Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
When there's about to be a job opening, a lot of people get interested. "Hey, I just heard that they're going to be looking for somebody in marketing. You ought to put in a word for your son and tell him to get his app in."
There are relatives, friends and people with perks who frequently get inside tips on a lucrative position.
It's called "nepotism" and it has been the primary method of employment since the beginning of time. What do you think your chances are of getting a choice job if you recently blew into town and don't know anybody? That requires (Item #5) having an essential skill that nobody else can do.
Spotting a good paying job with benefits is like seeing money laying on the sidewalk. Nobody is going to ignore it. Indeed, there are going to be a lot of hands grabbing. People who don't want the job themselves are still going to try to grab it for their kids, brother, friends or cousins.
If you do happen to get the job ahead of the others (not likely) they will assuredly resent you for getting it ahead of their friends and relatives. The bottom line is - if you don't have friends or relatives in opportune places looking for inside job information in your behalf - then you'd better start making a bunch of new friends! Or marry the boss's daughter!
That's why in all of the job books, "networking" is mentioned. I've only ever partially gotten a job due to this, though (I had been a volunteer and my friend ended up working there in a different department; they went bankrupt; she got re-hired, and knew I had been a volunteer and needed a job). And as I wrote in another thread, my boyfriend's stepmother has connections to the President of an organization that offered me and then rescinded their job offer. But besides that one job, I've never gotten a job due to knowing people.
I think it should come down to your skills, but sometimes people have the same skills, and it will probably come down to the interviewing having heard good things about the applicant from co-workers, etc. So is life, but it sucks.
You realize you can add all your points to one post? Or are you trying to get your post count up?
I don't have it all compiled as of now... Just writing from my experiences as they come to mind. I know there will have to be several "items" since I've acquired jobs in a lot of different ways. Also I think each "item" is worthy of some discussion because it's tough to get a good job these days and job seekers need to bounce some ideas around and get a plan - or better - several plans in motion.
I've had five jobs spanning my professional career (many more if you count high school and college) and I landed each one without knowing a single person at that company. Some were big companies, some were small. All hired me on my merit.
(When I was in 6th grade, though, I did land a job at the local newspaper suffing envelopes because my neighbor worked there.)
Having a network can certainly help. But it's not the be all end all. And having a network will only help if you are good at what you do. People are unlikely to recommend you if you are going to make them look bad.
There are relatives, friends and people with perks who frequently get inside tips on a lucrative position.
It's called "nepotism" and it has been the primary method of employment since the beginning of time. What do you think your chances are of getting a choice job if you recently blew into town and don't know anybody? That requires (Item #5) having an essential skill that nobody else can do.
Are you cutting and pasting? You're only up to Item #2!
Are you cutting and pasting? You're only up to Item #2!
Yes, I am cutting and pasting. I'm writing as I go in OpenOffice on a CentOS computer. When I get some of my thoughts down, I review what I've written, I copy the text, then switch over to Firefox and post it on the board here. Reason being, I have lost text before when I was typing it directly into web pages, etc., and something experienced a glitch. When that happened, I needed to start all over.
So to keep from losing the text, I usually just type it into a word processor like LibreOffice Writer, WordPerfect or MS Word and then copy or cut and paste it as appropriate. So far, I've only written #1 and #2 while 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are still somewhere in my head. If it seems that might be helping somebody to consider what I have learned about beating the bushes for a job, then I may go on to perhaps 8, 9 and 10.
If however, I'm just taking up space on the board without actually helping anyone else collect their thoughts and formulate a plan, then I'll probably just go and read some topics of interest. A lot of what I have learned over the years consists of some rather dastardly deeds that others have used. Well, I guess I've been guilty somewhat too.
Keep in mind that I'm not advocating the use of unscrupulous methods of landing a job but I believe everyone has a right to know the "ploys" people use in their pursuit of money. When you get beat out of a job opportunity, it helps to know what devices are in play. Just saying.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
When there's about to be a job opening, a lot of people get interested. "Hey, I just heard that they're going to be looking for somebody in marketing. You ought to put in a word for your son and tell him to get his app in."
