Now I, like most of you, have spent a lot of time looking for jobs in the traditional and non-traditional ways - all in the hope of finding a job that will enable Wifey and I to keep our home and work our way out of debt like so many “hard-asses” say is the “responsible thing to do.” And, like many of you, I have been met with either a negative response, or a deafening silence.
Everybody seems to have what they think is the best advice on how to get a job these days:
“Hit the bricks, that’s how we did it in my day. If it was good enough for me, than by God its good enough for you!”
“Ask around to find good opportunities – network yourself. Don’t just stick to the papers or online.”
“Volunteering is a good way to make inroads towards future employment. If you are busy doing something it will be looked upon favorably by hiring managers.”
“Make sure you keep an eye on your credit rating. A bad credit report can disqualify you from certain jobs.”
Now we have all heard this advice and a lot of us have taken it to heart. We may not have done exclusivly one thing, but most of us have integrated different methods into our job search. I not only look in the paper and online, but I also ask around about hiring possibilities at the food banks we go to or the stores we might shop at. I send my resume out on Twitter and I follow the Tweets of local companies and job boards to see if there are opportunities for me. I also ask our creditors if they are hiring or if they know someone who might be – which they usually take as a sign that you are trying everything you can to get work and pay your bills. I have even begun looking for job possibilities in other states and, yes – even in Canada. We really don’t want to move but I figured that it’s better to have an idea of what’s available elsewhere.
But I have to take issue with a recent article that came out from MSN encarta entitled “Why College Grads Still Can’t Get A Job” that, in my opinion, gave some really horrible advice to not only recent grads, but to job seekers everywhere.
The article starts out with the author Don Asher, who has written ten books on careers and higher education, telling about his experience on a recent talk radio show in Los Angeles. According to Mr Asher:
…one college student after another called in to say that they had followed all the rules and still couldn’t find a job. They had good grades and logical career plans, they had gotten the two internships (or at least one), and they were just flummoxed by this job market.
Their pain was palpable. They were trying desperately to make their educations pay off with a job, and they were getting absolutely nowhere. And worst of all, they were now dumped into the job market as recent college grads, competing directly with people with years of experience in every targeted field.
He then goes on to ask what else they could do to improve their chances. That’s when he began to go off the rails a little bit because the next thing he said was that college grads biggest mistake is that they spend all of their time and energy looking online for a job. He then goes on to say that “applying for jobs online, from the safety of a mom’s basement, night after night, is unlikely to result in a hire. It’s comfortable, and insulates the jobseeker from personal rejection, but it’s simply not that effective.”
First of all I think that Mr. Asher betrays a bias that he might have against young, college-age job seekers with that statement. Look at the image that he presents us with that sentence: a young person, living in their parent’s basement, with one overhead light, a bed (or cot) and a computer with an Internet connection. The image that he is projecting upon our young people is that of a loser who has been rejected by polite society, and has sentenced him or her to a lifetime of isolation and failure.
But wait, there’s more.
Mr. Asher quotes other so-called “experts” to back up his hypothesis:
Having good grades and doing an internship is not enough,” says Justin McCummings, associate director of undergraduate career services at Boston University’s school of management. “Online can be a great starting point, but that face-to-face communication has to take place. Someone has to know about you, and know your story. I like to say it’s not who you know, but who knows you.
I ran into this a lot when I graduated and tried to break into mainstream acting – it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
But wait, there’s more…
The most infuriating part of the article for me was when Mr. Asher quoted research done by CareerXroads. According to Mr. Asher, CareerXroads is “an international recruiting strategy consultancy based in New Jersey. Their research is designed to help corporate HR departments be more effective at staffing, but it has implications for jobseekers.”And what might those implications be you ask? Well, according to CareerXroads they sourced 309,600 hires at American and Canadian companies to see how sucessful new hires engaged employers, and these were their results:
Employee Referrals 27%Corporate Web Site 20%Job Boards 12%Direct Sourcing 8%College Recruiting 4%Print Advertising 3%Search Engine Marketing 3%Career Fairs / Open Houses 3%Temp-to-Perm 3%Employment Agencies 3%Rehires 2%Walk Ins 1%All Others 10%
Now judging by their results you could devine the following – “hitting the bricks” as they call it is not an effective method of job-hunting in the present economy as the 1% of successful walk-ins can attest. Getting re-hired after a lay off is not likely to happen either, so if your boss says that they will bring you back in a few months – don’t count on it, move on. Employment Agencies are not high on the list either, which reflects what I’ve been hearing from some of you about how you have been turned away by some of them. That goes along with the Temp-to-Perm route and the ineffective Career Fairs that try to get us to sell Bio-Degradable Feminine Napkins door-to-door.
