Yesterday I came across an article written by Bedabrata Pain about the poet Nirendranath Chakraborty’s passing and his contribution to the Bengali literature. In his piece, Pain described many of Chakraborty’s poems, including ‘The King is Naked’, and how they are timeless and still relevant to what is happening today in the world. He ends his post reaffirming his admiration for Chakraborty:
“Yes, this world could do with more poets like Nirendranath Chakraborty.
If only to awaken the child in us – fearless, authentic, and forthright.
If only to warn us of an obsession with a development that is deeply anti-human.”
The last two sentences made me think of my blog and my frustrating experience in the past 4 months, looking for a new position. Eight weeks into my search, I fully understood why many job seekers give up and decide to start their own business. The list of “must do” is longer and more complex by the minute. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in planning and preparation. However, at what point we moved from thoroughly preparing for job searching and application to an excessive number of rules that is discouraging and dehumanizing?
After I lost my job September of last year, I immediately started getting ready to find another position. First things first, get up-to-date on the new trends about resumes, cover letters, job boards, etc. There is no shortage of advice in the internet about what job seekers must do in order to “stand out” from the crowd.
According to most articles, if I do not have a profile in LinkedIn, I practically do not exist since more than 90% of recruiters use this site as their primary search tool to find candidates. Creating a profile is not hard except for all the steps I must follow if I want to be “found by the recruiters”. I need to use LinkedIn’s Search Optimization Engine to my advantage. How?
I must have a complete profile which includes a “killer headline” with all the right ‘keywords’ employers may be searching for in the industry I am interested. I also need to use the same keywords several times in my summary while I describe 2 or 3 of my most significant achievements. As recruiters want to see results, I need to use numbers right up upfront while writing a summary that is warm and welcoming. Hmmmm
My photo needs to be professional but I need to remember to “smile for the camera” so I can look “friendly and approachable”. I also need to enter my work experience using my human voice to tell my story. I should turn my duties into accomplishment in a “quantifiable way”. One of the many articles I read on the Forbes website said that “both AI-driven systems and humans today are adept at sensing personality through stories, whether they be in video, embedded media or words on LinkedIn.”
The steps also include entering my hard and soft skills, getting “good connections” (meaning people who can help you get a job), requesting strategic recommendations (without recommendation recruiters will not even look at me), become an author, update my profile frequently and, I love this one – Be Excited! I need to “make sure my LinkedIn profile shows my enthusiasm for what I do”.
All these steps took hours to complete and that is just one item on the list of things I need to do before I can apply for a position. I still needed to make my resume up-to date which will need to follow some of the same rules as the LinkedIn profile. I should have a powerful summary that tells recruiters I am the right person for the job. I should have “accomplishment statements” instead of job duties descriptions. I should have the right keyword that will allow my resume to bypass the “Applicant Tracking System” designed to weed me out. I should have the soft and hard skills related to the position I am applying for.
It is now time to search positions and send applications. Time to write those pesky things called “cover letters”. Yes, I need to write them because they are my opportunity to “tell my story” (how many times do I have to tell my story? Which story should I tell?) I need to find the one that will “grab the attention” of the hiring manager or the recruiter before he/she decides it is boring and deletes me from the list of possible candidates. I also need to find a connection with either the company or the person I am sending the job application to so I can tell a story in a way that is memorable and personable but it is about the company, not me. Another tip to remember: send resume and cover letter to the hiring manager so the application does not end in the “black hole” created by the ATS system.
After following most of these advices and working for hours, I had one interview and no job offers. I have a Master of Mass Communications, I speak 3 languages and I have 13 years of experience in logistics. If I am not getting interviews, I must be doing something wrong, according to articles written to help job seekers improve their chances. It might have something to do with one of the buzzwords: algorithms! Article onTechRepublic website explained that “companies use algorithms to sift and sort piles of application data. And recruiters, often paid per referral, rely on automated tools to match successful candidates with job opportunities.” Remember the keywords that I have to repeat over and over again? It’s my attempt to be among the individuals from the “pile of applicants” the algorithm recommends for the open job. Apparently, some “algorithms prioritize candidates by recency and frequency of desired skills.”
I find incredibly ironic all the advices given on how to optimize my profile and my resume only to receive job recommendations that have nothing to do with the information I entered. Maybe the algorithms took a couple of days off?
The job alerts became the most frustrating part of the job seeking process. The disparity between my profile and the list of jobs sent in the alerts was ridiculous. I spent a good amount of time updating my information, uploading a new resume, answering all the questions in order to optimize my chances of finding jobs that matched my background to no avail.
The job search process has become, in my opinion, disrespectful and dehumanized. Recruiters hide behind the algorithms in the ATS and SEO systems or decide on a candidate after looking at the resume for 6 seconds. Then again, the final advice is that the best way to find a job is through networking. If that is the best way, why should we go through all this time consuming, dehumanizing process? Wait, I vaguely remember this website that was supposed to be just that – a place for networking.
As for my search, I decided to drop from the job seeker group and joined the business owner group. I know it will not be easier. In fact, it will probably be harder but at least I will not feel like I do not exist because I do not have the perfect profile in LinkedIn.
The King is Naked 