The Reminder of Relationships

I keep on losing focus at times that I treat myself as an Employment Specialist who just mindlessly drums job application after job application to an employer rather than be a developer and create relationships with business owners, employers, and representatives from companies and corporations who honestly are looking for talent, but are not capturing the full scope of individuals who are within their employment pool.  Last week, I went to a Job Development Training at the Metro DDSO at 75 Morton St.  It was interesting because I attended training sessions for Job Development in the past and like this one, nobody talks about the elephant in the room; just it gets brought up and talks about how negative that our technology of streamlining applications and software to weed out the less desirable for the super, and quite possibly overqualified candidate who's looking for a job to possible give up in seven or eight months.  May be that turnover is good for a company that is willing to promote within and invest with its own human capital, but in the end the Human Resources aficionado depends on this technology because it may make the job easier.

The part of the problem is that a large number of  Human Resource employees are in a high paced, quantitative driven society that if the job applicant does not use the perfect word choice within their resume or cover letter, that individual is deemed unsuitable for employment.  This always winds up with the story, "When I was unemployed?"  So, when this story gets rehashed, it is always because I applied for 10 jobs a day for 9 months, and I did not get a call back.  Honestly, I applied for approximately 60-70 jobs when I was unemployed.  I also used two temp agencies, inquired with about 10 people or so from a few different industries, and I struggled.  I felt that whatever I did I was un-accessible because who I was applying to was denying me access.

Yes, we do live in a post 9/11 environment, and many people will say the amount of security and privacy that is required to not allow a person to even think about walking through the front door of a skyscraper of 100 companies makes it daunting, not to mention, getting turned away the millisecond you ask to speak to a manager or HR representative.  Websites are even worse, because they may even give contacts for Human Resources, who are you contacting in HR?  Are you communicating with a HR representative, like a manager, or an Employment Specialist; is it just contacting a HR member with hopes to hear a contact back, or what I normally get from two varied responses: Nothing at all, OR, the Bot that tells you to apply for a job online.

It lead into a conversation from a friends Facebook thread: "I don't like to talk on the phone!!!..."  The person said to start the thread ..."u call and get no answer take a hint."  Of course someone will say that is rude, but may be the inner therapist in me has to psychoanalyze that there is a deep down fundamental of I don't want to talk to you.  I could see a large corporation with mass numbers of applicants and people emailing to not reply, but when you have a person who does not want to do this, imagine when the small business turns you away.  Usually it is small businesses who require the help to bridge the gaps between "not getting things done" or "getting things done inefficiently" so they can perform better to their bottom line and look better in their community.

Like when you hire a developmentally disabled individual, or an individual which a business does a diversity study of who you are so it can be studied are we hiring enough of a certain grouping may be we are looking good.  But dear business owners, employers, HR aficionados: you are doing it for the wrong reasons.  Look good, but stick to your guns.  Hire the qualified, but also hire the under-appreciated and qualified too, so that you don't have millions of potentially qualified applicants unable to get into a field that is six degrees of separation from the job that someone wants, that is qualified and would not have to think so hard about I'm unhappy because I'm not compensated enough to do this.  I think businesses who just put out a Public Relations statement and say we talked to people does not show the testimonials of actually relating to the situation of the applicant.

So, I will be making a better effort as a liaison to the public to speak to the businesses owners.  But hopefully the employers are willing to talk to the business applicants; whether your are a "Mom and Pop" single storefront or a Fortune-500 corporation.

Inner ramblings...inner thoughts...expounded outward in a questioned thought of society.