Worst Way to Get a Job: Apply

It's been about a decade since I last had to look for a job.  And, my oh my has it changed.

At the time Dice and Monster were the (relatively) new hotness and when you applied there, you generally got a response pretty quickly. Nowadays, Monster is a brutal train wreck of excess. I haven't looked at Dice lately and LinkedIn and Indeed.com have sprung up out of nowhere.

There are a massive number of jobs out there. For example, on Indeed if you search for "Los Angeles", you get over 60,000 listings. That's a lot of jobs. Unfortunately, I've found that applying for them is the equivalent of printing out your resume and putting it in the shredder. Actually, that would be more fun.

That makes it an applicant's market, right? Nope.

I've seen lots of numbers bandied about that every job posting receives an average of over 200 applications. That's a lot of volume to sift through if you are a recruiter with a few dozen listings. 

What's interesting is that many of these jobs seem to stay open. Ok, how is this working exactly then? You need to hire someone, you get a few hundred applications... and you can't find a single fit? Maybe you're doing something wrong.

Maybe the job search process is broken. I know that people are putting a lot of technology at work here to try to screen out applicants based on a handful or more of questions. And, I'm sure it screens out some applicants, but just like the issues with Big Data that have recently been discussed... are you sure you are asking the right questions? And if you found the ideal candidate and she made $1,000 more than your budget you wouldn't fight for that grand? Are you sure you want to screen on cost instead of value?

Certainly, some of the best career counselors recommend taking an entirely different approach. It's good advice and helpful in getting a job. However, I'm very conflicted about this approach. For one thing, I don't like the concept of getting a job because of who you know. It has happened to me once or twice, but it is deeply unsatisfying to me. I want to know that I got the job because I'm the best candidate. 

But, even that thought it pretty silly. At the end of an interview process, neither you nor anyone else has any idea of how good of a job you will do. Until you start to do it. If you get a job offer, you just won the interview process - not a head to head performance appraisal.

Interesting thoughts to be certain. I shall keep slogging away and see how it all goes. In the meantime, good luck out there!