Four Unemployment Frustrations - Part 1

Before I became unemployed, I would have expected that losing my job would also remove a large number of the frustrations of my daily life. The reality is that while I definitely have less stress in my current state, my previous frustrations have simply been replaced by new ones. As with anything, some of these frustrations are simply a natural part of being unemployed: having less money, retyping your contact details and job history for every company you apply to, trying to respond gracefully when people offer unhelpful advice on your job search. These things are frustrating, but they’re legitimate frustrations, with logical, understandable and even forgivable reasons. But some of the frustrations I’ve experienced aren’t logical or understandable, and they’re certainly not forgivable. I was originally going to write about some of these “illegitimate” frustrations in a single post, but apparently, I had a lot to say about them. So, I’m going to run a small series this week of my top four unemployment frustrations. Starting with the least annoying and progressing to the most annoying.

I’ll call the first frustration poor attention to detail.

My resume is publically available on the major job site, Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice, etc. I also peruse these sites, job search aggregator sites, and a number of other sources to find companies that are hiring in my field and apply. As a result, I frequently get emails or phone calls from recruiters about jobs they are working on that they feel I’m a match for. This is exactly how one would expect the job search process to work. Except sometimes, the logic behind the call or email makes no sense. Two recent examples:

• A recruiter called and left a message for me about a position in NYC. I return the call, only to learn that the position is payroll heavy. I have almost no payroll experience. (In her defense, I don't think the company was clear about the payroll requirement at first, but it was an HR analytics role, which generally does involve a lot of payroll data.)
• A recruiter emailed me about a 2-3 month contract position in Texas. The job sounded interesting, but I live in NJ, so I emailed him back to find out if it was a remote position. I never heard back.

Because I can tell that they are legitimate recruiters (I’ll talk about the less than legitimate in future posts), I always take the time to respond, because one never knows when a connection may lead to something. For example, the first recruiter and I had a nice discussion, and while the job she’s working on isn’t for me, I hope she will call me if a better match comes up (although maybe not if she reads this . . .). However, this kind of mismatched contact frustrates me because it uses up a portion of my time and gets my hopes up unnecessarily.

Poor attention to detail comes up frequently in job postings as well. I’ve talked before about typos and poor formatting in postings. Usually, I take small errors in stride. But I do find contradictory information in the same posting to be frustrating. Where is this job, exactly, NJ as it says in the job details, or Florida, as it says in the job description? Is this a management position as the job title says, or an assistant position as the job description implies? If I apply, am I just wasting your and my time? Paying better attention to the details would probably improve the number of quality candidates a company receives, so this is important.

I know I’m not perfect in this regard either. We can all use the reminder to think before we act, to slow down and check for accuracy before we do things. These things reflect on how others perceive us.

There's more to come.  Click here to read Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4.