Finding the needle in the Jobstack

While looking for a job is never an easy task, doing so during the highest unemployment period in global history, job-search is harder work than most jobs really take to be successful. Despite all the technology at our fingertips to search for employment, technology has also made the job search and application process incredibly difficult. Submitting applications online simply cannot be met with success unless your resume can achieve an 80% match rate to combat the 'robots' behind ATS that filter out candidates. Keywords, recruiter findings, skills matching, format checks among other elements take priority when applying "blind" to a job post. If these ATS scores aren't up to snuff, twenty years of work experience combined with building and managing your network feel as though that effort is for naught. But it isn't. People hire people.

What has been an amazing show of humanity, selflessness and grace are the people who try to help job searchers rise above the machines. People who boost LinkedIn posts, write recommendations, offer to network, pass resumes to their own network are true hero's. Just like the frontline hero's working to keep the country running and saving lives. The folks who help those of us unemployed seek and gain employment are truly hero's in my book. And the list of those who are helping me in my own search are those who are stand outs of the human race. And those who ghost, ignore and otherwise just don't care about their fellow human fall to the wayside.

Each day, in the confinement of our social distancing and locked-down-lives, I get up and go back at it, looking for new employment opportunities. I thank my blessings for the people in my professional and personal life who have actually provided some assistance. I thank them for their selfless acts to get one day closer to finding that needle in the jobstack.

So thank you to all who have helped and continue to help. You are more appreciated than you likely will ever know. Your acts of kindness will never be forgotten. Please keep it up.