Internet Misuse May Contribute To Long Joblessness

from the get-away-from-the-computer dept

With all the stories about people using internet job search boards to find their latest job, here's an article suggesting that online job search sites are keeping people unemployed longer. There are a few reasons for this. First, many people simply use the job boards as their primary way of searching for a job. They don't do any networking, they just send off tons of generic resumes to everyone they can find. This means, they're not doing any real job hunting, they're taking a machine gun approach. At the same time, this is inundating hiring managers with useless, unqualified resumes, and making it harder to dig out the qualified candidates. In the end, it seems that the best way to find a job is still through personal networking.
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  1. identicon
    dorpus, 18 Feb 2003 @ 12:48pm

    Converse

    Networking also makes co-workers introduce a lot of useless, unqualified candidates.

    It's possible to get a job because you're friends with a hiring manager, but if you're not qualified, then the relationship will end on a sour note anyway.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Doug, 18 Feb 2003 @ 7:33pm

    Networking is important, but...

    Expecting people that gave up their social life in order to keep up with their profession to then become super salesman is unrealistic. Take super salesman and give him a library of books to study and several programming languages and some database theory, then see how many connections he has after three years.
    Comparing the average tech worker, seeking a job to a savvy social outgoing person seeking a job, you can get some significant statistics. Comparing anyone seeking a job to a savvy socially connected person seeking a job, you will see a significant difference between the two.

    Tech workers had multiple job offers just a few years ago. I doubt that a large percentage of tech workers became hermits over the last few years. Still, the bad economy is the most significant factor for the contemporary job seeker.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    marc1919, 19 Feb 2003 @ 8:41am

    Tech vs. Sales

    There have always been two main categories of people in the business world: Creative and Technical. Creative types are communications-oriented that take jobs in sales, marketing, management, and design. The Tech people are fact- or systems-oriented, who gravitate to engineering and accounting type jobs. Tech guys have a distinct disadvantage in networking because they are not focused on creating relationships in their work, but on implementing, maintaining, and optimizing the systems they work on. Creative types build relationships by their very nature. All of this is obvious stuff, hence the stereotypes of "introverted computer nerd" or "slick ad agent". But let's face it, NO ONE is finding jobs right now and since the beginning of history, it's always been about who knows you, not who you know.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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