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We had a class full of people that did it also. We averaged a 40% increase in salary within 4 months for over 100 people in 2009. I went from $12/hr shipping clerk job to $50/hr reporting role.
We were a bunch of people without college degrees with low prospects in a charity program for people in poverty. The only difference was the mock interviews, and collegeguy has a degree.
Fair enough, though it depends heavily on the situation. For example, I assume that most of those folks in that charity program weren't stuck applying online for their jobs. If in their case an in-person interview was the first step, than, yes, mock interviews would make a huge difference. If, however, the person is stuck applying online for most jobs - as collegeguy almost surely is - mock interviews won't help with that stage of the process.
Long story short, they aren't a bad idea, but they are not a substitute for standard job applications, nor can they bypass the automated filters that act as obstacles for most people who are out of work.
Fair enough, though it depends heavily on the situation. For example, I assume that most of those folks in that charity program weren't stuck applying online for their jobs. If in their case an in-person interview was the first step, than, yes, mock interviews would make a huge difference. If, however, the person is stuck applying online for most jobs - as collegeguy almost surely is - mock interviews won't help with that stage of the process.
Long story short, they aren't a bad idea, but they are not a substitute for standard job applications, nor can they bypass the automated filters that act as obstacles for most people who are out of work.
We were all stuck applying online for jobs. I went from getting 0 calls a week on my resume to a 1-2 calls every week on applications submitted online. When you have multiple call backs, it allows you to pick and choose the offer.
I graduated in the BOTTOM 10% of my HS class at 500 or so out of 550 students. I barely graduated with a 2.0 GPA. It doesn't take a genius to know that I don't have the same advantages as smarter, more educated people.
I knew that I had problems with finding a job, so I addressed them weekly with people smarter than me. Most of the volunteers had degrees and good jobs. They educated lower class people like me, struggling with no education and $11-12/hr shipping clerk job. I was laid off along with thousands of employees in our company. I had no where to go. Don't tell the lie that 2009 was an economic boom. I had no where to go back then. The number of mass layoffs was peaking back then.
We were all stuck applying online for jobs. I went from getting 0 calls a week on my resume to a 1-2 calls every week on applications submitted online. When you have multiple call backs, it allows you to pick and choose the offer.
I graduated in the BOTTOM 10% of my HS class at 500 or so out of 550 students. I barely graduated with a 2.0 GPA. It doesn't take a genius to know that I don't have the same advantages as smarter, more educated people.
I knew that I had problems with finding a job, so I addressed them weekly with people smarter than me. Most of the volunteers had degrees and good jobs. They educated lower class people like me, struggling with no education and $11-12/hr shipping clerk job. I was laid off along with thousands of employees in our company. I had no where to go. Don't tell the lie that 2009 was an economic boom. I had no where to go back then. The number of mass layoffs was peaking back then.
I'm at the point where job hunting feels pointless because:
I've already applied to 99% of the companies that have listings. It's hard to find a company I haven't applied to already.
I'm blacklisted from the companies I most desire to work for (Microsoft, Amazon, etc.). I failed my interviews last year, so they aren't going to bother interviewing me again.
Applying for jobs can bite me in the a** because if the staffing agency I work sees that I've been applying for jobs, they might preemptively replace me.
Guess I just have to cling to my current job for dear life.
We were all stuck applying online for jobs. I went from getting 0 calls a week on my resume to a 1-2 calls every week on applications submitted online. When you have multiple call backs, it allows you to pick and choose the offer.
I graduated in the BOTTOM 10% of my HS class at 500 or so out of 550 students. I barely graduated with a 2.0 GPA. It doesn't take a genius to know that I don't have the same advantages as smarter, more educated people.
I knew that I had problems with finding a job, so I addressed them weekly with people smarter than me. Most of the volunteers had degrees and good jobs. They educated lower class people like me, struggling with no education and $11-12/hr shipping clerk job. I was laid off along with thousands of employees in our company. I had no where to go. Don't tell the lie that 2009 was an economic boom. I had no where to go back then. The number of mass layoffs was peaking back then.
I wish I could feel more positive about this than I do at first impression.
I dodged the mock interviews that many of my classmates went through upon graduation from college, but the message some friends who did brought back was: "Dress to impress; never indicate a negative attitude toward their plans and their authority; reveal as little of your own desires and plans as possible; be the perfect example of 'corporate putty' they really want."
And all this came at a time when the candidates were much more likely to be males from traditional family structures -- ready, willing and eager to assume a similar regimen. With an increasingly diverse and non-traditional pool of candidates to choose from, I can only assume that the corporate desire for "carte blanche" authority to run roughshod over any form of individualistic behavior not protected by law has drastically intensified. Many of the "unwritten rules" of an earlier time have vanished, and what's left has, unfortunately, been leavened by the insanity of Political Correctness.
