Somebody Hire Me!

Are you feeling discouraged in your job search? If you have sent out resumes and are not getting any calls for interviews, then we need to talk. But what if you are getting interviews but no offers? The hiring process often takes a great deal longer than most people think. From the time of the first interview until the offer, most companies average about 4 weeks. That can seem like an eternity when you are looking for a job.

Discouragement can set in quickly when you have unreasonable expectations in your job search. A well-written resume will garner interviews for you in a majority of instances. If you feel you are not getting calls for interviews, give us a call. Perhaps it’s not necessarily your resume but how you are going about your job search. Many job seekers post their resume on just one job board and then expect to be flooded by calls. That sometimes happens but it’s not common. Armed with a well-written resume and a plan that includes various job search methods, including targeted mailings such as ResumeMachine, you should be receiving a satisfactory numbers of interviews.

Salary level also impacts the duration of a job search. The higher the salary level, the longer the job search will take. If you want to make $8 an hour, you can get a job in ten minutes just by walking in the nearest McDonald’s. If you want to make $250,000 annually, it will take longer to find a job – for many reasons! One, there are not that many $250K jobs out there. Two, of those jobs at that salary level that are out there, they are not all in your field. Three, jobs with those salary levels tend to not come open often. Four, those level jobs tend to be filled from within, through recruiters, or through word of mouth rather than via advertisement. And finally, $250K job applicants are vetted extremely thoroughly, a process which takes time.

Type of industry will affect length of the job search. Those professionals who are in demand will enjoy shorter job searches than those who find themselves in a market flooded with available talent. Job seekers with skills that are out of date or who have not kept up with the latest trends in their field will have a more difficult task in finding a position in their ideal time frame.

I was watching an interesting documentary recently from Nova called Einstein Revealed. I was surprised to learn that when Einstein graduated from college, he sent out many, many letters of application to different universities and laboratories in search of a teaching position in physics (preferably theoretical physics). His father even had pity on him and contacted influential people he knew to try to help his son find employment. Einstein got exactly zero replies to his resume. He eventually found a temporary substitute math teaching position and later secured a permanent position as a patent clerk. Here was the world’s most brilliant mind and he couldn’t find a job.

So don’t despair! Maybe your Nobel Prize is just out there waiting on you!