Okay, looks like I need to drop off some tips in here while I write up something longer. I'm not in Human Resources/HR, but I've worked with them and can hum the tune even if I can't play the song. I've also sat on the other side of the interviewing table and passed judgement on job seekers just like most others in HR, just as a technical evaluator. Keep in mind this is for the US and applies to US job seekers only.
Some of you will find this horribly offensive. Too bad. Welcome to the real working world, this isn't academia and you are
not a special little snowflake here. You are an interchangeable part that I can get a replacement for tomorrow in this employers' market. Get used to that.
For starters, everyone who's posted above me is in an area that is either known to be in job loss mode or has been a single state disaster that's hemorrhaging money, jobs and people for years (Michigan); I won't go into why this is so in this post, but basically you are screwed and leading economic indicators (despite what the idiots in Washington keep claiming and the unemployment numbers keep proving they're lying about) say that's not going to change any time soon. In your area, you have lots of people chasing few or non-existent positions; you will be lucky to get even entry level positions saying, "Would you like fries with that?" due to how the trickle down effect demonstrably works.
What this means is that, statistically, you are going to have to move if you want a job. You need to relocate to an area where there are few people chasing many jobs.
According to Forbes, here are the top 25 metropolitan areas in which to find a non-farm job:
Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, TX
Bismarck, ND
El Paso, TX
College Station-Bryan, TX
Midland, TX
Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX
New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
Dubuque, IA
Manhattan, KS
Pascagoula, MS
Odessa, TX
Corpus Christi, TX
Logan, UT-ID
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
Fairbanks, AK
Elizabethtown, KY
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX
Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX Metropolitan Division
Jacksonville, NC
Lawton, OK
Lebanon, PA
Anchorage, AK
Longview, TX
Joplin, MO
Kennewick-Pasco-Richland, WA
Gulfport-Biloxi, MS
McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX
Brownsville-Harlingen, TX
Columbia, MO
Auburn-Opelika, AL
Now, I could make this into a rah-rah-Texas post, but I'm not. I will point out that the job creation engine is still running here, and it's dead in many other places, which people have posted about above. Why this is so is really a subject for the political section and not here, so I'll leave that out for the moment. However, if you don't like Texas, you need not come here for work; you'll note that there are other options on the list. North Dakota, for example, has far too many jobs in
all fields chasing almost no available workers. (In fact, CrazyJeeper is going to be heading up to North Dakota upon graduation to take up a very well-paying position at an employer that has already hired him. This isn't gloating, it is pointing out that he's going where the money is.)
You must use the mobility that the country affords you to get a job somewhere where people actually are hiring. Fortunately, you do have FinalGear (use ALL your resources to network!) and you can probably find someone in a job-rich area to give you a hand or at least a couch to crash on until you get set up wherever.
In short - You don't have to go home, but you can't stay there. Not if you want a job.
Next item: college degrees. I know many of you just graduated and you're very proud of the little piece of paper that you spent so much time and effort on. I have some bad news for you; unless it's in a technical specialty like engineering or a few of the hard sciences (and you're not pre-med) it's not worth the pseudovellum it's printed on in terms of getting you a job. Employers like college degrees, but they're not going to get you hired if you have no work experience. Eventually your degree will be worth something. Today is not that day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either - but it will be once you start up the ladder. So despite your degree, you have to start at the bottom in entry level jobs to get experience. Do not expect to get hired at anything but the lowest level unless you have job experience. You have no idea how many fresh college graduates apply for managerial positions assuming their degree will get them a job without experience. It won't; adjust your expectations accordingly.
Final item for the day, and I
cannot emphasize this enough: EVERYTHING IS A TEST IN THE APPLICATION PROCESS. You are being tested on, among other things:
Your ability to communicate clearly, effectively and efficiently.
Your mental flexibility.
Your punctuality.
Your ability to commit and follow up.
Your ability to work with others.
Your emotional stability, i.e., how desperate are you. (Visibly desperate people do not get good jobs.)
All of this happens before you get an invitation to an interview. If you think the testing starts after the invite, you are sorely behind the curve.
I'll touch on just a few of the above now, since I intend to go into this in more detail in a later post.
When you submit an application or resume, do
not call and harass the HR department about your submission every day starting with the day you sent it in. This will result in your papers being roundfiled instantly.
Do follow up on your submission on the third business day (but not before!) after it should have arrived; this indicates to the hiring authority that you follow through on your work. If you need to follow up on it again after receiving a non-committal response, do so just once three days later. See below for reasoning for delay; if you don't follow up, chances are good that you won't be getting a call if many people are applying for the job - this is the first sieve to weed out applicants. Those serious and motivated will call and follow up, the resume spammers and people just casually applying will sit waiting for calls that won't come and therefore won't be a problem for HR to deal with later.
When following up, do
not call first thing in the morning, as this indicates that you are either desperate or have nothing better to do.
Do call in the early to mid afternoon, as if you were working your way down a list of calls that you needed to return after lunch. This indicates that you are productively occupying your time and are not desperate - but you are earnest as well as detail-oriented.
If the party you wish to reach is out of the office and voice mail is not offered, such as in a situation where the person said they wished to speak to you, do
not call back 15 minutes later to enquire again if no guidance was given as to when the person would be available. This makes you sound like a stalker with nothing better to do. Instead,
do wait at least 45 and preferably 90 minutes and call again. Again - it indicates that you are a steady worker who is occupied but interested and earnest.
Do keep logs of who you spoke to, where they were and what they said. Reference this material as needed. You probably will be tested on this more than once in passing, and it will enable you to schedule your followups and such accurately and in a timely fashion. This is part of the punctuality and detail-orientation test as well as mental flexibility.
Do
not abuse anyone on the phone.
Do adopt a calm and professional demeanor on the phone. One HR rep I worked with made a point of attempting to get an applicant riled up by feigning abject stupidity, asking for the same answer multiple times, asking for the applicant to repeat an answer because he didn't get it the first time, making them verify and re-verify addresses, prior employment, et cetera. The object of this exercise was not to actually check anything. The object was to find out how emotionally stable the subject was and how well they would work with annoying co-workers or worse, annoying clients. Those who could not be upset or who were upset the least (out of a particular pool of applicants) got the job or at least an interview.
Free advice like this is, of course, worth what you paid for it - but check with MWF as to the effectiveness of my advice; he requested my thoughts on recent events with his job situation.
I'm done with this for today, so you can consider this post finished.