I am the hiring manager for the XXX positions in X-----. I had over 7000 applicants to fill 55 positions. I appreciate your dedication and follow up but I have filled all of the open positions at this time. Thank you.

Our observations:
This is a ratio of 127:1. For each job offered, if we look on the whole as being averaged, 127 resumes were received. This is actually lower than many positions we’ve heard about, which average 300:1.

OK, so what does this mean? Well, one interpretation of this data is that you can hide your head and do nothing because you’re so frozen with despair and go into permanent shock and withdrawal.

Another interpretation (and more healthy, I believe) is that you can do everything to stand out in a very crowded field; which means having absolutely the best possible resume and cover letter. Still a third interpretation is you can get out of that field and go into another (possibly your own business, which you may have some control over but which will have its own very engaging problems). A fourth interpretation is that you can start networking, really networking as if it is a serious enterprise, to find those jobs before they pop out into the light of day; very few people, as I’ve said time and again, actually do this. Except for the first one, these aren’t exclusive choices.

I’d welcome any e-mails and discussion about any additional choices you, as a reader, may know of.

Being Flexible and Adapting in this New Economy

One of my clients pointed out a trend that many of you readers, if you’re unemployed and lucky enough to be chosen after an interview, may have encountered. After working her way through the interviewing process in two jobs, and after being told she had been chosen as a finalist for the job in both cases … nothing happened. Not a thing. No phone calls. No e-mails stating that someone else had been chosen. Complete silence. It was as if both companies had fallen off the edge of the world.

When she finally followed up, she was told by the people involved, “We lost our funding. Stay in touch, maybe in the second quarter the position will open up again.”

Talk about feeling let down. Talk about feeling powerless. What a waste of effort it had all been was her feeling. And, it appeared, there was nothing that she – or for that matter, anyone -- could do about it. No strategy was going to revive the prospects of either company, improve their sales or profits, and revive the job opening.

Yet something didn’t make sense about this to me. I reasoned that, although both companies had “lost” the funding, there was probably still a real need for the “problem” those job opening were supposed to solve. The rationale for creating those openings must still be open, and someone had to perform the work. That seemed logical.

So, when we strategize together, after thinking about it, I said to my client, as I’m wont to do: “What would happen if…?”

“What would happen if,” I said, “you went back to these two companies, to the hiring managers, and stated what we’ve just talked about? Namely, that the need for the job probably hasn’t gone away. And, therefore, what if you asked them, since they knew your capabilities by this time after so thoroughly interviewing you, if you might work on a few of their urgent projects on a contract basis? Would you be willing to do that to see what they said?”

Of course she would, my client said. And she did.

And, in one out of the two cases, the idea struck a chord with the hiring manager. Yes, he told her, there was a real need for a project and he would see if they could contract with her to do the work. After some shuttling back and forth, and a few discussions, her got back to her.

Lo and behold, she had a one month agreement, signed sealed and delivered, and was earning a reasonable fee. Not a great one, but a heck of a lot more than the nothing she had beforehand.

The second company is still mulling over her offer. Something may, or may not, come of it.

Now my client has a leg up over any other applicant, if the work she does is the quality they expect – and, knowing her, it is. They have a chance to look her over, and she, in turn, has a chance to look them over. She gets to work, which as any of you who aren’t working now know, is more satisfying than the alternative. She also gets a reasonable amount of money for her efforts.

Not an ideal situation. But what is? In this New Economy, with our country at war, it obviously pays to be creative and flexible.

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© 2002 by Lawrence M. Light. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited without prior permission.

Attitude: The effect it has

Job search: Denial

Job skills: Denial

Job search: Dispair

Job search: Competition

Eliminating job friction

Intense job search focus

Limiting job options

Sales and job hunting

Unhook your ego from your job

Magic of three