As I continue the struggle to find meaningful and desired employment, I keep getting hit over the head with the fact that it's hard to get a job when you're looking for a job. What I mean is the jobs people really want come to them, sometimes when they already have a job, and sometimes when they aren't looking for a job at all. The key to this serendipity is knowing a lot of people. A lot. So, knowing this, instead of looking for jobs in a traditional sense, I am trying to get to know as many librarians and LIS professors as I can. To me, this is better than a job search, and seems far more promising.
That said, this is a silly way to run a country's job market (that is to say, no one's running it). Part of me loves the fact that you can know people, be totally unqualified, and still get ahead. Maybe that's one of the final remnants of the American Dream. But it's unfair and unsustainable. What we really need is an actual way to find jobs and hire qualified people. I know: it's a revolutionary idea, but it has never been done. An astonishingly high number of job postings are bogus or outright scams. Even if a job is legitimate, the people on the employer end are usually scanning for keywords, or looking at aesthetic qualities of documents, or randomly picking people. Maybe they pick the first person who applied. Maybe they liked their name. I might get HR hate mail for saying these things, but I am basing my statements on countless HR people I've known or talked to (or the more usual case of someone who is in charge of hiring with little or no HR experience). If they know someone, they will take that person over the unknown.
I've heard several truisms lately regarding jobs that are both funny and frightening at the same time. One is that faking it is half the battle during a job or job interview. Yes, I already know this. Still, I don't lie about my abilities. This puts me at a huge disadvantage to everyone else looking for the same job, because they are all lying about their cataloging experience or knowledge of XML. If everyone's lying and we all know it, why even state the qualifications? Why not just say "Hey, if you're an LIS student or grad., apply to this job and we'll have an interview" and let's ditch the exaggerated resumés: you're probably just responding to the font I used or the layout, anyway.
Another truism is that communication is everything. If you are a great public speaker and a salesman, you can get any job. I'm not hating on great orators: they have a place in just about any occupation. But I shouldn't have to be a salesman. There should be some process by where it becomes clear I am right for the job. If that's a CV, a background check, a professional recommendation, or trial, so be it. Let's save the elevator pitches for people who actually need to sell things.
So let me close this post of epic whining by saying that looking for a job is just one more confusing card placed atop the house of cards that we call an economy. Firing a lot of people increases productivity. Increased savings rates among the public spells disaster. Cutting taxes actually costs money (I know, right?). These problems are all here to say, but it has guys like me sitting around thinking, "Does it have to be this way?"
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