One of my best friends got a job offer last week. He is one of the most amazing, highly skilled, ridiculously awesome people I’ve ever met and any company would be super fortunate to have him on their team.
It took him 8 months to find this job. Eight!
If a Rockstar like him needs the better part of a year to get a new job, what hope is there for the rest of us? And why would it take that long for someone with an awesome skillset to find a job?
Well, timing. The pandemic hit only a month into his search and many companies stopped hiring in the short-term as they figured out the whole work-from-home thing. And by the time everything was figured out enough, then it was summer, a time when there are far fewer postings due to holidays/vacations.
Process plays a role too. Many (I’d argue most!) companies have outdated, burdensome, non-applicant-centric hiring processes.
But by far, the biggest factor was people, and more specifically, the ways we need to interact during the job search.
Job searching is like… dating
Job searching is basically like dating, but far more awful. It’s meeting a bunch of random strangers and hoping that you hit it off with even one. It’s engaging in polite small talk and trying to keep your problems hidden until later. It’s being charming and witty and amazing and then never hearing from them again!
With job searching you get all the awkwardness and pain, but none of the dinner and drinks reward (and let’s be honest, food is a HUGE motivator for most of us!). At least with dating, you have the possibility of someone buying you a meal!
Even with all the technology in place in the job search process, remember that people are the final decision-makers and people don’t always make rational decisions. There are politics, and management philosophies, and company culture, and team dynamics and whole lot of other things at play for Every. Single. Job. Posting. And there is no visibility or transparency into those things. Often, an “it’s-not-you-it’s-me” response has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with all those invisible forces at work.
My friend managed to slog through the dead-ends and disappointments of the job search, while keeping his sense of humor in tact (a must for dating AND job searching!) and eventually found a perfect role for his exact skillset.
So just like dating, the best approach is to keep putting yourself out there and waiting for the right one to come along. It will, and you’ll be glad you didn’t settle!
#PositiveAction Hit the apply button to one (more!) job this week. You never know when you’ll find “the one”!!
If you're in need of a super-fast way to super-charge your job search, check out my e-book on job searching during a pandemic.