What's the fantasy? The most qualified person gets the job.
We all know it’s not true. But we keep on pretending. We even make it worse by acting as if the job search is simple and rational. Follow the search process better than anyone? You’ll get the job.
Why are we so stuck in this fantasy?
We’re Sold on the Simple
You’ve seen the ads. “Find great candidates without interviewing!” Just program your software, sit back, and press a button and viola! Perfect fit candidates fill your email while you doze, check Facebook or stand in line at Starbucks. Whether you are hiring or looking to be hired; job boards feel good. Because they are simple.
Looking for a job? No problem. Just use the incredibly simple job boards. Use them a lot and you’ll find a job even faster. Simple AND fast!
Next stop on the Simple Train are the “how-to” books on finding a job. Written as if there was a giant vending machine somewhere and all you needed was the correct change, a pull on the lever, and a job would pop out.
When I wrote Finding Work When There Are No Jobs, we sold the first 10,000 books or so by getting across the idea that the key question in finding and engaging with a job was NOT “how-to.” The key question was “what if?” And that question might be the hardest question of all. Nothing simple about “what-if” Because the question demands one thinks about and charts their own unique path. “What if” prompts stories. Not the simpler task of following instructions.
Now that the book is at 30,000 in sales, the value of replacing how-to” with “what if?” is becoming more accepted as what really works. But it’s a slow ride and jumping off that “simple train” can be frightening.
Had we stuck with how-to; we might have sold three million and not a paltry thirty thousand by now. Because “how to” is simple. You just follow the instructions.
The way Career Development is taught and then used is simple because it often stops at the cosmetic. After the self-assessment, there are interviewing skills, opinions on the perfect resume and a push out the door while waving “Happy Networking!” Simple.
Better yet. It’s simplistic.
So We Pretend Its Rational
The other part of the fantasy of job search is that the whole thing is rational. Want proof that’s a myth? Question that fantasy.“Do the most qualified folks or even the ones who are the best fit always get the job?” Of course not. Not even close.
In a rational world, more is usually better. Send out more resumes, you have a better chance of getting called. Right?
Nope. That’s simply not true. Not today. Not in this market. Is more networking better? Rationally you’d think so. But rational just doesn’t always come through in the often-bizarre world of connecting people and jobs. Ask 5 people what networking means and you’ll get 5 different answers. Unless you are making active, visible connections as a member of a community—in Finding Work When there Are No Jobs we call it ‘communitizing’—your networking can produce nothing but anxiety. In the hundreds of folks I’ve worked with over the last ten years in finding their own path to work, no one word causes more stress than the word “networking.” Rational? You decide.
Fantasies That Weaken Institutions
When Finding Work When There Are No Jobs came out, I was struck by a pattern I’d see whenever I’d attempt contact with a school or organization’s career development operation. First, the operation was hard to find. I’d ask who ran Career Development and more times than not, I’d have to ask multiple people because no one knew.
I found great, dedicated individuals, but the institutional focus on connecting people and jobs was low key at best and non-existent at worst.
For Career Development functions in higher education, I’d see separate enclaves for academic areas that didn’t talk to each other. Sometimes there would be a 100% focus on student job seekers and NOTHING for alumni. No resources, program or results for those who came before, were having a tough time in this present era of ageism and could use the excitement of charting their own path for what’s next more than anyone.
It was as if the fantasies of work search, the fantasies of simplicity and rationality had been exposed. Revealed to be empty. Not worth any kind of organizational focus. And no one cared.
Of course it doesn’t have to be that way. If we were to start the Career Development discussion with “What if?. . ."
There is a way to bring job search back to reality.