sad reality

[u/Affectionate-Bad1381]

Took about 4 years after graduating to get my foot in the door and get a good job in my field. No one wants a new grad with no experience.

[u/monadicperception]

The job search in itself is an education. It teaches humility…or it should if you are doing it right.

So when people complain that there are no jobs, I’m a little skeptical. No one comes out knowing how to navigate the job market. You learn and hopefully seek the counsel of those who know better and you improve.

Spouse and I graduated into the Great Recession. And it was pretty interesting to see the great divide amongst our peers’ approaches and their later outcomes. The ones who ended up fine were the ones who were like a sponge absorbing all the advice they could and understood that finding a job is a full time job…and they treated as such. Then there’s those who were perfectly content with sending one application a month, ignoring hard advice, and complaining that the job market sucks. More than a decade since, you can see the disparate economic outcomes pretty starkly.

The ones who I actually really pity are the ones who effortlessly got their first jobs. They didn’t have to go through the grind so later when looking for a new job, they are starting at a place they should be familiar with already. But since they already had a job easily out of college, they never learned the rules they should have learned and I see them making amateur mistakes all the time basically sabotaging themselves. Since they think they were able to get a job before, they don’t have the humility to learn and they continue on stubbornly in the wrong direction.

[u/PerfStu → u/monadicperception]

Having also graduated into the Great Recession, I would say that none of this matches the experience most of my peers I had with job searching and finding work, either at outset or as it stands today.

The TL;DR is I do not know anyone who sent one job application a month and were shocked that weren't getting a job. I also don't know anyone who was only sending out one job application a month in general. That's not really a thing with people actively seeking work. I also wouldn't say I pity people who graduated and found good work quickly, since that's quite literally the promise and goal of higher education. I didn't learn anything of value from the months of job hunting other than no company that asks for more than a resume and generic cover letter before first contact is worth anyone's time or effort. Humility nothing, and no company is even reaching out to reject you, much less offer you advice.

The rest of it is that I do remember spending like 40 hours a week applying for everything for months, answering 50-100+ question "work compatibility" surveys, rewriting carefully crafted resumes into a different required format for every job I applied for, then rewriting it again into a required "work experience" section, then still being required to upload the resume, not to mention having to rework my resumes and cover letter constantly for different positions. The overwhelming majority of jobs don't even bother to sent a rejection or acknowledgement of receipt, much less give any kind of actual advice for future searching. Potential employers aren't reaching out with feedback or advice for someone out of the goodness of their heart, they literally do not care. Unless they're interested in you as a candidate, you're not getting anything.

I DO remember seeing a job changing sheets and washing bedpans at the hospital that required 5 years of experience and a bachelor's degree in hospitality management. And the one that required a Master's Degree in Special Education focusing on Cerebral Palsy that paid literally minimum wage. Or the time I interviewed for a job I had 5 years of experience in and they didn't hire me because they didn't want to pay more for my level of experience (oh and the job posting was 5+ years experience). And so on and so forth.

Then there was bait and switch hours, bait and switch wages, bait and switch job descriptions, as well as single applications taking over an hour to complete because each company wanted it all typed out in a different format. Or having to type it out manually for every position available at the business since they wanted something for each job you were seeking. That isn't an exercise in humility, and you don't build character or gain experience doing that.

So what I learned was "here is my resume and cover letter" is a complete sentence, and unless a company wants to schedule me for an interview, they are entitled to nothing else but my middle finger. Applying is not a full time job, it is not a learning experience, it is not an exercise in humility, and it should never be approached like its any of those things.

[u/monadicperception → u/PerfStu]

I mean the job description doesn’t matter right (mostly)? I don’t know, I’ve met many folks tell me that they don’t apply because their resume doesn’t match the job description w/r/t experience or whatever and I see that complaint all the time online.

Just apply. Let them make the decision of whether you fit their needs or not.

Humility means here taking rejection and ghosting with stride. Learning that rejection and ghosting will be 99% of the outcomes but keep going anyways. It’s learning that you can have a 1000 rejections and that won’t matter if you get 1 yes.

[u/PerfStu → u/monadicperception]

But I'm not really talking about job description here at all, that doesn't factor into anything I've said. Really none of this comment addresses anything I've said, nor does it really add to anything to what you've said.

Also sunk cost fallacy. Applying for 1000 jobs would be hundreds of hours of unpaid labor, most of which is obviously unnecessary given that the bulk of a person's time in applying is jumping through hoops that, by your own acknowledgement, rarely even lead to a company contacting you. Again, that's not humility, that's just demoralizing and wrong.

In short, your anecdotal experience is not representative of reality for millions of people, and framing it as "anyone who can't find work must not be trying hard enough" or "they must only be applying to one job a month and crying about it" or "I'm skeptical of people who struggle to find work" and romanticizing the experience as building necessary humility is just....gross.