The lost art of communication
I have just posted a few words for job seekers, which got me thinking about the heavy reliance of graduates on the internet, particularly as a mechanism to find jobs. Actually, that part isn’t the problem – I agree that Seek, MyCareer etc are a great way to search for jobs and start the application process. It’s what happens after that which I find strange.
The job boards have created a lazy approach to job seeking. Click, click, click, browse, attach, click, click.
And then….wait. And Wait. Still waiting..
Perhaps you’ll receive a call back, perhaps you won’t. By the time you do get the phone call, surely you’ve forgotten which job you applied for. Thats because there is a backlog of other lazy job seeker’s applications to get through.
Many moons ago, we didn’t have the internet. I know, hard to imagine, isn’t it? When we didn’t have the internet, we contacted eachother on the telephone and had conversations with humans and we spoke clearly about our intentions. This is the piece that has now been lost.
If you’re a job seeker looking to stand out from the crowd (and the other lazy job seekers in the market) then take a different approach. By all means, start with the internet. But don’t just leave it there and expect the internet to manage the process on your behalf. Somewhere in the process, is a human (for now, anyway). Ever thought about calling the human? Might be worth a shot. Call them up directly, tell them you’ve applied for a role and you’d like to know what the next step is.
It’s really not that difficult, is it? Give it a try…you never know, someone might actually call you back!
