Posts Tagged ‘Jobs’

How to Help Someone Find Employment

May 3rd, 10 / 4 Comments

Unemployment is currently a huge problem through much of the world today. Chances are good you know someone who doesn’t have a job, or has one but would like a better one. If you do, this person may be hunting diligently, or they may have become discouraged by the difficulty of finding a job and taking a breather to recharge. In any case, a little support goes a long way towards helping someone get or stay motivated in the hunt for a better job. Here are some tips, from what I’ve observed both in myself and in other people.

1) Provide what help you can, as needed and asked for.

If you’ve managed to land a job lately, you’re a prime candidate for providing this help. The job market has changed a lot, and it’s not as easy as it used to be. Still, even those who found jobs a couple decades ago will still have some good, timeless advice, so long as they can adapt it to the job market today. Help with resumes, cover letters, and even making applications as appealing as possible can go a long way. Even knowing when it is a good time to make follow up calls is helpful information to many job seekers, as this is not common knowledge. All the little things that may seem obvious to you aren’t obvious to others, so point them out when possible.

2) Support, don’t nag.

Pop quiz. What’s the best way to make someone not want to look for a job? Nagging them about it. This is true of most anything, but when you’ve applied to twenty different places in the past month, and been turned down at all of them, the last thing you want to hear is how you should try harder, put in more time job searching, and just get a job already. By this point, a job seeker’s self esteem has already often taken a huge hit, and piling more on top of that isn’t going to help. Instead, gently direct them to places and people that may be able to help and other possible opportunities. Also, be sure to congratulate them on their victories, such as landing an interview. While they may seem like small victories, sometimes, they’re the best encouragement you can get.

3) Don’t act like it’s the job seeker’s fault he still doesn’t have a job.

This goes hand in hand with the above point. This is a huge self-esteem killer, and on top of that, is very likely to make the dedicated job hunter annoyed with you, cutting off your chances of helping them out. It’s true that some people don’t want a job, but the ones who are out looking are trying, and treating them as though they aren’t is not going to sit well with them. The economy is in still in the tank, even if it’s possibly getting better now, and it’s still difficult to find employment. There’s no sense in blaming this on the person trying to overcome it.

4) Job search sites are helpful, but not everything.

Use all reputable, available job search sites to find potential job opportunities. It’s way easier than looking for now hiring signs, which many places don’t even put up anymore. Still, encourage job seekers to do as much in person as possible, since establishing a connection with other people at the job will help in getting hired. This isn’t always possible, but it should be done whenever it is.

5) Don’t get discouraged if they don’t take every tip you give them.

Sometimes, job seekers know something you might not. For instance, you might know someone is good with computers, so you send them a bunch of IT and computer analyst jobs. What you don’t know, but the job seeker does, is that just being “good with computers” doesn’t qualify them for these jobs, and that additional training or knowledge may very well be required. This doesn’t mean you can’t show them how they may be qualified for a position they think they aren’t qualified for, just bear in mind there might be more to the job than you understand.

Hopefully, these tips can help you better assist someone in finding a job. Positive support will go a long way toward keeping them motivated and applying, and new tips and tricks can help them polish their technique. Good luck to you and those you may be helping.

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Do Work You Love or Do Work You Need

Apr 28th, 09 / 2 Comments

It’s quite common to be told to find a job you love, or follow your passion and the money will follow. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always seem to work out so conveniently for everyone.

So what is one to do when they can’t earn a living from their passion, or at least they haven’t figured out a way to do so yet? My answer to this is if you can’t find a job you love, find a job that will let you do something else you need to do anyway. For instance, if you want to get a good workout, you might consider a job in construction. If you want to learn more about money, you might try banking. You might have to get creative, but the idea is to pick a job that will let you pursue something you’d like to pursue anyway, even if the job itself is about something different. Naturally, when you do this, you’ll need basic competency in the area you hope to work, otherwise you simply won’t be qualified for the job. But through working in a field relating to the area you’d like to improve, you’ll improve in that area through constantly working with it. Just hit whatever basic competency you need, and from there you’ll be golden.

