Re: Job Hunting Stories
Since I'm going to be out looking for a job starting next week (I'm beingYour panic is understandable, but I wonder if it's not a little misplaced. Yes, the idea of 400-600 applicants for each job sounds as though your odds are slim. However, consider for a moment:
laid off after 2 1/2 years) I was a little panicked to learn that for every
IT position posted in our area, employers are getting somewhere in the
neighborhood of 400-600 responses. This means to find a job, you're going
to have to change careers, do something extremely creative with your resume
to get it noticed, or find alternative ways to find a job.
- How many of those applicants are people trying to break into the field that have little or no relevant experience? If my experience in hiring is any judge, the answer could be over half. In other words, the field is much narrower than the figure of 400-600 would indicate without you doing anything.
- How many of those applicants are people sending out their resumes to anything that they are remotely qualified for? This answer probably varies more than the answer to the first question, but, in my experience, it could be as much as forty percent. So, with some careful targeting, you can reduce the figure even more.
- Of the people who are qualified for any particular job, how many of them have your experience? This answer is impossible to estimate with any accuracy. However, you mention that you have been two and a half years at the same job. Even if that was your first job, you have a reasonable amount of experience, so your odds increase more. If you consider your experience intermediate, then you probably outclass at least another five percent.
Thus, when you apply for a job, you're not really competing against 400-600 people. It's really more like 20-30. Those odds are still high enough to make you uneasy, and should definitely make you look for ways to stand out, but they're considerably better than the original figure.
In other words, thinking of yourself as part of the statistics can be misleading and needlessly discouraging.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"We may be in a hallucination here, but that's no excuse for being delusional."
- Kim Stanley Robinson, "The Years of Rice and Salt"
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References:
Job Hunting Stories: From: Kathy Frost
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