Unlearning What Was Never Learned

Ask yourself how you were trained to seek employment

There is a school of thought that has been around for decades which says that one reason why people have such difficulty finding jobs is that they were never taught. There is some evidence of that.

Ask yourself: Aside from a resume critique and a few interview do’s & don’ts, were you ever instructed in how to find a job? Were you ever shown where and how to prospect for potential employers? Did anyone ever tell you how to network – or, even that things like networking can help you find a new position? Probably not.

It’s a new day

So, here we are today deep in the 21st Century and suddenly everyone is saying that how you find a job today is totally different. What worked in the past doesn't work anymore. You may have found a job 20 years ago through a newspaper classified but, more likely than not, you found it through a personal referral.

Does that mean you have to “unlearn” how you looked for jobs before and learn something new? But, if no one ever taught you how to find a job in the first place, what is there to “unlearn”? What have we lost since no one was ever doing it before?

Gone are the newspaper want ads. Gone are the photocopies of your resume. Gone is the practice of mailing your resume to a potential employer. Gone is the time when you might spend hours in a library searching for something, anything as background on an employer in preparation for an interview.

Hello internet and social media. All the studies say that you’re probably not going to get hired without being active on LinkedIn and that most companies won’t find you without it. Fire up your computer and search the online jobs boards. Google XYZ Company to find out more than you ever wanted to know about the company where you’re interviewing next… and possibly the interviewer as well.

We're starting all over again. We’re staring at a clean slate insofar as teaching people how to look for jobs. And that slate may change again before we know it.

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