3 Reasons Why You Are Still Unemployed
Posted: Monday, April 05, 2010
by Leslie Drew
Unemployed Help
In these tough times it's easy to start blaming the economy for our troubles. But contrary to the media hype the economy is not the reasonwhy you're still unemployed. The media's job isn't to inform us, its to entertain us. The more doom and gloom they report about the job market, the more viewers they get. The more viewers they get the more money they make off of them.
Your Location
In our modern economy some jobs like manufacturing are disappearing. You should be especially cautious if you live in an area supported primarily by one major employer or industry (anyone here from Detroit?). If that employer or industry is in a tail spin then your job prospects may remain bleek for a while.
To improve your odds research what jobs or industries are growing or at least steady in your area. This will give you some idea about what jobs you should be focusing on. If you truly are in an area without any promising job prospects you might want to consider relocating. Since relocating isn't really feasible to most unemployed people let's focus our efforts on the next two sections.
Your Skill Set
There's a difference between ten years of experience and doing something the same way for ten years. The next ruler of the world will look more like Bill Gates than Genghis Khan. The reason is that technology is changing how every job is performed. The movies and supermarkets have more self service automated lanes than they have cashiers because its cheaper and more efficient.
Digital cameras have single handedly wiped out the once thriving photo film industry. I personally haven't been inside a bank in years due to online banking and ATMs. By the way, when was the last you time you actually hand wrote and mailed a letter?
No wonder the US Postal Service keeps raising the price of stamps and is now considering canceling Saturday mail delivery. Anyone who hasn't kept their skills current runs the risk of going the way of the cassette tape.
Your Job Search Is Broken
Your resume is the engine that drives your whole job search. The quality of your resume determines the quality level of the job you will eventually receive. I really can't stress this enough. You must have a well written highly targeted resume to stand out from the crowd of bland, generic, one size fits all resumes on a recruiter's desk .
Yes, it takes more time and energy. But that's what its going to take for a successful job search in this market. The resume you post on job sites should be tailored for the specific job industry you are targeting.
If your resume lacks focus then it likely isn't making the cut to the hiring managers desk. Don't try to include everything you have ever done if it doesn't match with your target job. Job search engines such as Monster allow you to post multiple resumes that you can submit to employers.
This allows you to submit different versions of your resume highlighting different aspects of your work experience targeting different jobs. So don't make your resume one big grab bag of jobs and skills.The better your resume fits the job the better your chances of landing it. You have to control the parts of your job search that you can and let the rest work itself out.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)This is a great, informative article. There is only one thing I would like to see added; attitude.I live in the Detroit area and see firsthand the devastating job loss. I hear the sad stories and meet the people who can't seem to get back on their feet. I wish I could scream from the rooftop to all these people that having a good, positive outlook will be the single-most selling pooint to any potential employer. Otherwise, you are just not hire-able.Please log in to respond to this comment.Attitude is a big factor in any job market. Maybe I'll include it in a rewrite or do a separate article on it. Thanks for the suggestion.Please log in to respond to this comment.Yes, I'm sure there are a lot of unemployed people with good attitudes. Something they kept from when they were laid off.Please log in to respond to this comment.
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