The job search is a simple one. There is a problem you can solve with your expertise. Someone would like to hire you to be their problem-solver. Everything makes sense up until you do not get the job. If you will not be working for this company, there is always that company, or the next one, or the one after that. Searching for a job is simple to do, harder still to realize. Here are some of the things I hate about finding the right job.
1. Call back limbo.
Like an actor after a nervous audition, you, the dutiful and unemployed, wait for a similar call back. Except you are not nervous in the slightest. You are used to waiting so long, the nerves have gone flat. What is worse than not getting a call back is getting a call back with a buffered rejection. The backhanded compliments have numbed you from feeling any future expectations.You are a great candidate, they say, and a candidate you will remain, they might as well say. Employable is not a bad qualifier, but you have more going for you.
2. Reading people.
You are not here to play 20 questions with every Tom, Dick, and Harry that meets you. You cannot psychoanalyze the root problem someone has within and throughout their personality. Playing to who someone is early on is a quick way to become discontent with who your true self is. Having to sell yourself is bad enough to get your foot in the door. Overselling yourself is a tragedy no one knows about except you. Never be someone else to appease someone else. No one likes the smell of anal retentive roses.
3. Following up.
You have waited long enough and you still have not heard from the recruiters. You email or call them, leave a nice reminder of your recent application. The hiring process is still on hold. Okay, so be it. You learn not be bitter too soon and wait once more. After another fair hiatus, you send another eager reminder. Nothing new yet. The fact that you have to go out of your way to remind people you still exist is appalling. They hire you, they should show as much interest in you as you are in them. At this point, it might be more effective to stand inside their work place with a "hire me" sign and a resume taped to your chest.
4. Being an in-between dependent.
When you are finding work, you tend to put yourself to work. Hiring yourself is a step towards building leadership and confidence. It is difficult keeping these qualities without recognition sometimes. Even harder, depending on others to keep you afloat on the market sea with jobs waiting to be fished and caught. But it is back to the docks where you keep casting your line for a better catch to come your way. Until then, you have some people who care to wind you up again.
5. Talking about myself.
Who am I? Today? I do not have any vanity to muster a conversation about myself. Why disappoint anyone with an anecdote they will not be impressed with? Do not put me through the formalities only to subject me to a cordial rejection. I know I am more than what is written on my resume. I just cannot be bothered to recite my whole subconscious in the first five minutes of meeting you. Someone's expectations are illusions, but do not let that be the reason you start saying yes. Your corporate world has calculated lines and that is nature to you. I continue to see beyond the mirror.
Jobs rhymes with sobs.