Getting a job with this purpose in mind is good because you’ll be more motivated to go to work, since working will be helping you to meet a goal you have in addition to paying the rent. While it may not be doing what you love, it is killing two birds with one stone, so you have more time outside of work to dedicate to other things.

The reason I bring this up is that there are a lot of people looking for ways to do what they love, and they aren’t finding a way to do it. I’m one of them, though I’m still working on it. In the meantime, we may as well get the most out of the jobs we have. We may not love what we’re doing, but we can at least be happy about the results we get. As long as it’s not mind-numbing work, perhaps that will be enough until we move on to the really fun stuff. There’s no reason not to find a way to make work as good as you can make it until you find work or another career path you don’t need to make better.

Naturally, I’d always recommend you take the dream job first. But in the event it simply isn’t available to you, or won’t pay the bills, consider the alternative of using your job to meet another goal you may have while you work. Keep pursuing the dream job if you wish, just keep your backup plan something you won’t mind doing as well.

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Human Automation

Apr 11th, 09 / 0 Comments

I was musing to myself at work a few days ago. I realized that much of the time I’m working, the job I do requires absolutely no thinking. When it gets busy, I need to think how to prioritize tasks, but that’s it. Aside from that bit of thinking, the work I do most days can all be done on autopilot.

Now, certainly, this leaves lots of time for thinking, which is useful to have. I don’t seem to have enough of that these days. But then again, it also gives me the feeling of being a human cog in a machine to get a job done. I’ve felt this way about having a job for a long time, though I’m attempting to find a way of dealing with that problem. One way I’m doing this is to find a new job that feels a bit more meaningful. The other is by working on my websites, attempting to build them up to the point that I don’t need a job in the first place. I love writing, and fiddling with technical stuff, so it’s lots of fun to do this.

That’s a little off topic though. The point is, this feeling about being a cog in a machine is a fairly common feeling among the employed, though it’s by no means universal. Some people have their dream jobs, and they’ll never have cause to feel this way. Some people are being cogs, and just haven’t woken up to that yet. And some are in my position, aware, but not sure how to fix it, other than look for a new way that will help meet their needs. How did we get to this point though?

The truth is, we’ve always needed to do some work. Everything living needs to do some work in order to live. We need food and shelter from the elements simply to survive, so the work to obtain that is the minimum needed. Procreation also requires work (though we can probably classify some aspects of that as fun), and that is also required if we’ll live on as a species. Beyond that, we don’t need anything else.

These days, we do a lot more work, because we look to have a lot more stuff. Some of this stuff is really cool, and serves a useful or entertaining pupose. Some of it is neither cool, useful, or entertaining. We need to manufacture it somehow, and while machines can do some of that work, people need to do the rest. This means we need fewer people to provide all the food, so other people can provide all the toys. This makes more work for everyone, since we provide for ourselves and a bunch of other people. Someday, perhaps machinery will take over doing any work necessary for our survival, but that may come with it’s own problems, such as deciding on distribution of goods, and how to deal with the machinery breaking down.

Either way, we need a way to break free of the machine, and that’s where finding a job you love or getting your own business started comes in. It’s not foolproof, and obviously I’m still working on getting any one of those to work out for me. You can also look for ways to live minimally in order to work less as well, leaving you with more time to pursue living life.

It feels absolutely crazy to spend so much of life just working, and not living. We go to school for six hours a day for 13 years, do at least an hour a night of homework for four of them, then work eight hours a day for another 45 years. Some tack on four or  more extra years of schooling to that as well. Where does it end? When do we get to live? Do we not get to enjoy our youth without worrying about how to pay the bills?

I’m not taking that path. I know it’s possible to do otherwise, and I’m going to do everyhing I can to work less and play more while meeting my needs and those of any family I may need to support along the way. I haven’t found the solution that works for me yet, but I’ll get there. Perhaps this very site will be it, perhaps it won’t. I don’t know yet. But I’m not doing a 40, 50, 60 hour workweek for the next 40 years, unless I find something I can really enjoy for that time, and that allows good vacation time.

