Let A Better Job Find You

Have you ever noticed how things usually work just the opposite of how you have always heard they work? This seems to be more and more the case. I'm thinking that maybe everyone just gets tired of being predictable. So they do things just the opposite of the way everyone thinks they are supposed to do it. Whatever "it" is. Of course, here "it" is getting a job.

I just read an article this morning that advised me not to look so hard for a job. For years, all I have heard is, when you are unemployed, your job is Finding a Job. That article said look for a couple of hours a day and then do something else, something positive, something you love to do, and to get with other people that like to do whatever it is you are doing. The idea is to stop trying so hard to find a job and let the job find you.

If you think about it, when you look at the job posting websites, it really only takes a couple of hours (if that long) to look at the new postings that are posted each day. How many times have you been looking at the postings and realized that you are looking at the same postings you have been looking at for the last week or two. I mainly look at Indeed.com. They seem to eventually pull new ads that have been posted elsewhere. So I see some new ads, but they are already several days old. It seems like I am seeing new postings, but not really.

Most of us feel like we should be looking for a job constantly. Especially if we have other family members depending on us to find a job. It gets almost addictive, which seems to be true of almost anything we do repetitively day after day. I have heard people say they can't sleep for thinking about job hunting, or they wake up earlier than usual thinking about job hunting.

That article I read did not really surprise me. I have been telling just about everyone that you can look for a job until you're blue in the face, work on your resume and cover letter until it's immaculate, and do every other thing that the professionals suggest, and still not get a job. Or you get a job because the guy at the grocery store told you where his brother-in-law just went to work. "I think they're hiring!"

The new theory is that you can burn out, get depressed, and become irritatingly boring if you overdo the job hunt. However, don't fall prey to the other extreme. You know, doing everything you can think of except searching for a job, like cleaning the garage or painting the house. The things you should do instead of searching for a job should compliment your job search. They should put you in contact with others that like to do what you like to do. That sort of thing. I am using my not-searching-for-a-job time to try and figure out another way to make a living. You know: blogging, learning to buy and sell on ebay, learning to be a webmaster, and so on. You might want to take a class to learn a new computer skill or whatever. Who knows, you might meet your next office mate at that class.

Also, keep in mind that the reason you are not at your old job may be another one of those deals that do not work the way you think it should work. In days gone by, the best employees were kept and the lesser employees received the pink slip. These days, you may have been terminated because you were at the top of the heap. Your employer may have realized that you had gone as far a you could go in your job. There were no more raises they could give you. You had to go, for your own good, someplace where they could give you new duties and pay you more. Plus, your old employer saves on your high salary and new opportunities open up to the junior employees that do the same things you did.

The point here is, you might want to look for a job that pays more and that will cause you to have to stretch your abilities. In other words, you will become the junior employee in a job that eventually pays more than your old job. This has unintentionally happened to me several times thanks to people who think about things like that. While I was looking for another job just like the one I had, my future employers were smart enough to see my potential for doing a job that offered me new challenges and more money. I say gear up. You can always gear down.

Some think that we live in a new age. Others say we live in a time where right is wrong and wrong is right. I don't know about all that, but I do know things often work just the opposite of the way we think they will work. We think we were laid off because we were doing a bad job when, in fact, we were doing too good a job. We ask for less money and less responsibility when we should be asking for more, more, more.