It makes me glad I'm about to retire, but apprehensive about growing old among a nation of sheep.
I've noticed many people talking about there are no jobs. What did people do before they went to the factories? Do the masses today think job first rather than a business. I'm just saying at some point when it becomes evident the job thing may not workout long term it might be a good idea to consider self employment even if it's selling Avon.
When did people lose the hunter mentality?
If what you're really asking is "what did people do before there were many 'jobs' using our present definition of that term?", I can state my hypothesis about why people have lost the "hunter" mentality.
It has been a slow death, for sure, but modern conveniences have weakened people's desire to be self-sufficient. My parents tell stories of growing up with their parents, and what vegetables their parents grew or what animals their parents raised (and slaughtered) to feed the family. Not only is it far more convenient to go to Wal-Mart and buy a bag of beans than it is to operate a bean farm, but it's also so cheap to do so that people don't find it to be worth the effort to be self-sufficient.
Have you ever wondered why they can sell, for example, beans, at less than a buck a pound? Think about it. That farmer has to prepare the soil, plant the beans, help them grow, harvest them, then package them to some extent. Then the beans get trucked to a packing house where they are packaged to sell, and then the packages are trucked to the store. All of that work, all of that diesel fuel, all of those fancy things to put in the soil, all of that overhead... and yet everyone can still make a profit at less than a buck a pound!
Well, as I always say, FOLLOW THE MONEY. Y'ever heard talk on the news about "the farm bill"? It comes up about once a year. It's always part of the budget and the Congressional lunatics always argue about it. In essence, it is a taxpayer subsidy for farmers of all types. To give you an example, I read not long ago that were dairy farmers not taxpayer-subsidized, milk would cost $8-something a gallon. You know what would happen if milk cost $8-something a gallon? You know what would happen if beans cost $3-something a pound? You know what would happen if a head of iceberg lettuce were $3.99? You know what would happen if 50-cent wing night suddenly became $1.19 wing night?
People would start producing the food themselves, en masse. They'd buy a cow. They'd buy some chickens. (Or they'd pool their resources and develop a herd of these animals on the property of someone who had enough land to support such a herd.) They'd borrow a rototiller and a garden rake, and plant their own vegetables. They'd learn how to can. They'd learn how to cook more with less.
In essence, they would become more independent.
Which is EXACTLY WHAT THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT.
The government wants you to be DEPENDENT upon it. Politicians and their cronies have wealth and power because of you being dependent upon the government and they sure ain't going to give that up easily.
You know how else they make us dependent? By enacting laws restricting our freedom to hunt. I live in a somewhat sparsely-populated area. I highly doubt my neighbors would mind me firing off a small-caliber gun or rifle to get me a fresh rabbit for dinner. Yet, in my town, it is illegal to discharge a firearm within 500 feet of an inhabited building. So, though I COULD hunt nuisance animals on my property and in so doing put some free food on the table, yet again, the government doesn't want me to be that independent.
If we get a good taste of independence, we're probably going to LIKE IT and we won't want to go back to dependence. Thus, we must be dissuaded from being independent. It's a very nefarious plot that is unraveling. But why else would taxpayers be footing the bill for farmers so that food can cost less on the shelves of the stores? Either way we're paying for the full production cost of the food, right? Well, perhaps, but one method is dependence on government and one method is independence. Were we independent, those with wealth and power might lose those two things.
Where jobs are concerned, school (which is also almost entirely government-controlled) teaches you to be a good employee. Rarely does school encourage people to start their own businesses or do what it takes to become REALLY rich. Look at most famous actors out there - very few have theater degrees. Very few have any degrees at all! I have looked at those lists of actors who have advanced degrees and only TWO PEOPLE came up as having doctorates - Jodie Foster and Bill Cosby. Evidently, school ain't pumping out famous actors. School also ain't pumping out businesspeople either. Mark Zuckerberg may have started Facebook while at Harvard, but it wasn't because of a class that he did so. It was of his own volition and an idea he had. Bill Gates didn't start Microsoft because some entrepreneurship professor gave him the tools to do so. The only richy-rich people whom college cranks out regularly are athletes, and that's another story in and of itself. Colleges that produce big-name athletes aren't doing so by educating them. Instead, the college is providing a venue and a system within which these people can shine and make their abilities known publicly... such that big-name sports teams will draft them. And frequently the colleges will treat the better athletes differently than the rest of the student body, giving them special privileges and protections because they bring in huge sums of money to the school. FOLLOW THE MONEY.
