The Want Ads
by Steve Wagner, WHP News
I’ve never known anybody who got a job with a resume. That’s not to say such
people don’t exist; simply that I’ve never met any. My own experience and
similar accounts from other of my media fellows are often parallel. We network. That is,
we know someone who knows someone else who can probably do us some good. A fortuitous
connection, as it were. Being in the right place at the right time, usually when someone
has decided to leave in disgust, the post you covet. As they head for browner pastures,
your world awakens. Your economic future suddenly looks brighter.
"We want you!" your new bosses exclaim. And you’re in. "Oh, by the
way, when you get a chance, could you drop off a copy of your resume?" After the
fact, you see.
At the other end of the spectrum are those whose occupational lives have been like
rudderless ships, drifting from one job to another with the consequence of raging disunity
in any potential resume. Another group is the very young, who haven’t had a chance to
build up a job portfolio of any significance. Lastly, many of those over the age of fifty
— college degreed, and able, but kicked out in the guise of corporate downsizing, and
often because they were smarter than the boss.
These three groups consistently fall prey to The Want Ads. They’re fair game because
most members of all three groups are somewhat out of touch with Want Ad realities.
Let’s face it! Up to the point of unemployment, they haven’t had much cause to
read them. The corporate vice president always thinks he’s mere steps away from
becoming the main man; the teen knowing that he won’t be stocking supermarket shelves
forever; and the checkered career drifter not really knowing or caring much.
The Want Ads, you must understand, are geared to get employee prospects in front of
potential employers. That’s why you never see Want Ads for radio and TV news anchors:
there’s always more than enough applicants. Yet, the Want Ads don’t want to
frighten you off by describing the harsher aspects of the job. So they couch those
turn-offs in piquant terms.
For example, if you see an ad that would love to welcome you into the prestige world of
Public Relations, you must learn to stifle images of you meeting celebrities, writing
speeches for a corporate CEO, booking hotel banquet rooms and setting up hospitality
suites, and writing press releases nobody reads. Substitute, instead, a bank of the
dreaded telemarketing telephones, because that or selling pots and pans door-to-door is
most often The Want Ad version of PR.
And, although there are frequently Sales categories in the Want Ads, scores of other jobs
seem to fall into the Sales category. Such an ad might lead you to believe that you have a
great career as a motivational sales speaker. The actual job turns out to involve speaking
all right — speaking over a telephone in (you got it) a crowded telemarketing phone
bank reading from a prepared script.
Forgive my cynicism, but this is the job market today as seen through the harsh reality of
The Want Ads, but believe it or not, there is an alternative to The Want Ad blues, and the
terminally boring telemarketing positions that abound. The alternative is called
Candidates for Hire, and you can find it right here in the back of MODE.
Candidates for Hire is MODE’s solution to the irritation factor of The Want Ads.
Candidates for Hire is a REVERSE Want Ad. Instead of an employer placing a Want Ad for a
new receptionist; if you’re a receptionist and you’re ready to move up in the
world, you can place a "Candidates for Hire" classified, worded the way you
want, with no middleman, no agency, no recruiter.
So don’t despair. If you’re not networked yet, there is an alternative to the
dreaded, always less than they pretend to be, endlessly typical Want Ads.
Try the Candidates for Hire section,
2-line ads are totally FREE to individuals! |
