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Monday, September 22, 2008

Time To Get Back To Work



Well Good News, I have a job offer.

The grim statistics are:

Unemployed since mid June, about 95? days. The current average in Michigan is 17 weeks.

612 email replies to my inbox from inquiries by me for employment.
The bulk of which 80%? were erroneous emails and spam from job boards.

I applied to anywhere from 2-20 places per day online, average of about 4-6.

My pay will be roughly 65% of what is was formerly although I think I will like the position better, which was a deciding factor.

Total interviews obtained from 3 months of daily M-F online effort was 3 with one return for a 2nd interview so 4 total.

Total leads from networking contacts (co-workers, friends.)was 1 job offer out of state for about 50% of former pay.
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So if I could give any advice to anyone out there it would be this.

Job boards are a incredible waste of time to the tune of about 99.6% inefficiency.

Leads from the newspaper performed best in terms of replies to inquiries.

Personal networking also had returns I would rate as  poor although I still think this would normally be the best route to gain employment.

Persistence, persistence, persistence...had I lost initiative or just plain gave up as I saw so many of my friends and co-workers do it would have been detrimental to my ever finding anything even remotely in my field of expertise.

I also turned down one job offer that was so ridiculously low as to hurt my career and self esteem for years, so do not be afraid to say no.

I recommend learning how to say thanks but no thanks, it is allowable to not be happy with an offer.

Remember it is the employers job to find someone as cheap as possible who can perform the job, yours is to find the highest paying offer possible you can adequately perform.
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This blog started out as a diary more or less of the trials and tribulations I had while looking for work.

It has since become more of a sounding board for injustices either local to Detroit or national to the U.S. as I peprceived them and commented upon, pulled entirley from the news media at large.




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