Don't take Florida's miserable job market personally

By Dian Vujovich

Depending upon the news source you read, unemployment in Florida is north of 12 percent and the number of job offerings around the state is skimpier than ever. That’s not good.

What’s impressive, however, is the number of people actively looking for employment in the Sunshine state who are keeping their good efforts up in spite of the less-than-sunny jobs market outlook.

As anyone looking for work knows, sending out resume after resume, hearing nothing back from the companies you’ve sent them to, going on interviews then not being awarded the job can be depressing. Very depressing.

I was talking to a retired H.R. person the other day about the difficultly of finding a job today. She recalled times at the manufacturing company she worked for when upwards of 1000 applications would come in for one job opening. It was, she said, “overwhelming.”

Then I asked how she weeded through them all. Simply put, she used a three-pile selection process. One pile was for candidates who were qualified for the job and whose resumes caught her eye. The second pile for possible candidates and the third, the circular file—as in trash basket.

After she’d whittled that No.1 pile down to a few dozen, she’s review the second pile to see if a good candidate may have been overlooked. After another round of whittling came the phone calls then in-person interviews.

I’m telling you this because while not getting a call back, or letter or card from the firm you’ve applied to can be debilitating, 99.9 percent of the time the reason for a no-response isn’t personal. Although too many no’s or rejection letters can certainly leave you feeling that way.

FYI, this H.R. person didn’t dump a resume into the trash if there were a typo on their cover letter. Nope. What caught her eye was past and appropriate experience for the position available. Plus, a letter that just didn’t repeat what was in the ad for the job, but one that was clever in addressing how one’s job skills fit the available position.

Unfortunately, today’s high unemployment rate means that there are lots of qualified people applying for the same position. Or positions they’d like to have.

But as my dad was fond of saying, “A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.”

Be a winner.