Beware the Job Description! – Part 1

How many people do you know who are (or were) unhappy with their job? Well, starting with yourself, you know at least one! No job is designed to bring you 100% happiness. It’s not like the Job Gods are sitting around planning the perfect job description with you in mind. It’s not like they want to talk with you first, learn all about your motivations, and then customize the job just to suit your specific needs. The job description is Employer-focused, not YOU-focused! 

So what's a poor job-seeker to do? You’ve been trained all of your professional life to search for job descriptions. And what a frustrating search it can be during these times of slow market growth. You’ve been told by companies to just go online and see what openings they have. You’ve been told by employers that they are not hiring. You have browsed job description after job description only to find a precious few that you met most of the requirements for. You’ve even applied to jobs that you were obviously underqualified for, and even overqualified for – just hoping that someone, anyone, would have mercy upon your poor little résumé…

At this point, you have no shame – you just want a job! And in your desperation, you become more anxious, more frustrated, and eventually more negative. But still, like an old failing company that refuses to change tactics, you search the Matrix of job boards for the ONE. You know it is out there just waiting for you to stumble upon it like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And so, on and on you go finding job description after job description and tirelessly sending your worn-out application materials to each one. If your résumé had feet, they would be gnarled and lumpy like the roots of an ancient sequoia tree!

So stop!! Stop I say!! For the sake of your poor little résumé who wishes not to be sent out on these foolish quests to search for El Dorado – the lost city of gold. Mindlessly sending your résumé into cyberspace is like spamming! And pretty soon the constantly evolving online system will either filter you into the spam folder, or store you in the holding bin of a company’s applicant tracking system...sadly awaiting a death row march towards the electronic trash bin.

I will leave you with something to think about. Would you rather spend your time chasing jobs, or would you rather have jobs chasing you?  Daniel Porot (www.porot.com) coined the terms "job beggar" versus "resource person" to describe this dichotomy. Think about the mental shift there and stay tuned for part 2 of this blog!