Job Seeker Black Hole

You might not have realized the danger involved in searching for work, but all too often job seekers find themselves networking and sending employment applications, yet finding that there efforts are met with silence – entering the dreaded black hole.

Applying for jobs on the Internet is a must in the 21st century, yet the response rate from such applications is relatively low. Most people consider a 10-15% of answers from employers to be good, with the rest of the applications entering some nether land never to be heard from again. To read more about this and some techniques to improve your results, take a look at this article: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2010/02/so-what-am-i-doing-wrong.html. And to read a humorous story of what one job seeker did after being ignored by a company he had started the recruitment process with, read here: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/complaint-box-the-e-snub/.

The main activity to be used to supplement your online job search is networking: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2009/11/employment-networking-getting-to-other.html. For some additional information about the five different types of networking resources, and how to speak to them effectively, read this article: http://timsstrategy.com/job-seeker-give-the-people-what-they-want/. One of the things that happen often when you are speaking to someone is that they will offer to forward your CVs to some of their network. While this is a very nice thing for them to do, what usually happens is that you don’t hear back nor do you have a way to follow-up (black hole!). In this case, it is best to try to get the names and contact details from the facilitator, in order to increase your visibility.

The worst thing that can happen is that frustration sets in, which is the real danger, as it can cause people to give up there job search entirely: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100206/ap_on_bi_ge/us_work_force_dropouts.

Certainly the employment market today is difficult and many things are beyond the control of individual job seekers, but there are things that you can do to improve your chances and make better progress, and I encourage you to focus your efforts on these activities.