People have always said that the newspaper is the worst place to look for a job. Those who advertised openings in the newspaper are said to receive more resumes than they could handle. Oftentimes, you’d end up writing to a generic P.O. Box, with no hope of contacting a live human being. How do you successfully follow up and show that you are ambitious? How do you make yourself stand out from the crowd when the attitude is, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you”?
I am going to take that old saying and revise it a little bit. The Internet is the worst place to look for a job, yet applicants are left with virtually no other options. An overwhelming number of companies now only accept online applications.
Online job websites have turned into recruiter junkie reunions. It has been several years since I’ve seen a “real” job posting on one of the popular job websites. Mostly, the chaff settles there – the jobs that are 3-month long contracts in far-flung places like South Dakota. Plus, you get no benefits, no overtime pay (since you’re hourly), and no stipend to support you moving somewhere else for three months while you struggle to support two households.
I may be exaggerating a bit, but I’m not far off. The last call I received was from a recruiter who happened across my online resume and he tried to interest me in a 3-month on-site contract in Alexandria, VA. I told him to Mapquest Alexandria to Petersburg and tell me what the drive time would be. Then I asked him if he would drive 3 hours one way to a job that was slated to last 3 months. He laughed and said, “No.” I said, “Neither would I.”
The next bright idea is to go directly to the company’s website you wish to work for, and apply there. Still, everything is electronic, and the attitude is the same as the newspaper ads: “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”
So what’s a girl to do? Simple. Get a contracting job working for a very large, Fortune 50 company. Ingratiate yourself into the social circle and sniff around for openings. So far, so good. An opening came up a few weeks ago. I talked with my manager about it, and she enthusiastically encouraged me to apply and to include her as a reference. While she does not have the budget or power to make hiring decisions (if she did, I wouldn’t be writing this now), she is willing to talk to anyone who does about why I would make a great choice as an employee.
The only way I could apply was through the online website, just like everyone else out there. So much for having an “in.” My manager cannot even break the chain. The best I could do was put her name down on my resume as a reference and hope they would read that far.
The HR department has taken a very hard line regarding the application process. Once they receive your application, you get a confirmation number. This number I received does very little to make me feel certain my electronic submission was received. They state only the most qualified applicants will receive further notification. Once a person has passed muster on paper, the next step is to see if they pass muster over the phone. If the phone interview goes well, then the next step is a face-to-face interview. Once all that is done, a candidate receives an offer, and the job posting is removed from the website.
I checked today, and the posting has been removed. If me contracting at the very same company at which I applied, doing the same job as advertised in the posting isn’t enough to get me in, and if my manager as a reference isn’t enough to get me in, then I don’t know what will be enough. I can only hope that I did pass muster, but the position was closed for other reasons, such as an unexpected hiring freeze.
I just sometimes feel that the HR departments running the application process live in an air-locked compartment. The application and interviewing process has changed, but nobody’s up-to-speed on it yet. There are plenty of articles on how to knock-‘em dead in your interview, but nothing written yet about how to make your electronic resume stand out from the crowd, so that you actually get an interview. The whole point of the resume is to outshine your peers, to get the attention of the decision-makers. Filling in some forms online hardly lets you do that.
I’m feeling a bit pigeonholed into contracting. It’s the next best thing to a “real” job. Yet, it’s awfully frightening to me. I know that I could be let go with no notice. I could be here this morning, and standing in the unemployment line this afternoon. That fear never, ever, ever goes away, either.
It would go away, I suppose, if I was independently wealthy, but I’m not. I still work to live, just like 99% of the rest of us. Being a contractor has made me extremely financially savvy, so I suppose that’s a plus. But it is tough, staying at a place for 2 years, getting to know everyone and their working styles and personal nuances, only to have to start the job search all over again, and start over somewhere new. I wonder if I can get used to it, to learn to accept it and embrace it, love it, even. Maybe in a few more years, after we’ve saved up 6 months’ salary and our stock portfolio has a deep cushion, I will be able to accept contracting as a lifestyle choice. Until then, I’m just going to walk around with angst.
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