It is a huge mistake to quit a job before having another one lined up. Of course one reason is that it might take a long while to find another job. But it looks terrible to the new employer. It makes no financial sense. It shows the applicant is impulsive and will only do things they want to do.
Even if the boss wants you to unplug toilets, don’t quit. Continue to take their thousands of dollars a month, consider yourself a very overpaid janitor, polish up your resume, and start looking for another job. What’s the worse that could happen? They fire you? You were going to quit anyway. At least if you stay there you will continue to get paid for longer than if you quit.
And there are cases in which this can be a very powerful asset. When I’m competing with kids straight out of law school for litigation fellowships, it’s helpful to be able to point out to an employer that he knows I’m serious about wanting to work there specifically, as opposed to desperate for a job - after all, I already have a job, and I’d probably be taking a pay cut if I left.
#1 If we have any openings, we’ll contact you. (They don’t contact you.)
-versus-
#2 If we have any openings, we’ll contact you. (We have openings. You know we have openings. We know you know we have openings.)
In #1, it’s applying for a job and they give you that line about them contacting you.
In #2, It’s applying for a job when everyone is applying for all jobs. That is, no one is hired yet at the company site, the company is accepting applications at the hiring site, and they give you that line about them contacting you. This time, that line doesn’t work. “If we have any openings, we’ll contact you.” means “We have openings, we’ll contact you”. You got them this time.
After applying at dozens of #1s, I applied at one #2 after seeing a news story on the local news/reading about it in the paper.
The other issue that is going on is that with high unemployment, employers feel that they can be choosy. I just saw this play out twice second hand. A company without a great reputation and with a below market pay scale turning down well qualified applicants in the hope of finding a diamond. Because with high unemployment, the diamond must be out there, looking for a lower paid job at a not great company. So rather than hiring a mere sapphire, they reported, maybe that diamond will apply this time. Diamonds are employed, and they are probably employed by a higher prestige company than yours at a higher salary, but sometimes we are a little stupid about what we want.
I’ve had times where there were more than 100 applications for a position, and this was even in the pre-Internet days. There’s just no way to interview that many people, so you wind up using some pretty arbitrary standards to eliminate people.
Depending on your job skills, being a “consultant” is one way to avoid being unemployed. For a couple of hundred dollars, you can have a professional web site made up.
I had a friend who was out of work for more than a year, but he worked with a partner going around and attempting to sell their services. It didn’t make him any money, but it kept him away from the Net and helped his networking.
Yes, I’ve heard the stories as well. There are a couple of reasons for that someone who is unemployed may appear to be a weaker candidate.
First, there is the HR idiot perception that you must be unemployed because you weren’t awesome enough to keep your job. You may not have been fired, but it must mean you weren’t so above and beyong the call of duty that you were invaluable to your company. I don’t particularly agree with this notion because it’s basically part of a greater cult-like cheerleadery overoptimistic groupthink that perpetuates much of corporate America. It fosters a mentality that no matter what you do, it’s not enough. It’s not sufficient to be capable at your job, you must LOVE it as if it were your life’s work. Because that’s what we hire here. The best and the brightest who can work anywhere and they choose to work here because we hire the best and the brightest.
The fact is, companies want the best candidate for the job. If you have two (or many more) identical candidates (and they all appear identical after awhile), maybe being currently employed is that slight edge you need to get the offer.
You can start to lose skills and knowledge the longer you are unemployed. 6-12 months of unemployment might mean 6-12 months of not generating client contacts, not honing your skills and not learning new technologies.
We just interviewed someone yesterday that hadn’t been working since last year, and it was a knock against them. Simple reason, at least here: In Nashville right now, if you’re are even a marginally decent IT person, you’re employed. We’ve got open positions we can’t fill, and so do a ton of other shops here in town.
Now, there were many other things that went into the decision, but this was at least part of it. We can’t afford a mistake in hiring this position, we’re expanding too quickly and we have to make sure we have the best people. But all the IT shops in town are hiring like crazy and trying to find people. The fact that this person couldn’t get on anywhere in town was really suspect.
Now, if it was a situation where no one was hiring and the same resume? It wouldn’t have been a strike. But there are tons of jobs available right now for IT people (hint hint) here in Nashville right now.
I’d be concerned about skill loss at bit, but no, that wouldn’t be worse. Not the situation in this case, but that’s not striking out from place to place.
I guess it made me wonder why he couldn’t get on somewhere, and made me wonder more about his skills/work habits. If you just took a year off, that’s different.
