The Working World
Gigonomics: Welcome to Cyber Jobbing
Negotiating the fibrous world of online job searching is an exhaustive endeavor all its own, and if you’ve plunged into Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice or Indeed, you’ve probably come to think that 1) there are tons of jobs out there and 2) you aren’t a fit for any of them.
This is especially true if you come from an industry as wrenched apart as mine. In print media, a top job is like a plucked chicken tossed into a tub full of piranhas—gone the instant it hits the water. In these troubled times, the ever-climbing jobless rate—current Bureau of Labor Statistics show unemployment has risen to a dizzying 8.1 percent—is in direct proportion to the uptick in online job searching. According to the Web analytic site Compete.com, the past year has seen a 58 percent increase in the number of unique visitors to Monster.com, 76 percent to Indeed.com, and a whopping 300 percent to SimplyHired.com. The perennial job search behemoth CareerBuilder.com had more than 18 million uniques in January alone.
The competition is stiff, and ever-so hungry.
Like many folks, my online career development consists of a cacophony of job-search websites to which I have registered, each blasting away with hourly emails and other entreaties—John! We’ve found a job for you in Sri Lanka!—in addition to my own frenetic networking on LinkedIn and Facebook, where I am building a network of contacts composed mostly of people I worked with at my previous job. There’s an odd tautology in that.
My cyberspaced jobbing includes boutique sites, such as JournalismJobs.com and WriteJobs.com and even Idealist.org, the a place I go when I imagine myself being a more decent person, working in community development or poverty alleviation. For about $10 you can even purchase the book, Idealist.org Handbook to Building a Better World—presumably a better world will be one that has a job in it for me. Oh yeah, and you too.
Nevertheless, with hundreds of job search sites, sub-domains, online recruiters, employer postings and Web-based classified ads available, it’s all too likely you’ll Alice your way down an enticing set of links, flinging cyber resumes as you go, only to emerge, hours later, screen-dazed and perhaps no closer to employment than when the day began.
Far be it from me to discourage due diligence, but as job searching approaches ultra-high frequency and those of us in the hunt become increasingly anxious to secure gainful employment before the Second Great Depression has us scrabbling for kindling along the fringes of Tent Town, it’s time to take a nice, deep pranayama breath (Ann Pizer will show you how at http://yoga.about.com). In other words, don’t panic. It’s a useless state of mind. Even my professional career counselor surprised me the other day when she said that one of the most important things I could do for my job search is take a walk. “A long walk,” she advised, “every day. And leave the cell phone at home for an hour.”
One automated job search email of which I’m rather fond is the weekly letters from Marc Cenedella, the founder and CEO of TheLadders.com. In his missives Marc is an irrepressible and transparent pitchman for his company, which is to be expected. I have no idea if he actually writes his own weekly material, but whoever does occasionally has a tone as corny as Kansas in August. As Marc put it in his email from February 16:
We may get rain-soaked, and covered in mud, and beaten and bashed along the way, but this country… and all of us together, are going to make it through.
It’s going to take perseverance, and humor, and an open mind, a little humility and some hard work, but we will get through this if we don’t let the times get us down, and we set about our daily work with the attitude ‘the world may give me its worst, but I will bring my best.’
These days I am a guilty-as-charged sucker for a gosh-darn patriotic pitch, especially one brimming with down-home Midwestern pluck, even if it comes from a Harvard MBA like Marc. I’ve grown increasingly fond of hope, and faith. So yes there are resumes to send out, and networking links to make, and search boards to be plumbed. And I’m going to get after all of that. As soon as I get back from my walk.
John Riha spent more than 20 years in magazine publishing including stints as managing editor of Traditional Home and executive editor of Better Homes and Gardens before being laid off in January. He now produces multi-media content, video, and, yup, is thinking about cranking out that novel. You know the one.
You can read all of John Riha’s columns here.
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3 comments for “Gigonomics: Welcome to Cyber Jobbing”
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I agree most job sites are difficult to navigate from beginning to having a job. I usually suggest people simply put their resume up on resumebucket.com, as be indexed by Google it gives you at least a shot of someone finding YOU instead of the other way around.
Dear John,
At the beginning of this article, once I read, \you’ve probably come to think that 1) there are tons of jobs out there and 2) you aren’t a fit for any of them,\ I had to finish this wonderful article.
You are so right. My small business recently went under, and I have been on the job hunt, and job hunting online is exactly as you say, it makes you feel like crap, worthless and skill-less.
The most up-beat job hunting website for me is good old Craigslist. It’s refreshing because it’s local people posting local jobs. Craigslist may or may not be your cup of tea, but try this routine while cyber job hunting:
1. Send out two or three resumes each day on the big sites (CareerBuilder & Monster, LinkedIn, etc…)
2. Finish off your 2-4 hours of online job hunting by submitting just ONE resume on your local Craigslist page. Craigslist makes you feel better because you typically get fast response times from the job offers.
3. Take a nice, hour long walk and relax. Focus on positive things in your life. I know, it’s VERY hard, I struggle with it everyday, but just keep at, make each day count.