With the high unemployment everywhere, it’s making things interesting (aka dificult) for people doing the hiring as well as people trying to get hired.  Recruiters and companies are getting flooded with applications and resumes in response to job postings, which means they either have to spend more time reviewing applications or cut down the amount of time they spend per applicant, which can lead to missing a number of good candidates and picking some poorer ones for interviews.  A resume is just an electronic file after all (I almost said piece of paper there for a minute).  As a job hunter, I have to accept the fact that my resume is getting passed over for many positions for no particular reason at all, other than the person reviewing the resume being in a hurry and not seeing one particular keyword they were looking for.

Many companies are simply avoiding this process completely and just hiring based upon referral.  It’s not hard for a company to find some decently qualified candidates who the company’s employees know personally.  Hence why networking is the key to job hunting right now.  In my case, the biggest problem I’m having with networking is my network.  It’s a nice big network, but much of it consists of people in the same situation I am.  What good is a big network when all my closest connections are also out of work with little experience?  I suspect this is part of the problem many recent graduates are having.  Experienced professionals who were laid off have business networks already established, and they are able to utilize those networks effectively to find new jobs.  Meanwhile, the large number of graduates who have had limited work (or in a few cases still haven’t found any real work since graduation last year – yikes!)  are all stuck asking each other if they have job connections.

Perhaps this is adding fuel to the fire of hard feelings between generations in the workforce that I’ve been noticing lately.  As for me, I’m just slowly working on changing up my network to make business connections.  It’s a long process, however, and my closest friends who would hire me at the snap of a finger are still in about the same position I am.