People look at the employed the same way they look at the internet. If a couple of people make an opinion on the internet it gets some validity without any proof. I do it myself looking for opinions on products KNOWING the responses can be complete nonsense yet those opinions can sway my decision. I do try to look for reasons behind the opinion that validate it to some extent such as: product performed well but… followed by some negative comment.
AAAAnyway, employers look at the employed as if their current employer knows something they don’t know which obviously doesn’t mean anything beyond “can’t fire them this week even though they wish a Russian satellite would fall out of orbit and squash them dead”.
So it SUCKS to get laid off and doubly so if the economy is tanking and triply so if you had a very narrow job category.
I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had three different jobs since 2008 and was unemployed in between them. I was laid off from the first job, then I had to quit the second when we relocated to another city. Now I’m on my third.
None of these companies expressed concern over my being unemployed – in fact one company even got a government kickback for hiring an unemployed person. Of course it helps that I was never fired, but I was still surprised.
I really want to hurt people who think like that. Unfortunately, it seems to be the norm at my company and in my department. In order to get a raise and/or get promoted, it’s not good enough to be extremely competent, keep the place going, etc… you have to be a total company whore and treat the job like the company’s the only thing between your family and an eternity of damnation.
It’s like if you’re not a total yes-man and corporate stooge, you’re not really considered for any advancement or reward, regardless of how good you actually are at your job.
I think the OP’s question is best answered that people say that because it only seems easier- when you have a job, it’s easy to take a month or two off from the job search and not feel guilty and still be able to pay the bills, etc… When you’re unemployed, the clock is ticking, and every rejection HURTS in a way that they don’t when you already have a job, making the search seem that much more difficult.
Even Sven said what I wanted to say, but some of it only applies if you already have a job in your chosen field.
If you have a McJob and are applying for a professional job (even at entry-level), then, despite having previous experience and qualifications, your McJob might make you look like you have no ambition and couldn’t possibly get anything else. It will also give you none of the contacts and current skills that a job in your desired field will give you, and will take time away from your jobsearch and any attempts to volunteer or retrain.
The McJob will pay your rent (or at least help towards it) but it won’t necessarily help you get another job.
This doesn’t apply to students working at McJobs while studying, but maybe a year afterwards.
This is why my long period of unemployment - almost four years when my daughter was tiny - wasn’t a big problem for me. The unemployment was easily explained. (I did volunteer in that time, which helped make it clear that I could make meetings on time and keep to a budget and ground-level stuff like that. Also that I could could bullshit well, which is a skill some jobs prize :D).
Of course, then you might want to explain how the reason you took that time off isn’t going to impact your work - you have multiple childcare back-ups, for example (even if employers aren’t allowed to ask this, you know they want to know it). But that’s still better than ‘nobody wanted me to work for them and I’m hoping you do.’
I used to tell my unemployed students without obvious caring responsibilities to either say that they were travelling, caring for some relative or studying for something or other, whichever was closest to the truth. Anything was better than admitting they’d been simply unemployed for years.
I only got my current job because my former employer, who is a client of my current employer, recommended me for it (there was no conflict of interest there since at the previous place I was a student and they knew I would be graduating and moving on anyway).
It depends. In Silicon Valley, we all know everyone else’s business. There are many cases where companies shut entire groups, so being laid off in that case says nothing about how qualified you are, except that you’re probably not a superstar. We’re interviewing someone in this situation now, and it is not at all a problem.
If, however, you are out of work for a year, then people wonder if everyone else sees a problem. Then it hurts. Also, if you have a long record of year or two year jobs with periods of unemployment between it is really going to hurt, And if it looks like you got laid off by a company doing well and hiring, it will hurt also.
I agree about the desperation angle. Getting someone hired is a long and tedious process, much easier to stand if you are employed already.
I don’t understand why people think your network of contacts ends with your employment. You’ll bring your business cards home, right, and your personal collection of numbers?
They say when you stop worrying about it so much, it just happens. Bullshit. It took me years to find a good job again and I did everything I could, even stop caring for little awhile. No job just jumped up out of nowhere, I had to keep looking and waiting until I just got lucky.
Much of corporate America is like some sort of alternate reality Lake Wobegon. I’ll give you a clue guys - not everyone can hire the above average unless we let unemployment go to 50%. It always makes me laugh…“we only hire the best…” and I think “yeah, if I were the best, I wouldn’t be HERE.”
We only hire the best - but we pay median salary for our industry. And we wonder why we have turnover.
Or, for us - we only hire new grads from the top schools - and then we wonder why there is so much competition for them and we have to pay so much. Surely no other Silicon Valley company has thought of hiring grads from Stanford!
