Dealing With Silence When You're Unemployed

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Any unemploymentguide, good or bad, will have an entry designed to help readers deal with rejection. Ibelieve this is for two reasons: One, rejection is, at least to a certain degree,inevitable. Two, it’s easy. It doesn’t take a lot of thought on the part ofthe author to tell you to keep your chin up, go over what went well and what went poorly,and maybe even ask for feedback if the interviewer is willing. I mean, really, does anyoneneed a guide to tell them not to send hate mail to the offending office and/or upper-decktheir toilets? Aside from being almost criminally unhelpful, rejection guides ignore themost pervasive part of a jobsearch -- silence. Unless you’re an unemployed upper-level manageror executive, chances are your days aren’t filled with phone calls from headhuntersand potential employers. No, if you’re anywhere from a junior employee to amid-senior associate, 95% of your job search will consist of a whole lot of nothing. Youfind some jobs and apply, maybe you hit up some friends and family members forconnections. Then you wait. And wait. Then you have lunch, and maybe check out someunsavory content on the internet. Then you wait some more. There’s literally nothingelse you can do once you’ve applied for a job. You can’t continue to pesteryour contact, and if you applied through the company website or LinkedIn, what’sdone is done. I think a lot of the struggles modern men experience come from instances ofimpotence or powerlessness, and nothing exemplifies that better than the feeling ofclicking “apply” and then checking the clock to see how long it’s beensince you last rubbed one out. I suppose it’s been about two months nowsince I started chronicling my unemployment experience, and while a good two weeks of thatwas consumed with my wedding andhoneymoon, that still leaves six weeks with little to no progress. I’ve had afew nibbles here and there, but by and large nothing. It’s tough, no doubt about it.When a friend or family member innocuously asks “how’s the job searchgoing?”, it’s hard to have nothing new to report. Especially now thatI’m legally and spiritually obligated to another human being, I now have twice thenumber of people with a vested interest in my success. It’s a lot of pressure, notthrough any fault of theirs, but because of the situation in general. If being in anunhealthy relationship while unemployed leads to feelings of weakness and emasculation,dealing with the silence of unemployment leads to the opposite: Anger and frustration.I’ve done what I need to do, dammit, and now as the employer it’s your turn topick up the slack. It’s even worse when I remind myself that, truthfully, mostprofessional jobs require little in the way of real, concrete qualifications. I have mydegree, and I’ve done some stuff, so you and I both know I can do whatever it isyou’re hiring someone to do. Let’s just make it happen already. Even more frustrating is knowing that if I could just get in front of someone, I’dprobably lock down whatever job it is I applied for. That’s why I think“handling rejection” pieces are such BS, because there are few times in mylife where I’ve interviewed in person for a job and not gotten it. If your resumehas been selected and you made it past the initial stages, the job is really yours to loseunless someone spectacular comes in and steals it from you. I don’t need helpdealing with rejection; I need help giving someone the opportunity to reject me. If you’re experiencing something similar, one thing to keep in mind is the time ofyear during which you’re undertaking the search. I got laid off in mid-late summer,which is historically a slower time for the corporate world. What’s more, I’mlooking for jobs in D.C., and it just dawned on me that I’m doing so inmid-September of an election year. That’s going to make employers cautiouseverywhere, and doubly so here at political ground-zero. Job searching islargely a numbers game, so in times like these it’s especially important to keepyour application volume high and to have reasonable expectations for the rate of return.Even if a company posts a job, they could be waiting for any number of spending bills tomake their way through the legislature before they decide to pull the trigger. Ifyou’re especially frustrated, this is a good time to take a second look at yourresume, but don’t drive yourself crazy with it. If you ask five HR professionals toreview your resume, you’ll get five different opinions about what you should includeand where. Education at the top or bottom? Objective or no objective? Skills-based orchronological? There’s really no right or wrong answer, provided you’recovering all the basics and have it formatted in a way that doesn’t burden thereader. Rather than spend too much time obsessing over your resume, instead, considerswitching up your search venues. If you’re on Monster or Career Builder, first ofall why, but secondly do yourself a favor and try looking elsewhere. LinkedIn is great,especially if you have recommendations. Craigslist boasts some surprisingly high-qualityjobs and is a great way to get in direct contact with a real person at a smaller company.Also, don’t forget about your local newspaper’s website. If nothing else, allof the jobs listed there will be located in your intended area. The silencethat comes with job searching is yet another contributing factor to the psychologicaltrauma inflicted by unemployment. The reason it's so difficult to handle is that there'snothing you can do to mitigate it. I continue to remind myself that almost no one remainsunemployed forever. Like I said, it’s a numbers game, and unlike blackjack orroulette, over time it’s one you can win. Continue Reading

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