Sometimes We Recruiters Forget that Looking for a Job Is the Hardest Thing

In a post about the homeless a while ago I made a pretty bold statement, even for me, which is rare: “The three most stressful life events according to psychologists are, in order, getting married, buying a home and looking for a job.” I have been on both sides of that coin and I know what sort of horse manure you have to swim through to get a job — any job. It’s a painful and scary process no matter what your pedigree is. I have had it pretty lucky, but there was the time I lived in my car outside of an apartment building that had all my worldly possessions padlocked behind a door of the apartment I use to have.

I made it I guess. I am solvent, have money in the bank, a roof over my head, and am with an excellent company doing what I love. Sometimes I get emails sent to me … I am pretty easy to find. Most are saying thank you for writing about this or that, and it makes me smile. I’ve gotten hate mail, too. I was even threatened with a lawsuit, which was fun, from thin-skinned folks who are afraid of the truth. Then there are ones that pull at my heart strings, ones that make me say, “sh*&, I touched someone. ”

I got this below from a person I have never met live. They are not a recruiter, yet took the time to write to me.

I saw your posting in regards to homelessness. I’m a single mom, I had worked for Wells Fargo and moved to Colorado with a $5600 savings account and a promising job offer thinking I could move up here to finish the handful of courses I needed to pursue a Masters in Neuroscience. I grew up in a group home, so I have no family to fall back on. Literally no child support and two kids under five. I came up here, and the job fell through, the savings was drained in two months as we stayed in an extended stay. 398 job applications (just on linked in alone) placed in a two month period and I ended up with a job. As a single mom, all it takes is one emergency for us to fail. I make too much for food stamps and programs but not enough to survive.

I wanted to say thank you for posting your post because not everyone who has been homeless is lazy, a druggy or a criminal … And those I ran into in the shelter was mostly vets, moms, some were aging and disabled, and none of them wanted to be there. Denver has a high homeless population. It’s amazing at my work we have had people make horrid comments about homeless people, the irony is they were talking to me about it while I was living in a shelter with my kids. Your posting was very touching.

I’m not too proud to admit that after my first reading this I just stared at the words and teared up. It took me back to those days of sleeping in my car wondering what I was going to do, where was I going to get my next gig. The world had crashed down around me and no one was looking for recruiters in the IT space. Companies were hemorrhaging money and employees, not looking for more bodies to type superfluous code. I had placed a .NET developer at one of these companies, and he was good, really good, but he was now delivering pizzas to make ends meet.

We are on an upswing in technology now and the future looks bright, with a side of haze, but like Erma Bombeck wrote, “the grass is always greener on the other side over septic tank.” Our unemployment numbers in this country are based on fictional statistics IMO and if you walk the streets of any major city in the United States you will see a problem no one wants to chat about. Having a job just in most circumstances means you are a paid slave nowadays, and if you are in the Middle East, you more than likely are not getting paid at all.

If you have never had to look for a job, then you are in a very unique, very minuscule group, or you are still in the sixth grade. It’s a grueling process involving HR people who use antiquated job descriptions because that is just the way they have done it. Managers have no clue what we do, nor do most care. They would prefer to blame HR who in turn blame us and at times we take our frustrations out on candidates and at times each other, myself included. No one is imunne.

What our take away should be is the memory of the pain, the angst, and the fear that we as job seekers went through while looking for a new position. When I am training or mentoring a new recruiter, I tell them to look in the mirror, every morning, and remember what it was like to wake up in the morning with no job. Take that with you throughout the day and use it as a shield to block the negative that you see and feel. I am telling you this is one of the best pieces of advice I could give anyone entering our world. #truestory #zellerout