Why Can't We Find Jobs?

I had a conversation the other day, and I figured I would share it. I've been looking for a job for two years. I've sent out hundreds of resumes. I was lucky enough to find a temp job as an assistant manager back in September 2010, but the job ended January 2011. Since then I have had three interviews. Two of them were online. One of them was in person. The in person interview was with a technology temp company. They have yet to call me for a first job. The second job was for a work-at-home help desk position. I spent an hour and a half running through the on-line training. The company emailed me and said that a recruiter would call me back. They never did.

The third job was very promising. It was for a non-profit company working as a Job Developer. The hiring manager emailed me a list of questions. I spent two days researching and answering those questions. Then I emailed them back. I didn't hear back for a week, so I emailed the hiring manager. He emailed me back within a few hours and told me that he had been busy and would get back with me at the end of the week. I believe his exact words were "You will hear from me by the end of the week." Fantastic, I thought. I applied for a few more jobs and waited. Friday came and went. I didn't hear anything over the weekend. I figured he just hadn't had time. I waited until Tuesday morning and emailed him again. I never heard back.

Since then I have applied for 150 new jobs. I had one call back from a recruiter for a recruiting company. I had applied for an HR job in Florida. That job wasn't feasible, but he was willing to work with me to find an entry level HR job. I have a masters degree in Human Resources Development. He had two jobs in mind. One was in Michigan city, Indiana. The other was working as a store manager for a western wear company. Neither panned out.

I emailed him again to check on the progress. He called me. We ended up talking for 30 minutes. He suggested that I be proactive in helping him help me find a job. He told me to find six to 12 companies and jobs that I would like to work for and to email him the phone numbers. It took hours. Phone numbers for companies and especially the phone numbers for Human Resources are nearly impossible to find. Most job don't list the contact number, and very few websites list the number for human resources. I had to open the phone book and match the addresses to find the phone numbers. Even then, I wasn't sure I had the right phone numbers, but I found phone numbers for the companies.

Why did he want me to do that? Because he had examples of the current job market. For a maintenance position, he had over 100 resumes. For a machine tooler, he had 60 resumes. For another Human Resources position, he had 500 resumes. That's three available jobs and 660 people who need work. Those are worse odds than trying to find a publisher for a new novelist. The recruiter estimated that he would send the companies 1% of those resumes. Writers have 3% odds of finding a publisher. That's not good, and what it says to me is that it is still a tough market for those trying to find jobs.