So most of our young people aren't taught to be entrepreneurial. Heck, I have a (tested and proven) high IQ, and I was in special "magnet" programs all through high school... got a bachelor's degree too... I cannot ever recall having been encouraged to blaze my own trail. I got that idea myself at age 23 and now if I could go back in time to my teenage years, I know that I never would have gone to college. Instead, I'd have done my compulsory schooling, graduated at age 18, and then blazed my own trail starting then.
This is why we have lost the "hunter" mentality. All around us are self-entitled people who have grown up wussified by modern conveniences and government tomfoolery, and when the time comes that the "hunter" mentality could be of use, few people recognize that and even fewer have the first clue how to implement it. You mentioned selling Avon. If THAT was easy, everyone who did it would be rich. The fact that you never hear of Avon reps getting rich shows how likely one is to make decent bucks selling Avon.
I can see why older people lose their motivation when comes to job hunting when a 28 year old guy tells me he had 100 job applications and only got two replies and he was also just out of military. What chance do I have at 53 years old to get a job? I have been filling out applications without any luck so far.
My question would be why are you wanting another job when you've already learned that you don't like having one?
This is likely a waste of my time replying but.....stating that its pretty sad that we've reached a point where standing on a street corner with a 'looking for work' sign is seen as a viable option, in no way whatsoever suggests that I don't like having a job. At all.
This is why we have lost the "hunter" mentality. All around us are self-entitled people who have grown up wussified by modern conveniences and government tomfoolery, and when the time comes that the "hunter" mentality could be of use, few people recognize that and even fewer have the first clue how to implement it. You mentioned selling Avon. If THAT was easy, everyone who did it would be rich. The fact that you never hear of Avon reps getting rich shows how likely one is to make decent bucks selling Avon.
Um, no. The reason people no longer have the "hunter" mentality - as you've defined in the form of being self-sufficient - is because there is no longer enough cheap land available for that type of life.
This has nothing to do with people being "wusses" or "lacking courage" or some other stereotype, but rather the simple fact that only a small percentage of the population in the developed world still lives on enough land to feed themselves. Look around - you see most people living in apartments, townhomes, or houses on little suburban lots. Yeah, sure - if they wanted to, they could grow some vegetables there, but that's about it, and it is not enough to live on. Most estimates I've read on-line place the minimum amount of space to sustain an adult human at 1 to 4 acres, which very few people in this nation own. So, one can bash people as "entitled" all day, but it changes nothing - you aren't going to feed your family of four on a 1/4" suburban lot, even if there were no laws prohibiting lifestock, etc.
I do agree that the government - and big business - want people to be dependent upon them vs. being independent, and I do agree that people are strongly discouraged from starting their own businesses, but it is wrong to say that people are "wusses" when the opportunities are simply no longer there. Most people simply cannot afford: the land amount needed to be self-sufficient, the start-up costs to create a major business these days, or the loss in revenue from not having a traditional job. That is the fault of the carefully constructed system, not the fault of supposedly "wussy" citizens.
Um, no. The reason people no longer have the "hunter" mentality - as you've defined in the form of being self-sufficient - is because there is no longer enough cheap land available for that type of life.
This has nothing to do with people being "wusses" or "lacking courage" or some other stereotype, but rather the simple fact that only a small percentage of the population in the developed world still lives on enough land to feed themselves. Look around - you see most people living in apartments, townhomes, or houses on little suburban lots. Yeah, sure - if they wanted to, they could grow some vegetables there, but that's about it, and it is not enough to live on. Most estimates I've read on-line place the minimum amount of space to sustain an adult human at 1 to 4 acres, which very few people in this nation own. So, one can bash people as "entitled" all day, but it changes nothing - you aren't going to feed your family of four on a 1/4" suburban lot, even if there were no laws prohibiting lifestock, etc.
I would even argue that if you gave everyone (or most people) that type of land, there would not be enough to go around.
And also, that excludes the fact that not all the land can support crops or livestock.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rambler123
I do agree that the government - and big business - want people to be dependent upon them vs. being independent, and I do agree that people are strongly discouraged from starting their own businesses, but it is wrong to say that people are "wusses" when the opportunities are simply no longer there. Most people simply cannot afford: the land amount needed to be self-sufficient, the start-up costs to create a major business these days, or the loss in revenue from not having a traditional job. That is the fault of the carefully constructed system, not the fault of supposedly "wussy" citizens.
I would say many people understand their strengths and weaknesses. For example, many don't have the leadership/management/entrepreneurial/sales/invention skills in order to start their own business. Yet, they could be a valuable person on someone's team - and let someone else handle sales and marketing
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