Charlie Wade's Job Hunting and Employment FAQs

"This whole job hunting thing is getting me down. I feel worthless."

Don't. Looking for a job isn't a referendum on you as a person or even really you as a potential employee. A lot (some say almost all) of finding a job is simply being in the right place at the right time, nothing more than that. Sometimes it just takes time to finally be in that position.

People who look at your resume and reject it, they don't know you as a person, they won't be giving themselves the chance to get to know how well you might work out on that job. That isn't their fault, it isn't anyone's mistake, it's just the way things are when you're trying to cull down resumes and interviews into just one person you want to hire. 

You just have to plug along and believe that you will eventually get in that 'right place, right time' position. You have to simply believe that things will get better, you will find work, and all this will be behind you. You have to have an indomitable optimism about your work situation.

Keep in mind, though, that you should also always be looking at your skill set and figuring out where you can improve your qualifications for what you want to do. It also helps to solicit advice from those in the field you want to be in about your qualifications and skills. It happens that people's qualifications simply don't match up well with the jobs they want; they just don't realize it. In that case, it's really not personal, it's just that your skill set doesn't match up well and there is a simple (albeit sometimes not easy) solution: fix your skill set.

There are some things that you can do to help you defeat the blues that come along with being unemployed, though:

• Don't keep a total (even a vague one) of the number of resumes you've sent out. There isn't any need for such a thing, all it serves to do is remind you of the length of your unemployment. Just let that go.
• Volunteer your time with the less fortunate. Some people can't work or have almost no hope in life. Put yourself to helping some of those people while you have the time to spare. You'll be helping not only society, but yourself. You'll see that while unemployment is terrible, it isn't as bad as some of the situations others are in. It will make you count your blessings and feel better about your own situation.
• Avoid pessimistic discussions about unemployment or the economy or the like. Reading or participating in live or online discussions that focus on dire future economic predictions or present conditions aren't going to help you. While their pessimism might be accurate, it serves you no purpose. You can't control how the economy spins down or up, you can't do anything except look for work and have optimism that your unemployment will end at some point. All such discussions will do is bring you further down emotionally.

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