The one thing I’ve learned is there are a lot of strategies out there, and some work for some people better than for others. You really do need find your own way if you want it to work. That doesn’t mean there won’t be useful tools and learning experiences to be gained from others. For instance, the blogging software I use is created and maintained by WordPress, and the inspiration to try blogging came from 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. But I’m finding out how to make this all work for me, and I may come to find out I need another strategy if this doesn’t work out in the end. My original site, Gaming My Way, was my first foray into blogging, and also a manifestation of my childhood dream to work with video games in some way. It’s been going for a year now, and I still work on it sometimes, but I’m also still experimenting with other ideas for now.

In any case, I’m not going to be a robot at my job forever. I will move on, and I will find the time to live my life, and not just work it all away.

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Job Market Dishonesty

Apr 7th, 09 / 2 Comments

Perhaps I shouldn’t be writing this as I’m still looking for a job. I feel a need to do so though. I will add one caveat: I know this doesn’t apply to absolutely every job-seeker or employer, but it covers a large number of them, and enough so I don’t feel it’s likely any job-seeker can get away from it.

Is it just me, or does the job market reek of dishonesty and shadiness? Think about it for a minute. Everyone acts “professional” for job interviews, even though it’s nothing like the real person. You kill your personality for the sake of “professionalism.” Is this really what employers want and need? I doubt it, yet it’s what they promote by looking for people who look “professional.”

What they need are people who know how to do the job. You know, actual professionals, not people who know how to play the part. This means they should look for qualifications, not appearances. I know this is likely to never happen in our world, but I suppose I can dream. For now, I obviously play the game too, but it really feels wrong to me, like I’m lying to get the job. There’s a part of me always saying in the back of my mind that this isn’t who I am. Perhaps my problem is that I can’t get rid of that voice, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to. Then I might lose myself.

Of course, employers are also guilty of lying in the ways everyone is socially conditioned to accept. They’re masters of the art of not giving a straight answer. Want that interview? Sure, they’ll call and let you know. By which they mean they won’t call, and you should call them again to show interest and initiative. Looking for people to show initiative is all well and good, but don’t lie about your intent guys. If you want people to call you, don’t tell them you’re going to call them. I know this isn’t how it works, but it always feels wrong to call back when they said they’d call you, like you’re breaking a request they made. This is exactly what they expect you to do though. Why hire someone who won’t give you the time to make the decisions you need to make though? Obviously, the request was made for a reason.

Then, they also want to keep you in the dark about salaries, wages, and benefits. This creates another dance of dishonesty, usually giving the employer the power in this case. Since you don’t know what they pay everyone else, you have to guess. Guess too low, you get a job that pays you less than you’re worth. Guess too high, they’ll hire someone else. Guess in the right range, and they might try to talk you down before hiring you. And research doesn’t always give you reliable results about what you should be earning either, so even if you’re prepared it’s still a guessing game. In any case, without honesty, there’s a need to pad what you think you should be earning with just the right extra so you can be talked down to what you want to earn. Is this really the way we want to do business? Shouldn’t we just lay out our expectations out front so everyone knows what we get out of the deal? Wouldn’t this be the sane way to do business? Still, I at least understand this particular layer of dishonesty. It’s all about getting the most money out of the deal.

I honestly don’t expect I’ll ever have my own business involving lots of employees. I don’t like to be in charge of other people or to delegate responsibility, so anything I do decide to start, I’ll likely try to do as a one man show, possibly with a friend or two as a partner. Still, in the event I ever do end up in charge of a business with lots of employees, I know I’ll have a very different hiring process than is the norm.

I just get irritated by the social expectations being so ingrained in everyone. Just be honest. Seriously. Say what you want and expect. Be clear. Don’t tell us you’ll do things that you won’t do. How are we supposed to trust you if that’s your hiring strategy? For once, just run an honest business at every level, both internally and externally. I know I’ve likely just scratched the surface, but frankly, these are the most irritating layers of dishonesty that are tied up in our society’s standard hiring and job-seeking practices.

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