Technology giveth and technology taketh away
Just when job seekers thought that they were getting the hang of the new job search with LinkedIn, ATS, etc., along comes the pandemic and now everything is Zoom. That is until you get Zoom fatigue.
Interestingly, as a side note, the word zoom, as a verb, did not enter the language until 1886 and it wasn’t accepted as a noun until 1917. In the world of lexicon and dictionaries, the word Zoom is still an infant.
Yet job seekers had to familiarize themselves with this technology. Notice we didn’t say “new” technology. In fact, just this week, Zoom celebrated its 10th anniversary. The company launched in April, 2011. A ten-year old product in the world of 21st Century technology is a veritable geezer.
Although no one asked for it, job seekers have had Zoom forced upon them for job interviews, job search groups, networking, online learning, et.al. Another strike against the older job candidates is when the more mature applicants have trouble functioning in a Zoom world. We don’t need to give those still wet-behind-the-ears more fodder as to how we older workers are technological liabilities.
The good news is that most job seekers – of all ages – have mastered, or are mastering this Zoom-new-world.
The people we wonder about are the candidates who claim that their strongest characteristic is that “I’m a people person.” That’s a nice notion, but it’s a little tougher to pull that off when you’re staring at someone’s shrunken forehead on a computer screen. Zoom may be a great way to stay in touch during a global pandemic, but, let’s face it, it is just a wee bit impersonal.
But only the strong survive and, if nothing else, we’ve all shown that when faced with adversity, we find a way to make it happen – whether it’s on Zoom, LinkedIn, or something completely different.
If you have to learn Zoom in order to get a new job, you can add one more technological mountain that you’ve climbed.
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