Jobs, jobs, jobs......that's all the rage nowadays. You see job news everywhere: front page of the Wall Street Journal, radio news, corporate luncheons, friendly social gatherings. Heck, Steve Jobs is on front page news everywhere too. It's an unescapable topic. And it's for good reason: the unemployment rate is probably the most powerful indicator of the economy. People need jobs to have purchasing power, and purchasing power fuels the consumer economy.
My take on jobs:
Applying for jobs is hard. REALLY hard. it takes a certain amount of motivation to know that every time you apply for a job, there is a good chance (I'd say my rate is at about 1 in 10) that you will be rejected. In fact, most jobs I apply for , I never even hear BACK from the company.... no courtesy email, no thin envelope in the mail, nothing to indicate that the process has passed me by. Once in a while you get a nice email saying "We'll keep your resume on file." Less often, you get a call (gasp!) from the employer scheduling an interview. After you go to that interview (your chances suddenly have gone up tremendously), sometimes you get a call saying, "Congratulations, when can you start?"
So every dog has his day. But the problem is getting started to get to that day. On any given job-seeking venture, there are HUNDREDS.
There are hundreds of workshops out there on how to brand yourself
I go back to another simple fact that I hammer home all the time: Luck. Sometimes, you just gotta be lucky. It's probably one of the top 2 factors of all job-seeking: Being at the right place at the right time, or knowing the right person, or seeing something inadvertently on a job site, or having the exact skill set that someone looks for, or having someone like the sound of your name.
When I was a little kid in preschool or kindergarten, I remember being extremely frustrated if the class did a cutting project and I couldn't figure it out. Meanwhile, all the other kids in class were finishing up and could go to recess since they finished.... I REALLY wanted to go to recess. As more and more kids finished up, up their projects, I became more and more frustrated because I knew all the fun bouncy balls on the playground had already been taken up, and the nice swingsets and monkey bars were fully occupied. I desperately tried to figure out a way to finish the project, if only to avoid being the last one in the classroom. I scanned the room to see how other people were doing their projects, checking to see if there was some method I had missed. I cursed myself for being dim-witted and bad with my hands, as clearly any idiot could complete this project easily. Each time I started back up, it seemed like I was just going through another futile attempt, doomed to failure.
I remember back then at age 6 or 7, that I would do everything I could to avoid that feeling again, that nothing was worse than the feeling of being left behind, of not being able to accomplish my goals. And I tried to avoid that by doing everything I could in school and choosing job-oriented majors.
I recently attended a job-searching seminar in which one speaker made the following great point: The job-search process essentially consists of 3 parts: 1. you need the employer, 2. the employer needs you and 3. you and the employer need to find each other. Sounds simple. And all 3 coming together seems to require some of what I hammer home all the time: Good old fashioned luck.
May the New Year bring good luck. Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
My take on jobs:
Applying for jobs is hard. REALLY hard. it takes a certain amount of motivation to know that every time you apply for a job, there is a good chance (I'd say my rate is at about 1 in 10) that you will be rejected. In fact, most jobs I apply for , I never even hear BACK from the company.... no courtesy email, no thin envelope in the mail, nothing to indicate that the process has passed me by. Once in a while you get a nice email saying "We'll keep your resume on file." Less often, you get a call (gasp!) from the employer scheduling an interview. After you go to that interview (your chances suddenly have gone up tremendously), sometimes you get a call saying, "Congratulations, when can you start?"
So every dog has his day. But the problem is getting started to get to that day. On any given job-seeking venture, there are HUNDREDS.
There are hundreds of workshops out there on how to brand yourself
I go back to another simple fact that I hammer home all the time: Luck. Sometimes, you just gotta be lucky. It's probably one of the top 2 factors of all job-seeking: Being at the right place at the right time, or knowing the right person, or seeing something inadvertently on a job site, or having the exact skill set that someone looks for, or having someone like the sound of your name.
When I was a little kid in preschool or kindergarten, I remember being extremely frustrated if the class did a cutting project and I couldn't figure it out. Meanwhile, all the other kids in class were finishing up and could go to recess since they finished.... I REALLY wanted to go to recess. As more and more kids finished up, up their projects, I became more and more frustrated because I knew all the fun bouncy balls on the playground had already been taken up, and the nice swingsets and monkey bars were fully occupied. I desperately tried to figure out a way to finish the project, if only to avoid being the last one in the classroom. I scanned the room to see how other people were doing their projects, checking to see if there was some method I had missed. I cursed myself for being dim-witted and bad with my hands, as clearly any idiot could complete this project easily. Each time I started back up, it seemed like I was just going through another futile attempt, doomed to failure.
I remember back then at age 6 or 7, that I would do everything I could to avoid that feeling again, that nothing was worse than the feeling of being left behind, of not being able to accomplish my goals. And I tried to avoid that by doing everything I could in school and choosing job-oriented majors.
I recently attended a job-searching seminar in which one speaker made the following great point: The job-search process essentially consists of 3 parts: 1. you need the employer, 2. the employer needs you and 3. you and the employer need to find each other. Sounds simple. And all 3 coming together seems to require some of what I hammer home all the time: Good old fashioned luck.
May the New Year bring good luck. Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
No comments:
Post a Comment