By
Skip Freeman
© Skip Freeman 2010 – All Rights Reserved
While the latest jobs report indicated that there might at last be a glimmer of hope for the jobless,* I wouldn’t recommend breaking out the champagne to celebrate quite yet. Why? Because, if the job market continues to improve (still a BIG “if,” of course!), it likely will serve as the “trigger” for the 60 to 80 million people—over one-half of the currently employed—who have indicated in recent surveys conducted by CareerBuilder.com and Manpower, Inc. that they intend to “jump ship” for new career opportunities once the economy is truly on the mend.
So, if this exodus actually occurs, rather than the current average of six applicants for every open position in the job market, there easily could be an average of thirty applicants for every open position, beginning as soon as 2010! That would represent an average five-fold increase in the applicants-to-job ratio! Certainly that would create significantly more turbulence in the already chaotic job market, as well as put additional, tremendous stress and strain on the unemployed.
Currently Employed Totally Fed Up with Their Employers
This anticipated mass exodus of the currently employed will be precipitated, the survey results indicate, because many, if not most, feel they have been hard put upon by their employers during the Great Recession. They have had to endure the ongoing emotional trauma of watching fellow employees be fired, laid off or downsized, while daily fearing for their own jobs. They have received either miniscule raises or none at all. In some cases they have even had to take salary reductions. They have had to shoulder a workload that normally would have been handled by several employees. In a nutshell, they are simply fed up with the (real or perceived) treatment they (and their fellow employees) have received from their employers during the last several years and feel little, if any, loyalty to them.
An optimist might say, well, the currently unemployed could simply take the jobs that will be vacated by those people leaving their current employers for new jobs that may be created in the economy over the next couple of years. Ostensibly that may even be true. A realist, however, might point out that it’s important to keep in mind that most companies tend to take their own, sweet time when it comes to replacing employees who leave their employ. It would therefore be reasonable to expect companies experiencing significant employee losses to follow suit, to take a “wait and see” attitude. For how long? Who knows? In the best case scenario it can take several months for companies to replace positions, if they indeed replace them at all. Plus, to add insult to injury, the first to even be considered for most of these positions that may become open quite likely will be those who are “jumping ship” from other companies, not the unemployed!
Both Employed, Unemployed Must Learn NEW 'Rules' of 'Hiring Game'
Obviously, it remains to be seen as to exactly how things will ultimately shape up in the job market once new jobs start to be created. And it may take several more years before the job market picture starts to come into anything resembling a clear focus. Still, if ever there was a time that job seekers, both those employed people who plan to search out new career opportunities and the unemployed, need to learn the NEW “rules” of the “hiring game,” and how to effectively apply them to compete in the market, that would be now.
What characterizes these NEW “rules”? With competition for jobs already at fever pitch and likely to get even worse, the job market definitely is—and will remain for the foreseeable future—a buyer’s market. Hiring companies are very much “calling the shots” and apparently will continue to do so. No longer are hiring companies focused on seeing how many applicants they can include in their “pool” of potential employees. Rather, their focus now is on, and apparently shall remain on, how many applicants they can exclude from the “pool,” and do that as quickly as possible, in order to get to the applicants who ultimately will be selected for positions.
Brutal? Unfair? You bet, but all signs are pointing to the fact that that’s still the way it is and will continue to be for sometime in the job market.
Gone forever are the days when an applicant could merely put together a résumé, fire it off to prospective employers and then merely wait for their “number” to come up, i.e., to be offered a new job. Today, only those applicants who know how to play by the NEW set of “rules” in the “hiring game,” and then actually start playing by those new rules, can ever hope to be positioned as a TOP candidate for virtually any job! All others will quickly and summarily be excluded from further consideration. Believe that.
The New Realities of the Job Market
While, as already stated, currently employed people will have somewhat of an advantage over the unemployed when it comes to competing for new jobs that may be created over the next few years, i.e., merely by the fact that they, unlike the unemployed, have been able to stay employed through the recent rough times, they also are at somewhat of a disadvantage. That is, if they haven’t “tested the waters” for quite a few years, chances are, not only do they not know how to play by the NEW “rules” of the “hiring game,” they probably don’t even know that they exist!
Insofar as the unemployed are concerned, many still apparently haven’t bought into the fact that the rules of the game have actually changed. (This is evidenced by the fact that so many of them continue to do the same things over and over in today’s job market, i.e., send out résumé after résumé, spend hours each day on the job boards, etc., etc., all the while continuing to expect different results!) Until they disavow themselves of this belief, until they quit hoping that things will soon return to “normal,” they, too, are destined to experience continued frustration, disappointment and stress.
In order to be successful in today’s—and tomorrow’s!—job market, both of these groups, the currently employed and the unemployed, will first have to accept the fact that the rules have changed, learn what these new rules are, and then diligently apply them to their job searches. Unfortunately, there are no other realistic choices that I am aware of, and my opinion is based not on some “gut” feeling. Rather, it is based upon years of experience working in the job market, both with candidates and with hiring managers and companies, each and every business day of each and every business week.
I’ve always admired the cleverness and appropriateness in a wide variety of situations and circumstances of the Boy Scout’s motto: Be Prepared. As we enter 2010 that would seem to be very good advice for both the employed who may seek new career opportunities and the unemployed who desperately want and need to get back into the game!
*Released December 4, 2009. Total U.S. unemployment in November dipped slightly, to 10% (from 10.2%), and employers shed “just” 11,000 jobs. This performance was considerably better than the net job loss of 111,000 the previous month, and beat the predictions of the Labor Department and many economists.
