Monday, November 22, 2010

Job hunting

Time seems to be whizzing by, and the race to find jobs for my husband and I before the doors close on his present company is getting more intense and stressful. I miss the old days of applying for jobs where one looked through the newspaper ads, circling those of interest and then printing out a resume, addressing an envelope, and mailing the resume in an addressed and stamped envelope. I don't like this new electronic application process at all. 

I prefer to go in and shake someone's hand and introduce myself and ask to face-to-face and deliver the resume in person. This is the only way a prospective employer will really get an honest first impression of an applicant. Online applications are quite impersonal, and the questionnaires that many companies require you to spend a long time filling out tells nowhere near what an honest and open face-to-face meeting can. 

Once resumes are sent online, it feels as if they are sucked into a black hole of uncertainty. I wonder if many, if not most, of my resumes are being received at all unless I get an automated response "thank you for your resume, we will get in touch with you if we are interested". Most of the time there is no response at all, and I think the "reject letter" is a thing of the past and not a thing most companies concern themselves with doing anymore. Therefore, people are left hanging and maybe even applying for a company multiple times in hopes of them being noticed and considered. 

We have no choice but to keep plodding along, emailing our attached resumes, answering sometimes hundreds of redundant questionnaires, and hoping that a human being at some point will actually read and consider our applications.

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