#64 - The Logics of the Job Search

An essay on identifying obstacles to finding work.

Hello, my friends,

Michael became an environmental activist this week. A few days ago, it was fairly wet overnight and foggy in the morning — perfect snail weather. I had gone running early in the morning and there were so many snails crossing the road that it was like navigating an obstacle course. Thankfully, I managed to avoid squashing the shelled slugs. Later on, however, I accidentally stepped on a snail while walking Michael to school. Worse yet, it was right outside of the school gate! We were standing over the murder scene when one of Michael’s teachers walked by. “You should make a sign and we can put it up!” she said, “Snail crossing!” He was enthused about the idea.

A few days passed and I forgot all about it when what filled my ocular orbs when I walked up to the school gate yesterday? A big, colorful sign to raise awareness about the snails! Cool, I thought, someone actually made it. “Did you see?” I asked Michael as we were walking out, “there’s a sign now!”

Yes, he said.

I made it.

Michael, age 5, a supporter of snail safety.

The Logics of the Job Search

Just over a year ago (#13) I wrote about the magic questions we get during the near-weekly virtual events I host at work on career-related topics. Essentially, people seeking reassurance or indirectly asking for more hands-on assistance in the form of quasi-questions that we cannot respond to in our limited program time, and possibly not at all, because these questions are often unanswerable. As a result of seeing these questions over and over, I’ve developed some hard-nosed heuristics related to job searches; likely answers to common issues folks have as job seekers. For instance, in the aforementioned piece, I included the following: “If you’ve put in 300 applications in the past year and have only gotten called in twice for interviews, there’s a near-certain probability that your resume, cover letter, or skillset are missing something.”

Another one would be something like: “If you keep getting called in to interview but are not getting the offer, it’s likely because you are not describing your experience in a way that is relevant enough to the audience.” Or on the topic of employment gaps, which is a question we get often: “Employment gaps of less than three years are generally no big deal, but a ten-year gap can be a liability; employers who see that on a resume are likely to assume that you’ll be less capable at the job compared to someone with targeted recent experience. So what to do? Either show that you have the relevant skills to hit the ground running, take some extra time to gain those skills and use them on personal projects for a portfolio that will demonstrate your professional mettle, or look for a lower-level position.”

These straightforward, logical statements can be unpacked like pop-up books into fairly lengthy explanations, but their purpose in my mind, is to quickly identify sticking points for job-seekers. Though the job search is full of uncertainty, there are a number of stages that, in the aggregate, are fairly stable. Knowing these “landings” lets us pause and debug a person’s job search. “Why isn’t my job search succeeding? Well, are you getting interviews? Are you getting offers?” The nice thing is that the stages map pretty closely to the job search documents and process. Consider these in-roads to analysis:

• Narrowing the search

• Resume & Cover Letter

• Interview

• Job offer/negotiation

Each leads to the other; you can be pretty certain that if you haven’t narrowed your search to a handful of potential job titles (ideally one or two), then you’re going to have difficulty tailoring a resume to speak to the needs of those jobs. That’s because you’ll be spending so much time researching twenty different roles that you won’t have a chance to do much resume-writing. Likewise, as mentioned above, if you aren’t getting called in to interview, the problem is your materials. It boils down to: 1) There’s something wrong with the formatting, spelling, font size, or design so the resume isn’t being read, 2) Your education/experience/skillset are not competitive for the jobs you’ve chosen, or 3) You aren’t describing your e/e/s (see #2) in a way that communicates your level of competence to address the company’s needs. So on and so forth.

An overarching question is: Do you understand the job you’re applying for? Not just in a cursory way, but enough to where you can foresee the potential challenges you need to address to prove that you’re the one. This is an underrated question. I’ve conducted entry-level librarian interviews with experienced paraprofessionals and library school students who demonstrated through their answers that, despite sometimes having on-the-ground library experience, they didn’t “get” what a public librarian did. Those folks obviously got rated lower than applicants who could describe the job up-and-down and provide solid examples demonstrating their work skills. Many years ago, I interviewed a person for a paraprofessional position who said that if someone stole a book from the library they’d pursue them outside and tackle them. I did not hire them.

It’s vital for me to say that despite these logics, job searches are filled with many intangibles; most job-seekers never find out exactly why they didn’t get called in to interview or weren’t hired after one. There is also the subject of conscious and unconscious biases (like racism, sexism, ageism) or job postings that are shams from the beginning. Not scams, exactly, but just-for-show exercises to mask the hiring of a pre-selected internal candidate and/or grandson of the owner. Not to mention that some bosses, hiring managers, and companies are indescribably insane: Posting inaccurate job descriptions, requiring candidates to sit for five interviews and produce a few unpaid projects, or as has become more common since the Pandemic, dishonesty about a jobs remote-work status. All of these are not simply a giant middle-finger to job-seekers, they’re also bad for the companies since these tactics do little to uncover the best candidates.

Where the intangibles recede and the logics help is when a job search goes beyond one or two applications. Then, in my opinion, the probability veers towards the more reasonable. I think that most organizations want to do well by job-seekers, even if they don’t do everything right. So, generally, job search advice that makes sense is advice that will be helpful in most situations. And then there are questions that make me wonder whether a person lacks the independence or skills to do even the most rudimentary research. Questions like: “How many pages should my resume be?”

It’s not a bad question. In fact, it’s a good start. But the answer is a Google search away and it’s not very controversial (in case you’re curious: 1-2 is average, but more is acceptable depending on your level). During my programs, we have experts coming on to share their knowledge and the best question a person can think of is about the number of pages? That’s why I resort to my heuristics, ideally they jump-start a person’s critical thinking and common sense, resurrecting a trust in their own capacity to reason. Because, really, I believe that most people implicitly understand their job search challenges and can even figure out solutions with a little prompting. What keeps them from acting on their own knowledge? Well, now, I’m just a lowly job search logician so that’s above my pay grade. Better to go ask a psychologist.

“Skeletons in an Office” (1944) by Paul Dalvaux

Time Machine

Here’s what I wrote in HMF a year ago (in issue #11):

• An Act of Reinvention: An essay in which I evaluate my shifting career trajectory and how it relates to my self-image.

“Cooper Park II” (1962) by Jeffrey Smart