Job-searching in the U.S. is like queuing in the U.K. Have you ever seen the lines next to the bus stops in London? In the U.K., people line up. It's like breathing for them. No jostling, no line-cutting. That's their thing. They're very good liner-uppers.
Here in the U.S., we apply for jobs the same way. Show us two velvet ropes, we're gonna stand between 'em. There's nothing quite like job-hunting to remind us of how rule-abiding we are. Fill out this online application. Take this personality test. Answer this twenty-minute questionnaire.
My husband says to me "There's something about forms -- online or on paper. You get a form, you start filling it out, suddenly you're six years old and every authority figure from your whole lifetime is standing over your shoulder, checking for accuracy." He's right.
We are trained to follow the rules, and when it comes time to job-hunt, we fall right in line. When I write about a rule-breaking job-seeker who got a job (and most of the folks I know who are getting good jobs right now, are breaking rules right and left) some people get discouraged. They even get mad. I always get comments that say "You're wrong, that's B.S., you can't get a job that way."
It makes some people angry to hear that other people are getting great jobs by not following the rules.
But think about it: whose rules are these? They're not laws. They're bureaucratic HR policies. You don't work for these companies (yet). Why should you follow their rules? Every resume must go into the Black Hole. No phone calls. No end-running HR, do not contact the hiring manager, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Yeah, well, who says?
I wrote a story a while back (How That Guy Doug Got the Job) and I got mail in my inbox saying "It wasn't fair how that guy got the job."
It was fair! The guy showed up with a desire to find out what the employer really needed. He asked good questions. He got to the heart of the matter and made himself and his background relevant to the CEO. How is that not fair? He didn't bribe anybody. He didn't call on his old friend Vincent "The Chin" Gigante to make someone an offer he couldn't refuse.
Job specs are full of filler and garbage, and Black Holes don't work. I can understand why people are reluctant to ignore the formal hiring system -- they fear they might be blackballed -- but that fear is keeping them on unemployment (with or without benefits) for months longer than they need to be.
Real employers have real business pain. "I have twenty years of progressively more responsible experience in yada yada" doesn't make anyone's heart beat faster. "Say, I was calling to see whether the XYZ acquisition you finalized last month is putting you in need of contract attorneys" might.
It's not as scary as you think, to pick up the phone or launch an email message or LinkedIn overture to ask "Am I right in thinking that you're dealing with A, B and C?" To the manager in pain, your call or email message is manna from heaven.
There is another job market. It's not the be-a-good-boy-or-girl job market of Black Hole resumes lobbed over the transom and ignored forever. That job market is broken. Forget about it. It doesn't work, and you won't get a job that way.
I know what you're thinking. SOMEONE might get a job that way. Someone will also win the lottery. Would you bank your future on the lottery?
The why-not, I'm-calling-this-guy, I'm-sending-another-Pain-letter job market is alive and well. My client Betsy got an $80K job this week, and another client, Clara, got a $55K job offer last Sunday. (She got a job offer on a Sunday! Someone was in pain.)
These folks got their jobs because they took the employer's perspective and constructed an outreach of some type (phone, email, snail mail, LinkedIn, personal introduction) that spoke to the manager's most likely pain. "I wasn't sure, so I figured I'd ask" is the theme in this approach. Nothing about their long years of experience. Nothing about their own assessments of their skills ("I'm strategic, I'm savvy, blah blah blah.")
A guy called me on the phone, and he said "I see you do tele-seminars. Would you be interested in a quote on fast, high-quality transcription?" I said "Why not?" What risk did the transcription guy take? Only the risk that I'd say "No, not really," and that's no risk at all.
Job-seekers in the Other Job Market are doing the same thing. They're not putting their faith in Black Holes and HR pipelines and Hurry Up and Wait and Maybe We'll Get Back to You, One Day and Oh Wait, We Also Need Your College Transcripts and a Writing Sample. They're doing what the transcription guy did. They're saying to themselves This Guy Might Need My Help, and I'll Never Know Until I Ask Him.
Life is too short to spend your time beating your head against the wall and kowtowing to bureaucracies, right? You're not the groveling type, anyway.