13 Aug 90 jobs, no return calls!
“As a recent college grad, I applied to nearly 90 jobs, and I never heard back from a majority of them. I didn’t think it would be this difficult.” –https://www.businessinsider.com/recent-college-grad-applied-jobs-rejected-2023-8
*Cue Dave from Storage Wars saying, “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.”*
This is the problem exactly: “I didn’t think it would be this difficult.” And I can understand why because look at the sheer insanity (IMO) we’re still told!
“The unemployment rate for July was 3.5%, down slightly from 3.6% in June, according to the jobs report released on Aug. 4 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It’s a small decrease, as job gains and other factors show the U.S. labor market remains strong.” –https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/jobs-report-unemployment-rate
Over and over again on multiple outlets, it’s the same ole, same ole. 3.5% unemployment rate. Surges of open jobs! Resilient economy. Robust labor market. Wah-wah-waaaaaah.
I have been on my blogs and on my podcast warning people that these stories and statistics just don’t match what I’m seeing in real time. I’ve been in the job market every day for over a decade and I can see the difference between an actual good labor market versus a crappy one. I know what it looks like when a boom cycle ends and the bust cycle begins. And folks, I’m not hearing flowery, sunshiney stories from job seekers – I haven’t for a while now. You don’t have to be someone who gets caught off-guard and/or steamrolled by an economic downturn. BUT, you do have to pay attention and think critically. People have the tendency to think the job market is irrelevant to them until they need to dive in. By then, when you’re facing a layoff or a firing, it’s too late to prepare ahead of time because you’re in the thick of a crisis situation.
I started off my senior year at the University of Chicago unsure about exactly what I wanted to do in my career, but I felt optimistic about my professional future. That optimism would be short-lived.With a new spreadsheet grandly entitled “The Job Search,” I began compiling a list of interesting opportunities and sending out cover letters and résumés. Each line in my spreadsheet felt like progress toward a promising and exciting future.But stress started to build in January 2022 — the year I would be graduating. I still didn’t have a job lined up.Something strange was also happening with my tracking spreadsheet. While some of the jobs now had “rejected” in the status column, many of them remained at “submitted.” These were jobs I’d applied to months prior, and I hadn’t heard anything since getting an automated “we have received your application” message.
-Business Insider, Ibid.
Is this strange to me? Nope. I warned you about fake jobs posted for optics long before anyone in the MSM decided it was time to tip you off. Hell, I even had mansplainers and trolls arguing with me that I was making it up!
Meanwhile, if you actually talk to candidates who are out on the job market, you’ll have more than a few who say, “I applied all over town, and I only got one callback,” or “I went in a restaurant with a help wanted sign in the window, and the manager told me, ‘Well, actually, we can’t afford to hire anybody right now, but we can’t take the sign down for optics.'” It seems like there’s a lot more to the story than what we’re being told.” -“Bonus Episode: Housing Market ➡ Job Market” published on July 4, 2022 “Job Listings Abound, but Many Are Fake In an uncertain economy, companies post ads for jobs they might not really be trying to fill” –https://www.wsj.com/articles/that-plum-job-listing-may-just-be-a-ghost-3aafc794?mod=mhp I TOLD YOU SO!
-“Fake Job Openings & Bogus Optics” https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/12513883
The job seeker’s timing also makes sense to me because I warned you about what I felt when January 1, 2022 rolled around:
And I’m telling you that the script has flipped and we’re not in 2021 anymore. Going all the way back to January – the early part of January of this year – it was like something shifted. Now I don’t know how to sit here and explain it to you logically, chapter and verse. I’m just telling you, it was a shift that was palpable. You could feel it. To use a phrase from the youngsters: the vibes were off. Again, I don’t know exactly how to explain it to you rationally. I could just feel it in my gut instinct and in my spirit. It was like something had changed. So last year, Q4 was crazy. I mean, even during the weeks that are typically dead, Thanksgiving – Christmas, that kind of dead week that typically happens between Christmas and New Year’s, I was busy. I had work to do. We were shakin’ and bakin’ and it was just nuts. January 1st, it was like a door slammed shut. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m just telling you that it happened.
-“Something More Esoteric” published on July 21, 2022 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/10886920
So it does not surprise me that this person’s stress level started to build in January of 2022 and that her job search wasn’t what she expected.
In the end, I applied to 86 jobs and never heard back from about 60 of them. I never anticipated applying to jobs would be this difficult.
-Business Insider, Ibid.
But think about the messaging we heard in 2022: TWO OPEN JOBS FOR EVERY ONE UNEMPLOYED PERSON! 😒 That messaging was everywhere, all the time in 2022. Whether you believed it or not, however, is up to you.
It was the same dance every time: I would find a job posting, go through the application motions, and submit without any sense of joy, hope, or excitement. Many of these jobs showed hundreds of candidates had already applied — within just a few days or even hours of the job being posted.
-Business Insider, Ibid. emphasis mine
Mmhmm. So if The Great Resignation was still going strong at that point in time and the labor market really was so damned robust, why would that be the case? Why would you see a job posting with hundreds of candidates applying within a matter of hours?
Corporations exist to make MONEY. They are not in business to make someone’s dreams come true or to give everyone the warm-fuzzies. Regardless of what their marketing department might tell you. On the other side of expansion (aka growth) is contraction. And we’re seeing it already in layoffs, hiring freezes, and rescinded offers. IMHO, The Great Resignation is done. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s toast now. When you go on LinkedIn and the side panel of news is littered with layoff reports and your feed has many posts of people saying, “I got laid-off and thought I’d be hired again soon because: labor shortage, but this has gone on for weeks and I’m still not hired anywhere,” that’s not a sign of labor shortages and robust economic growth. Just sayin.
-“Cynics and the Coffee Drinking Dog” published on June 15, 2022 https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2022/06/15/cynics-and-the-coffee-drinking-dog/
While others in the industry were on social media pumping you up about The Great Resignation and the supposedly red hawt job market, I was here telling you the truth as I see it.
For the entirety of my college experience, I didn’t focus too much on the after-college part because I thought that doing well in my classes meant that the after part would come easily. I never had trouble passing my classes and impressing teachers; getting a job didn’t seem like it could be much different. I was wrong.
-Business Insider, Ibid.
Trying to land a job in an economic 💩 storm is a very different proposition than studying well and passing your tests in college.
Here’s my question to you: where do you want to land in all this? Do you want to think about the job market once you’re handed a pink slip or the company has a mass firing, or do you want to have a game plan ahead of time? I’ve said many times before and will say it again: IMO, whatever this particular downturn is, I believe it will separate out people who paid attention from people who did not. And I firmly believe the hyper elites are counting on you NOT paying attention because that benefits them, not you.
No Comments