The Good, the Bad…

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 next technological generation and now everything is AI to 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, recently Zoom celebrated its 15th anniversary. A fifteen-year old product in the world of 21st Century technology is a veritable geezer.

Surviving this brave new world

Although no one asked for it, job seekers have had AI and Zoom forced upon them for resumes, 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 an AI-to-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 in the process of mastering this AI-to-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, 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 with AI, on Zoom, LinkedIn, or something completely different.

If you have to learn new technology in order to get a new job, you can add one more job search mountain that you’ve climbed.

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