THE SLOT MACHINE AND THE JOB BOARD

Slot Machines by Shari Weinsheimer

When I was living in New York, a friend talked me into going to Atlantic City. I had never been to Atlantic City and I had never gambled before. So it was pretty exciting to me. Lot of noise, flashing lights, money and people everywhere walking around with rolls of chips and cups of coins. What really got my attention was that it seemed as if all the trays attached to the slot machine were all filled to the brim with silver dollars. It looked like it would be so easy to grab a machine put in a dollar and watch my tray begin to fill-up and then overflow with silver dollars.

I hurried over to the cashier and turned my hard earned paper money into silver dollars. Then I carefully walked around the casino searching for the perfect slot machine. Once I found it, I put in one of my dollars and wow; three dollars came out. Then I put in another dollar and three more dollars came out. This went on for a good while and I began to wonder how did the place make money when the slot machines were paying me and all of these people two dollars for every dollar that they put into the machine.

Soon my friend came over and told me that I would win more if I put in more than one dollar at a time. So I started to put in two and three dollars and the money just kept pouring out of the machine. I felt like I had discovered a diamond mine or an oil well or something.

Then it happened, I put about four dollars in and nothing came out. Normally, had I been in my right mind I would have walked away at that point; however, even though I did not know it the gambling bug had me. My normal ability to think and rationalize were gone. They had been replaced by something that was saying put in a few more dollars something will come out the next time.

Needless to say, after about an hour or so I had given the machine back all of the dollars that it had given me as well as my entire $80.00 bank roll that I had brought with me for spending money. As if that was not bad enough I found myself struggling to keep my bank cards in my wallet and not walk over to the ATM to start pinching off of my little savings account.

The only escape was to run out onto the boardwalk to get away from the trays and cups of money and rolls of chips because I had learned that the odds were not in my favor.

I hate to say this, but in a way the slot machines are like the job boards. They may seem like they are free and not costing you anything but if you spend too much time there you will eventually realize that you've put everything that you've worked for and own on the line hoping that the job boards will pay-off with a shinny new job.

Each time when I would click-on the submit button on a job board, I experienced the same exact feeling and thoughts that I had when I was feeding dollars to that darn slot machine. Maybe it will pay-off this time. Every time that I waited for a response it felt the exact same way as it had as I watched the cherries and sevens fly by on the slot machine. And when the call never came I had the same let down feeling that I had when the machine did not pay-out.

Just like the slot machine, even when I realize that my efforts were not paying off, I still had a hard time tearing myself away. I felt like I was leaving the excitement, the flashing lights, and the people with the cups of coins and rolls of chips. I felt like I was going to miss out on a chance to win.

Finally, I had to do the same thing that I had done when I was in Atlantic City I had to force myself to walk away and not look back. Believe it or not it was hard. Sometimes during the day out of nowhere I would think about checking the boards to see if there was anything new that looked good. It took almost all of my willpower not to log-on.

Finally, after about two weeks the urge was finally gone. The strange thing was I knew that I had gotten past it when I received an email egging me to log-on to view new job openings and I became angry. I actually sent a heated response to the company demanding that they never contact me again. I was sort of like a reformed smoker. I did not want any part of my former vice.

The next time that you find yourself logging-on to the job board for a full-day of job searching ask yourself why are you doing it. What do you expect to gain? Do you really believe that the next time that you submit a resume the outcome will be different? Have the job boards become an unfulfilling habit or do you really believe that the odds are in your favor? Ask yourself if it is time to try something else.

This is not meant to say that you should do as I did and stop using the job boards to search for employment. It is to suggest that you consider trying a few alternative methods in addition to the job boards. For example, increase your network by getting out and about, seek the assistance of a recruiter, sign-up for temporary work, try freelance work you will be surprised by the number of options that are available to you once you kick-the-job-board habit.

STREAMLINING YOUR JOB SEARCH

We all know about looking for work on the job boards. If you’ve spent more than one month looking for a job, there is a good chance that you've tried a job board. Some of you may have been successful using this method most of us have not.

