Читать книгу How to Find Work in the 21st Century - Ron McGowan - Страница 3

We’re a society that knows how to apply for a job. The challenge for employment seekers today is to become proficient at finding work. That’s a much more complicated process than applying for a job.

— Ron McGowan

The vast majority of employment seekers, be they college/university graduates or experienced people who are losing their jobs, have no idea how to find work. Like most of society, they’re stuck in the twentieth century and focus, almost exclusively, on finding a traditional job. Those jobs, which have been the mainstay of our economy for over 100 years, are in decline, yet our society, governments, and institutions are still structured as if they were the norm. In trendsetting California, according to a study by the University of San Francisco, only about 30 percent of the workforce have traditional jobs. This reality is where we’re all headed — and we’re not ready for it.

Like it or not, employment seekers need to face the reality of today’s workplace and be willing to accept temporary or contract work without reservations. They also need to accept the fact that there’s no guarantee that anyone will offer them employment. They may need to create their own employment. That doesn’t mean they have to give up looking for a job, if that’s what they want; it means recognizing how the workplace has changed and understanding that the path to a traditional job today is often via the temporary or contract work route. Today it makes more sense to look for work rather than look for a job. But that is a huge psychological shift for people to make in their approach to finding employment considering how entrenched the traditional full-time job model continues to be in our society.

Today’s employment seeker must be more entrepreneurial and enterprising in his or her search for work than previous generations, and needs to be better at selling himself or herself. Acquiring self-marketing skills is a must as is the ability to find hidden employment opportunities, since at least 80 percent of employment opportunities today are never advertised. Finally, employment seekers need to learn how to approach employers in a strategically effective way rather than the reactive, mostly passive approach used by people in the twentieth century.