is considering making “employment status” a protected class for hiring purposes, because “only apply if employed” ads are completely rampant here. That is - not merely preferring employed applicants which could have a number of soft-focus reasons behind it as already described above - but actually attempting to exclude the unemployed entirely from the hiring pool. Why are employers explicitly discriminating against the unemployed to the point where remedial legislation is being considered? I don’t know, but I suspect it has something to do with irrational bias against the unemployed on the part of employers.
For the record, I am not unemployed, and I’m not sure what I think about the proposed law. It does sugegst however, that the idea that employers have unfounded beliefs about the unemployed is a little more than just a “bad attitude.”
I suspect it’s more of a numbers and resource game. If, statistically speaking, you have a better chance of finding your eventual employee from those that are employed, and you are getting too many resumes to process, a first cut could be “get rid of anyone currently unemployed.”. Not that much different than “degree required” when for most jobs a degree really isn’t needed. Scanning through a bunch of resumes is time consuming and most corporations are running too lean.
The law won’t do much since the cut will just be made internally rather than in advertisements. As a female IT professional, who has been to more than one interview, granted long ago, to get told by some low level tech “hr said we had to interview a woman,” I feel the pain.