Advice from Someone who has a Job… No not me

Here is a link everyone looking for work should read. Advice from The Career Builder Blog.

The blogger, Rachel Zupek, talks about how impersonal those old fashioned greetings can be. Shame on you job seeker for not simply calling the company and doing a little research. This is why you have no job and someone like Rachel does. Well to be fair she has made the most of her skills and judging her on one tired and trite blog would be simply unfair and unprofessional. You see, Ms. Zupek (or should I use another term? Is Mz or Ms outdated and old fashioned and showing a lack of research on my part?) is simply part of the Machine. Getting hired in today’s world is really similar to taking a standardized test. In my day it was the SAT but they have a great many acronyms now.  It is all about the process and feeding the machine. It always has been and it always will be.

Note: of course there are exceptions to the above, nothing is an absolute.

For as long as people have been seeking jobs, those who have jobs have been telling the seekers about the secrets to getting hired. It is a game and many people do not realize it. Like any meaningful relationship outside of friendship, getting hired is game of courtship and one might say seduction. The target holds out hoops and waits to see which one of the suitors can make it through the most before falling. It is a beauty contest where the most deserving often does not get hired. Make no mistake, one should take Rachel Zupek’s advice seriously. You are in this beauty pageant and at stake is some security at the very least and quite possible fulfilling your dreams and goals.  Companies think they hold all the cards and in many ways they do. Those of us who are unemployed or underemployed do not have the moral fortitude as a group to say “Well until companies as a whole start treating us a skilled resource instead of unwashed masses, we are withholding our skills from the workforce”.  Companies already hire subs-par workers because they can pay them less and fire them at will. So if we refuse to work, we will just be poor, socially unacceptable, and tragic figures holding out our hands for scraps while physically, professionally, or politically beautiful earn a paycheck every week.

Now, as far as the article itself, I wanted to make a few rebuttal points to Ms. Zupek’s blog.

1. How am I supposed to know who to address when you are going through a third party hiring company more interested in furthering my education than reviewing my resume for it’s content? The article suggests that the job seeker needs to show effort, but what about the employer? If you have an HR department are you not already paying someone to hire me? Why are you paying Career Builder and say American Career Group to do the preliminary work for you? Kudos to both companies because they have sold you on an unnecessary service (less so in the case of Career Builder but a company could probably get the same results with less output). Now why would I want to work for you if I see that you spend your money so unwisely?
2. How am I supposed to know who to address when the people I am calling do not even know you are hiring? Have you ever called even a mid-sized company and their answer person has no idea what you are talking about or worse, makes a guess? Even better have you been told the following: “Everything you need to know is in the advertisement.”?  I have and on more than one occasion. If you want me to work for you, perhaps your left hand should know what your right hand is doing?
3. Is the person who posted the ad and has his or her email as the email of contact really the person I need to address my cover letter to? This another common issue. Often it is just a company email but the person actually reading your cover letter is someone completely different. In an environment looking a reason to reject a resume, is havign the wrong name more or less likely to send my resume to the circular file than using “To Whom it May Concern”?

As a skilled worker in a supposedly Capitalist market, you need to make the companies do the seduction. Make them come after you and I think you will find (as will they when you show them they made the right hiring decision) that you can have your dignity as well as a well-paying career.

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