I’m just never going to be able to get that image out of my head…
The top 3 methods that they have found however seemed to be Employee referrals, Corporate Web Sites and Job Boards – probably sites like CareerBuilder, Monster, HotJobs and Craigslist. All told, 59% of successful applicants had used one or more of those methods – but that is not the infuriating part of the article for me. This is:
Never ever apply without having an employee refer you,” says Gerry Crispin, a global staffing guru and one of the principals at CareerXroads. “It is profoundly important to know that most organizations, for any specific opening, do not get that many referrals. Think about it as a lottery. Which lottery do you invest in? The one with a 1-in-10 chance of winning? Or one with a 1-in-50 or 1-in-500 chance? The reward is the same either way. It’s a job.
What?!?
Excuse me?!?!?
Come again?!?!?!?!?
Let me just repeat that key phrase down below for those of you who may have missed it…
Never ever apply without having an employee refer you.
Somehow I do not believe that not only has Mr. Crispin not had to look for a job for an extended period of time, but that he has his head stuck so far up his ass that he has lost all touch with current economic realities.
Gerry, do you have any idea just how damaging that little piece of advice is that you just gave? Do you have any notion of how many potential job seekers could be derailed by you if they were to take you seriously? “Never ever apply without having an employee refer you” has to be, without a doubt the dumbest piece of advice I have ever heard given to someone who is trying to start out in the world or who is trying to support their family. Gerry, there are so many of us out here who do not have the inside access to get an employee referral that you are talking about that in essence you have just told millions of job seekers that they should just give up on their job search and start pitching tents out in the wilderness because the banks are coming to take away their homes!!!! I do not call that someone giving responsible advice Gerry, do you?!?!?!?
If the answer is yes then Gerry, I am sad to say (not!) that it is time for a career change because you have obviously lost all touch with reality!!! The reality is that, unfortunately, many of us have had to re-locate in an attempt to follow the jobs in the hope that we might be able to actually secure one. In such a case, many of us are in a strange town where we don’t know anyone, and can’t depend on those magical employee referrals that you are touting. Some of us are on our own, and we do not need someone like you, who has probably been with a company and in an industry that is not subject to the economic forces that many other industries are, giving us bad advice on how best to secure the means to keep our children fed and warm!!!
If it sounds like I am being to harsh on Gerry, think about it! If we were all to take his advice and just not apply to a job unless we had someone who worked there vouching for us, think of the effect that would have on all of our spirits. Think of how many positions would go unfilled when they most needed to be. Think of the damage that would do to the economy in the long run as more and more people lose their Unemployment benefits after they’ve either run out or were stopped because we were not “actively” looking for work. Then think about the long-term implications of millions of people being out of work for an extended period of time. Think about what that would do to the housing market, the banking industry, health care, education. Think about what that would mean for the millions of families that were now homeless because of extended unemployment – it would mean that we would, despite the President’s best efforts, be ensnared in the grip of the 2nd Great Depression. All because millions of job seekers stop looking for work because they didn’t have someone to vouch for them.
Ya see why this is bad advice Gerry?!? Ya see where this could end up?!?
Now I don’t seriously think for one moment that anyone is actually going to take this fool at his word and just give up their job search. On the contrary, I would think that it would make most of us, myself included, go out there with a renewed vigor and double our efforts to gain employment. If anything we should be doing it just to prove this jack-ass wrong and that we really can get a job without having someone put in a good word for us first. I have no doubt that a referral would help, but it should not be a pre-requisite for sending in your resume and cover letter just as our FICO scores should not be used against us to discriminate against us for falling on hard times.
Personally I would love to have someone put in a good word for me someplace so that I could have a leg up on everybody else. The problem is that we know very few people here and the chances of that happening for me, and for many others in our situation, are remote at best.
So Memo to Gerry: Why don’t you come down off of your pedestal and come mingle with the wayward and unwashed and see what our daily lives are like? See what it is like to have to try to figure out how to keep the lights on and keep food on the table and a roof over your head when you have no income to speak of. See what it’s like to put yourself out there only to be turned away everywhere you go and you can’t figure out why. See how it is to live with that kind of stress when someone you love is sick and you have no possibility of getting them health care of any kind that doesn’t constitute a home remedy.
Then tell me that I shouldn’t be applying for jobs that I qualify for because I don’t have an “in” first!
Put on my size 12′s, walk a mile, then pop off!!!
