The Joys of Job Hunting

Let's be honest, searching for a new job blows goats. I mean there is an exciting side to it, no question, as your imagination dreams of the ideal job that will be meaningful, exciting, the opposite of mundane and full of people you enjoy working with. Oh yeah, and a job that will pay you good enough money to fly airplanes, travel the world and to donate to causes you like . . . on top of paying for a home, a car that's reliable and a date or two should the opportunity present itself. Oh wait, we need to eat too - I can't believe I almost forgot that one. Perhaps the details vary ever so slightly for you, but you get the picture.

But the search itself can be daunting. Perhaps your search begins at CareerBuilder.com or Monster.com, you spend hours formatting your resume, making it look unique, nice and professional only to find that the website you want to upload it to will convert it to boring text. Fantastic. Then there's the joy of typing in all of your information again into individual fields that make up your work history. Didn't we just type this into our resume?! Ugh! So you skip this and go to bed.

A day or two later, you get back to it, you finish filling in the fields, check it over and press the magical button to make your resume and job history "live." Good. The flood of jobs begins, right?

Well, kind of. Within hours your inbox has a few potential employers. "Hi 'A', I'm from company XYZ and I was looking over your resume and think that with your background in accounting, you may be a great candidate for our Sr. Accountant position we have available. The annual salary is $125,000 to $175,000 depending on experience. I look forward to hearing from you to discuss this exciting opportunity."

The salary is what?! Instantly you begin daydreaming of cruise vacations, sunny beaches in Mexico with a fruity drink in your hand and your feet in the sand. You picture your new beautiful home with pillows stuffed with $100 bills along a lake with a jet ski, your fancy new car to replace that beater and around now you realize, wait, I don't have any accounting experience!

Computers and the internet have truly changed the way the world works. In many ways it has simplified tasks such as job searching, allowing you to research many companies, apply for jobs and be discovered all with more ease than you could without these great tools. But one of the side affects of computers and their ease is something called "automation", in other words computers pretending to be humans.

No where in my resume is there any reference to any accounting positions, accounting duties or accounting experience of any kind. Yet for the past month, I've received at 3-5 invitations in my inbox to apply for a position because of my "accounting experience."

Why?

I suppose it happens because I list some experience that mentions some work for a financial services company, but believe me, no human would read the description and think "accounting." But you see, humans aren't reading my resume, computers are.

Moving on.

So you read through your inbox, continue to search positions online and finally you find a few places that appear to fit your criteria. With great anticipation, you apply and the waiting game begins.

A day or two later, if you're lucky, you hear back from somebody.

It's been 2 weeks now since you've perfected that resume, formatted it, converted it to boring text, researched multiple positions and now you have 1 response!

Victory!

You get an adrenaline rush, smile and realize that your hard work has finally paid off. Then suddenly you think . . .

Shit!

After all of this effort and time what I really have here is simply a date with a person that is going to do nothing but judge me on questions like, "If you were a zoo animal, what would you be and why?"

Did you know that on average, it takes 17 job interviews to land 1 job? At least CareerBuilder.com says so. Suddenly you fear that your career may not involve gainful employment, but simply years of experience in searching for and applying for jobs!

Oh yeah, and the economic outlook on jobs is down too.

Believe it or not, I am an optimist. I have to be, otherwise I would have given up on job searching day one. Despite the odds and despite the "good" news, I lean forward and keep going.

What's amazing is as unique as the entire trek feels from the uncertainty of which jobs to apply for all the way to the 17th interviewer staring you down and finally deciding you're worthy, we somehow get through this process. Not just us, but the millions of people across this country and the billions around the world. In other words, this experience is not unique. I find it to be quite amazing.

So congratulations, you're officially employed and feel like you've won the lottery. But if you are at all typical, in 6 months you'll dream of starting this process all over again.

God help us all.