If you’re employed, finding a new job isn’t easy. If you’re unemployed, finding a job can be even tougher. Here are a few tips to help smooth that tough road.
As if being unemployed during a recession weren’t hard enough, now it turns out that simply being unemployed can make it even harder for you to get hired.
How to get out of the unemployed rut? Take a job, any job.
The New York Timesreviewed pages and pages of job listings, only to discover that a new kind of job discrimination exists.
No, it’s not your race, your creed or your religion. It’s your job status. In other words, the message from HR managers is: The unemployed need not apply.
“A recent review of job vacancy postings on popular sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Craigslist revealed hundreds that said employers would consider (or at least ‘strongly prefer’) only people currently employed or just recently laid off,” the article says.
That means those 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer face even greater hurdles to find work than those who are employed or underemployed.
Isn’t this sort of thing illegal? Not so, say legal experts, because your employment status isn’t a “protected status.” (Your age, for example, is).
What can you do to beat unemployment discrimination?
Take a job, any job
If you’ve said no to job offers because you didn’t think the job was a perfect fit, you might want to rethink that decision. If you’ve got a job you don’t like, at least you’re employed, which helps, in the eyes of your potential next employer.
Fake it ’til you make it
Simply can’t find work? Volunteer. That way you can point to your non-paid work, explain all the work-like things you’re doing there and show how those skills make you a perfect candidate for the job you really want.
Explain, explain
The best way to get hired is to tell your work history like a story. Sometimes it’s all about how you frame it. Just because others aren’t landing a job because they’re not currently employed doesn’t mean you can’t do it. If you can explain how being unemployed has taught you life lessons that make you qualified for the next position, you may be able to talk your way into a paycheck.
Tell usIs there any job that you would absolutely refuse to take?Share with us in the comments section below! |
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