After 10 months of searching job boards and getting nowhere, I finally decided that it was time to take matters in to my own hands. Here is a list of what I did to land a job within six weeks of taking a no nonsense approach to my job search. I am not saying that this will work for you exactly how it worked for me, what I am saying is there are other ways and here is what I did:

1. Removed my information and stopped responding to ads on job boards. The job boards were wrecking my self-confidence and making me feel as if my destiny was out of my hands.

2. Reached out to my network with a new request. Instead of asking if they knew anyone hiring, I asked them if they could provide me with some names of people who might need some help.

3. Started prospecting by writing letters, sending emails and making phone calls to people that my contacts referred me to. This helped me to expand my network and I started to get a few freelance assignments from this effort.

4. Sent my resume to an employment service whose promotional material stated that a live person would review the resume and provide suggestions on how to improve the document free of charge. After months of resume tweaking the document had became almost unrecognizable. Worse yet, the hybrid resume was not getting any results.

5. Started an intensive search for local employment agencies. I had done this earlier in my job search but this time I changed my tone an my tactics. Instead of asking them about available positions or what type of jobs did they specialize in I asked, “When can I come in to be tested?” To my surprise, after months of getting nowhere with agencies I was finally getting in the door. Some asked that I email my resume to a specific recruiter before coming in for testing. Others just said show up during the hours that they were testing.

6. Only responded to ads on Craigslist. For some Craigslist can be scary, in reality it is not much different from the job boards. You have to be careful of spammers and use your best judgment. If it does not feel right, follow your instincts and skip the ad. The upside to Craigslist is that you usually know within a week if the company is interested in meeting with you. The companies are usually smaller and more in tuned to their needs. Most companies that advertise on Craigslist do not use web crawlers. An actual person usually reviews the resumes, which means that even if your resume is not peppered with keywords there is a good chance of it actually being seen.

7. Obtained input from a person who hires or recruits people for a living. When I first started to get interviews again, I realized that I was still not closing the deal. I spent a small amount of time communicating with a human resources recruiter on Twitter and the input that I recieved was dead on.

After taking these steps, I was off to the races. I had freelance work, I was getting calls for temp assignments and I was going on at least one interview a week. Better yet, within six weeks I had no less than three job offers.

LOCATING AND COMPLETING ONLINE JOB APPLICATIONS

One of the things that really frustrated me about searching for a job was when it felt as if there were no more places to look. Almost every morning the search would start with Careerbuilders, Monster, Indeed, Snag-a-Job, www.linkup.com and other job boards. Then I would check LinkedIn, Craigslist and MySpace for job postings and maybe email or call a couple of my contacts.

However to be honest, I really did not care for and tried to avoid completing online job applications. It seemed as if something would always go wrong. Often times the sites did not have a place for a carefully crafted cover letter. Then there were programs that insisted that the town where I live does not exist and the darn computer would assign a city on its own. Information would disappear and have to be reenter. Of course, that usually only happened on the page where the company asked two or three questions that required applicants to respond with short essays.

Nevertheless, I would press on like a good little job hunter because the goal was not to leave any stone-unturned during the job search. So, I tried to complete at least two online application per week. Most of the time on a Thursday or Friday, afternoon after I had run out of other places to look. Whether you have better luck with online job applications or if you are like me and only use them when you've run out of other places to look, below is a list of companies, most of which when last checked had multiple openings. Some of the jobs require a high school diploma others want degrees.

To see a company's career pages go to the Google search button, which has been conveniently added to the blog and type in the words "careers at" and then put the company name. For example, typing in careers at Johnson and Johnson should take you directly to the company's career section of their website. This phrase usually works on most corporate websites. So, if none of the companies listed below interest you, try typing in something that does -- such as careers at Burson-Marsteller.

Remember, most online applications use crawlers to search through the resumes and completed applications to determine which applicants background and experience best matches the job description. So use words from the job description when submitting your resume and completing the application. When there are questions that require you to compose a response, type-out the answer in Word then paste the response into the application. That way if the program fails to capture the information you will not have to start over again. Additionally, you can recycle the response if another application has the same or a similar question. And best of all you'll have the benefit of using spell-check.


Best of luck!